Politics of Social Psychology

<p>Social scientists have long known that political beliefs bias the way they think about, understand, and interpret the world around them. In this volume, scholars from social psychology and related fields explore the ways in which social scientists themselves have allowed their own political biases to influence their research. These biases may influence the development of research hypotheses, the design of studies and methods and materials chosen to test hypotheses, decisions to publish or not publish results based on their consistency with one’s prior political beliefs, and how results are described and dissemination to the popular press. The fact that these processes occur within academic disciplines, such as social psychology, that strongly skew to the political left compounds the problem. Contributors to this volume not only identify and document the ways that social psychologists’ political beliefs can and have influenced research, but also offer solutions towards a more depoliticized social psychology that can become a model for discourse across the social sciences. </p> <p>1. Introduction to the Politics of Social Psychology <em>Jarret T. Crawford & Lee Jussim</em> I. <b>How Politicized Social Psychology Undermines Theory Generation and Hypothesis Testing</b> 2. Do Ideologically Driven Scientific Agendas Impede the Understanding and Acceptance of Evolutionary Principles in Social Psychology? <em>William von Hippel & David M. Buss. </em>3. Norms and Explanations in Social and Political Psychology <em>Mark J. Brandt & Anna Katarina Spälti </em>4. Does Political Ideology Hinder Insights on Gender and Labor Markets?<em> Charlotta Stern</em> 5. Neglected Tradeoffs in Social Justice Research <em>Chris C. Martin </em>II. <b>How Politicized Social Psychology Distorts Research Methods & Design</b> 6. Scale Creation, Use, and Misuse: How Politics Undermines Measurement <em>Christine Reyna </em>7. The Politics of the Psychology of Prejudice <em>Jarret T. Crawford </em>8. Rethinking the Rigidity of the Right Model: Three Suboptimal Methodological Practices and Their Implications <em>Ariel Malka, Yphtach Lelkes, & Nissan Holzer</em> III. <b>How Politicized Social Psychology Distorts Interpretation of Research </b>9. Jumping to Conclusions: Advocacy and Application of Psychological Research <em>Gregory Mitchell </em>10. Socio-Political Values Infiltrate the Assessment of Scientific Research <em>Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams </em>11. The Bullet Point Bias: How Diluted Science Communications Can Impede Social Progress <em>Hart Blanton & Elif G. Ikizer</em> IV. <b>Political Discrimination in Social Psychology </b>12. Paranoid Egalitarian Meliorism: An Account of Bias in the Social Sciences <em>Bo Winegard & Benjamin Winegard </em>13. Political Exclusion and Discrimination in Social Psychology: Lived Experiences, and Solutions <em>Sean T. Stevens, Lee Jussim, Stephanie M. Anglin, Richard Contrada, Cheryl Alyssa Welch, Jennifer S. Labrecque, Matt Motyl, Jose Duarte, Sylvia Terbeck, Walter Sowden, John Edlund, & W. Keith Campbell</em> V<em>.</em><b>Towards a De-Politicized Social Psychological Science </b>14. Interrupting Bias in Psychological Science: Evolutionary Psychology as a Guide <em>Joshua M. Tybur & C. David Navarette </em>15. Possible Solutions for a Less Politicized Social Psychological Science <em>Lee Jussim & Jarret T. Crawford</em></p>