I have been thinking about this a lot lately - and have even taken a
shot at writing something about it for my blog. I think there are
probably multiple factors.
1) Self-selection: Smart conservatives go to business
school. Smart liberals go to grad school.
2) Tolerance for ambiguity: I am stereotyping, but many
conservatives I have met think in black-and-white terms. For every
question, there has to be one right answer. You will not make it far
in academics if you are uncomfortable with shades of grey.
3) Exposure to diversity: Study of individuals differences and
psychopathology exposes students to diversity - and that exposure in
generals leads to an increased tolerance for diversity. Psychology
in particular tends to "liberalize" students because the subject
matter by its very nature promotes an acceptance of diversity.
-- Jim
At 09:35 AM 5/17/2010, you wrote:
So why are academic psychologists more likely to be liberal. I have
a theory.that is probably not new: We are trained to look for the
causes of behavior. And because of the behaviorist influences on so
many of us, we tend to look for environmental causes. But even the
biological types among us (myself included) look for causes of behavior.
In my experience (and understanding), liberals tend to make
situational attributions to explain behavior while conservatives
tend to make dispositional attributions. Those dispositional
attributions are precisely the sort that conservations like to talk
about. i.e., people succeed or fail because of their laziness,
ambition, etc. Those are also precisely the sort of explanations
that behaviorists are most likelt to dismiss. We want to go the
extra step and ask "what external variable cause differences in
laziness, ambition, etc. and how can we change those variables to
change behavior.
I'm suggesting that academics are trained to go deeper in asking
about causation whereas the majority of conservatives that I know
are perfectly happy to make those dispositional attributions and end
the discussion there. I am not suggesting that this more superficial
analysis is a necessary part of all conservative thought (I can
appreciate a George Will) but it seems to be a rather ubiquitous
position among conservatives.
Ed
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
<http://home.comcast.net/~epollak/home.htm>http://home.comcast.net/~epollak/home.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, & bluegrass
fiddler...... in approximate order of importance.
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