The article was based on a conference talk given by Jon Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia. I was at the conference in question in San Antonio, but I will confess that I did not hear his talk in person. I did, however, read the transcript after the fact (as well as its coverage in the Times, including interviews with Haidt himself).
Certainly, Haidt is right about the disparity. The data on faculty composition are clear. Based on my own more anecdotal observations and interactions with colleagues, my only surprise at seeing the 12 to 1 ratio might be that the number isn't higher. And this sort of disparity is hardly confined to one discipline–on many a college campus, being a conservative student or faculty member means unambiguous membership in a clear statistical minority.
Now if you ask me, there's nothing inherently "liberal" or "conservative" about sensitivity to group-based bias. Conservatives, in particular, should be quite disturbed by discrimination that takes the form of institutional or governmental infringement upon individual rights. That said, perhaps in response to touchstone controversies such as those involving affirmative action, our contemporary political environment seems to have become one in which the knee-jerk "liberal" response to disparity is to see discrimination, whereas the knee-jerk "conservative" response is to cite alternative, legitimizing explanations.
For the disparity that Haidt cites however, it's the conservatives who are more likely to see evidence of actionable bias. As the argument goes, conservative psychologists are discriminated against when it comes to job hiring and promotion, not to mention grant funding and journal publication decisions; for that matter, the general atmosphere of the field might dissuade prospective psychologists from proceeding further down that path.
And now it's liberals who are more likely to deny that anything nefarious is going on, suggesting instead that conservatives simply aren't interested in academic jobs–or in the field of psychology–in large enough numbers. Rather, the argument goes, conservatives must have personalities that draw them to other, perhaps higher-paying fields and disciplines.
In short, here Haidt rightly points out a disparity with practical implications, but also one that serves as an interesting counterpoint to how many of us currently conceive of these issues.
But Haidt's talk is not right about everything. Take, for instance, this excerpt from the Times article:
Similarly, Larry Summers, then president of Harvard, was ostracized in 2005 for wondering publicly whether the preponderance of male professors in some top math and science departments might be due partly to the larger variance in I.Q. scores among men (meaning there are more men at the very high and very low ends). "This was not a permissible hypothesis," Dr. Haidt said. "It blamed the victims rather than the powerful. The outrage ultimately led to his resignation. We psychologists should have been outraged by the outrage. We should have defended his right to think freely.
Here, Haidt is off the mark. In fact, I'd argue that he's guilty of committing one of the very sins his talk bemoans by giving the one-sided, talking-point take on the Summers controversy. Because while I wasn't at Summers's talk either, I read his transcript too.
No, Larry Summers did not come out and argue that men are smarter than women. Nor did he dismiss the problem of the gender gap in the sciences. But Summers did more than simply articulate a testable hypothesis, as Haidt's version of events would suggest.
Had Summers simply articulated various hypotheses in need of further study, there would have been no high-profile controversy. But he went further than that. He ranked these explanations by importance, prioritizing the aptitude account over the role of socialization. Let's not forget, this was not just some researcher identifying abstract hypotheses in need of future study. Rather, this was a sitting university president–the guy who signed the paychecks and signed off on hiring and promotion decisions.
One can understand why, say, a female scientist working at Harvard under Summers might have been a tad concerned to hear the boss state that the lack of women in her department owed more to differences related to aptitude than to socialization or bias. Especially given the backstory that during Summers's administration, tenured job offers to women at Harvard dropped dramatically, to the point where only a handful of new hires the year before were female.
So with all due respect, Haidt misses the point when he suggests that "we psychologists should have been outraged by the outrage." Rather, we should have been outraged by Summers's clear dismissal of the singular premise that lies at the heart of our discipline of social psychology: the notion that situations matter.
Summers argued that "the human mind has a tendency to grab to the socialization hypothesis when you can see it. And it often turns out not to be true." He was wrong about this. Twice over.
Any good social psychologist–regardless of political orientation–can tell you that the human mind often overlooks the power of situations, grabbing on instead to intrinsic, internal explanations for human behavior. Larry Summers's arguments conveniently ignored the extensive social psychological literature on topics such as gender norms, self-fulfilling prophecies, and stereotype threat.
From an intellectual perspective as social psychologists, that should outrage all of us, elephant and donkey alike.
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Sam Sommers, Ph.D., is a social psychologist at Tufts University and author of the forthcoming book Situations Matter
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