The Credibility Crisis in Psychology: A Tragedy in Four Acts
What happens when an academic discipline becomes a tribal moral community?
ACT I
Over a decade ago, at the annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), social psychologist Jonathan Haidt gave a “provocative” talk. “When sacred values are threatened,” he explained, “we turn into ‘intuitive theologians.’ That is, we use our reasoning not to find the truth, but to find ways to defend what we hold sacred.”
Haidt warned that social and personality psychology had become a tribal moral community. It had developed “taboos and danger zones.” He thought the lack of viewpoint diversity was not statistically possible as a result of chance. “We are hurting ourselves when we deprive ourselves of critics,” Haidt said, “of people who are as committed to science as we are, but who ask different questions, and make different background assumptions.”
Morality both “binds and blinds.” It binds us into cohesive communities that become tribal in their thinking in order to be prepared for battle. It blinds us to the truth when the truth violates taboos or approaches “moral danger zones.” Just as it can be impossible for creationists to see the evidence for evolution, and for members of Heaven’s Gate to see that there was no spaceship in the trail of the Hale-Bopp comet, it can be impossible for believers of a political ideology to see evidence of truths that contradict their firmly held beliefs.
It also makes us blind to the fact that there are decent people in other tribes. And it can make us turn on those in our own tribe who don’t see members of other tribes as moral enemies.
In universities, where truth-seeking and knowledge-production are the articulated values, Haidt explained, tribal morality undermines scholars’ ability to effectively engage in the work they understand themselves to be doing. Many of the small number of conservative social and personality psychologists, he revealed, were even hiding their political orientation. Wearing blinders is antithetical to legitimate truth-seeking. Without the institutionalized disconfirmation provided by viewpoint diversity, he warned, the quality of the work — and the credibility of the field — would suffer.
ACT II
A year later, in 2012, psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers presented research at the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). They had attended Haidt’s SPSP talk, but they weren’t convinced he was right. So they surveyed members of the SPSP, asking how they identified politically, whether they believed there was a hostile climate for conservative thinkers, and whether they were willing to discriminate against conservative scholars.
Respondents were presented with four hypothetical situations:
Would they award a grant to a conservative scholar?
Would they accept a conservative’s paper for publication?
Would they invite a “quite conservative” scholar to participate in a symposium?
Would they choose a liberal over the conservative candidate for a position in their department?
The more liberal the respondent, Inbar and Lammers found, the less likely he or she was to think there was a hostile climate for conservatives, and yet, the more likely he or she was to actively discriminate against conservatives. Of the four scenarios, liberal professors expressed the greatest willingness to discriminate in order to prevent conservatives from joining their departments.
I attended the presentation of their findings at that APS conference at which respondents’ comments were used to illustrate the data. (These comments did not appear in the 2012 paper, but I published some in a 2015 article for Psychology Today) Here are two that illuminate the thinking behind liberal psychologists’ willingness to discriminate in hiring.
“Certainly, it doesn't make a lot of sense to hire someone… [with] beliefs and opinions that were contrary to the culture of the department.”
“I don't consider my critical attitude toward conservative political beliefs to be an inappropriate political bias, because in many cases those beliefs are predicated on demonstrably wrong propositions… and I don't think there's anything wrong with taking an aggressive partisan stance…”
“By excluding those who disagree with (most of) us politically,” Inbar & Lammers concluded, “we treat them unfairly, do ourselves a disservice, and ultimately damage the scientific credibility of our field.”
ACT III
In 2022, the SPSP — the same professional organization at which Haidt challenged his colleagues in 2011 to increase viewpoint diversity — changed its criteria for submissions to their 2023 annual conference. Now, each submission was to include a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, or Anti-Racism (DEIA) statement. “Submitters will indicate whether their work advances the DEIA goals of SPSP and if yes, they must share how.”
Haidt wrote to Laura King, the president of the organization asking if it was “really the policy of SPSP that all proposals for our 2023 conference had to include an explanation of how the submission would ‘advance the equity, inclusion, and antiracism goals of SPSP.’” (The entire back-and-forth plus more about this controversy and others can be found on psychologist Lee Jussim’s Substack, “Unsafe Science,” where you can read many other stories of moral tribalism.)
“I think it’s fine for the program committee to have goals for the conference and to put out special calls, or to preferentially select talks or sessions for that reason,” Haidt wrote. “I can support the possibility of giving preference to speakers based on their race or nationality. Those are internal decisions about who and what you want at the conference. But making all of us say how our work advances a specific ideological agenda? That is entirely different.”
King replied: “I am not super clear on why anti-racism is viewed as problematic….?”
Haidt responded:
I urge you to read Ibram Kendi’s “How to be an antiracist.” Here are two quotes, from p.18:
“There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.”
This is a bizarre statement. Everything that is not explicitly aligned with his philosophy is racist? If SPSP has a policy about plagiarism that is not antiracist, then it is racist? If a town in Iceland has a policy about speed limits on its roads that is not antiracist, then it is racist? Kendi is an example of the Manichaen binary thinking that I have spent much of my career trying to reduce.
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
This statement is breathtaking in both its obvious wrongness (there are plenty of other remedies) and in its moral offensiveness. Those of us raised in the late 20th century who strived to end group-based discrimination are now told we are wrong, that the ONLY way to end group-based discrimination is to do it in reverse? We are told that if our goal is to be non-racist, rather than anti-racist, then that makes us racist?
Antiracism is the most intellectually shallow and morally offensive ideology I have ever seen up close. It’s fine with me for it to be taught in schools as a set of influential ideas, like communism, nazism, or christianity. But if NYC public schools taught communism, nazism, christianity, or antiracism as an official creed, which my kids had to profess or abide by, I would withdraw them from the school system.
If SPSP is now endorsing this ideology, and telling us that we cannot present at the SPSP conference unless we profess antiracism, or at least pay lip service to it by finding some way that our research advances it, then I cannot and will not attend the conference. And if this policy stays in place, then I will have to resign from SPSP, after 31 years of membership.
By the end of September in 2022, Haidt had resigned. (You can read his resignation statement here.)
Act IV
In 2023, Yoel Inbar applied for a job at UCLA. As part of the interview process, Inbar spoke with some graduate students to learn about the culture of the department. A candidate at his level would normally be forwarded to the faculty for a vote by a three-person committee. But after his visit, graduate students circulated a petition against hiring him.
“We, the undersigned students,” the petition began, “write to strongly recommend against the hiring of Dr. Yoel Inbar as a tenured faculty in the Psychology Department. We feel that serious consideration of Dr. Inbar directly conflicts with the values and standards we uphold as an institution and department committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).”
Inbar co-hosts the podcast Two Psychologists, Four Beers with Mickey Inzlicht. The petition referenced two episodes of the podcast. In one, when discussing the SPSP’s public position against Georgia’s decision to outlaw all abortions past six weeks, Inbar, who is pro-choice, said, “It is not the place of SPSP to take a stand on this kind of issue” because “when we align ourselves with a political side or faction it’s bad for our science.”
This view is consistent with University of Chicago’s Kalven Report, which posits that a scholarly institution “cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy.” This necessity for neutrality “arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.”
The petitioning students disagreed. “Most concerning to us as students,” they complained, “is Dr. Inbar’s opposition to institutions endorsing positions on sociopolitical issues he has deemed ‘contentious’ or ‘controversial.’” Further, they took issue with Inbar’s “position against the use of diversity statements as a tool in the hiring process.” This, they found in a podcast episode from 2018 in which he mused, “it is not clear what good they do...”
In that episode, Inbar cited research indicating that DEI statements don’t seem to “lead to better outcomes for underrepresented groups.” He added, “I’m skeptical of this stuff” because it seems like something “some administrator thought would be a good idea to showcase the progressive values of the organization rather than anything that’s going to lead to better outcomes” for members of marginalized groups. Given his earlier research into the problem of ideological bias in his field, he also noted that these criteria “give reviewers license to apply” their “existing political biases.”
Petitioning students found his view intolerable.
Rather than recognizing the value of DEI initiatives to improve representation and inclusion of marginalized scholars, he casts valuing diversity, equity, and inclusion as uniquely ‘liberal’ values reflective of ideological bias. These comments frame diversity statements as a threat to ideological diversity, and reflect a lack of prioritization of the needs and experiences of historically marginalized individuals across the lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. In contrast, our institution’s position on this issue is unequivocal: page one of the UCLA Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion FAQ proclaims “Equity, diversity, and inclusion are integral to how the University of California conceives of “merit.”
Finally, the students took issue with Inbar’s view that “the left fails to acknowledge that these [DEI] statements ‘[signal] an allegiance to a certain set of beliefs.’” They objected to his concern that mandating DEI statements could require applicants to “demonstrate a commitment to left-wing values” and might “signal to people who don’t share those values, ‘this is not a place for you.’” In expressing concerns about excluding or marginalizing conservative scholars, Inbar, though not a conservative, was rendered as morally polluted as if he were.
Moral pollution is a phenomenon whereby an idea, person, or object is considered metaphorically contaminated by virtue of its physical or conceptual proximity to a taboo, including someone or something considered morally abhorrent. This is the mechanism of what’s now called adjacency. If a person’s thinking is “adjacent” to a morally polluted idea or person, that “adjacent” person is rendered contaminated, too.
Many on the faculty wanted Inbar to join the department. But the committee did not allow the faculty to vote. Inbar was sent an unambiguous signal: This is not a place for you.
Inbar’s case is not entirely unique. But it contains a particular irony. In his own required DEI statement, Inbar, who is politically liberal and supports affirmative action, wrote, “I am strongly committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in teaching and mentoring, and I continuously work to foster equitable and inclusive environments in my classes and in my lab culture…” Teaching at the very diverse University of Toronto, he said, “requires considering how [students’] different backgrounds and life experiences affect how they learn…” He even gave specific examples of his “inclusive mentorship” and concluded by reiterating his commitment “to continuing to mentor and support students from underrepresented groups...”
Inbar was right. Some DEI statements really don’t make a difference.
“We are very forgiving and accommodating in a way that [conservatives] tend not to be.” SPSP survey comment by self-described liberal psychologist
Epilogue:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has submitted a public records request to find out if Inbar was discriminated against because of his viewpoint. UCLA has continued to obfuscate. FIRE tweeted: “Professor Inbar’s case highlights the growing problem of ideological litmus tests becoming determining factors for faculty hiring, promotion and tenure. We suspect UCLA’s records would show it, and that’s why the school is using every trick in the book to avoid revealing them.”
You can help FIRE by emailing UCLA to tell them to give FIRE the requested records. (And donating to FIRE is always worthwhile.)
More to come…
A short version of this saga was published by Psychology Today.
Behavioral science (MPH-UCLA 1994) is my discipline. I believe that I was “vaccinated” against the tribal effect. My undergrad was Biology. My graduate program worshipped quantitative research. Then, I worked in IT for the last 22 years of my work career. We witches retire at age 55, (SF DPH). IT is about pure logic at each step with brutal and often immediate computer punishment for non-logic.
In 2019; when DEI program began to replace my science stories with non-science propaganda, I thought I would bark like a guard dog and the PhDs would respond by fixing the problem. But, they were blind and deaf to DEI criticism. So, I self-assigned myself the role of security guard to protect my behavioral science library.
In 2023 October; I postal mailed 50 governors arguing that DEI in Gov is not legal and advised that DEI be abolished by Dec 31, 2023. I informed them about IBT and pediatric-Trans, (below).
I expose the fact that City-Gov DEI in 100 cities has refused to be transparent since 2018. I will soon read “Due Process” - Springer so that I can challenge SF-Gov and CA-Gov accordingly.
On declining credibility within behavioral health, I informed the APA that I discovered that Implicit Bias Test (IBT) captures Left/Right hand dominance at keyboard. No response. I have been informing some parents that no psychological assessment exists to capture Trans.
Haidt is one of my heroes.