The Politics of Social Psychology (Frontiers of Social Psychology)

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 ones 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. -- Publisher's description Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Contributors 1 Introduction to the Politics of Social Psychology PART I: How Politicized Social Psychology Undermines Theory Generation and Hypothesis Testing 2 Do Ideologically Driven Scientific Agendas Impede the Understanding and Acceptance of Evolutionary Principles in Social Psychology? 3 Norms and Explanations in Social and Political Psychology 4 Does Political Ideology Hinder Insights on Gender and Labor Markets? 5 Neglected Trade-offs in Social Justice Research PART II: How Politicized Social Psychology Distorts Research Methods and Design 6 Scale Creation, Use, and Misuse: How Politics Undermines Measurement 7 The Politics of the Psychology of Prejudice 8 Rethinking the Rigidity of the Right Model: Three Suboptimal Methodological Practices and Their Implications PART III: How Politicized Social Psychology Distorts Interpretation of Research 9 Jumping to Conclusions: Advocacy and Application of Psychological Research 10 Socio-political Values Infiltrate the Assessment of Scienticfi Research 11 The Bullet-point Bias: How Diluted Science Communications Can Impede Social Progress PART IV: Political Discrimination in Social Psychology 12 Paranoid Egalitarian Meliorism: An Account of Bias in the Social Sciences 13 Political Exclusion and Discrimination in Social Psychology: Lived Experiences and Solutions PART V: Towards a De-Politicized Social Psychological Science 14 Interrupting Bias in Psychological Science: Evolutionary Psychology as a Guide 15 Possible Solutions for a Less Politicized Social Psychological Science Index This volume explores the complex and contentious political influences within the field of social psychology. It reveals how political biases affect theory development, selection of methodologies, data analysis, and the interpretation of findings.