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What’s wrong with social psychology, in a nutshell

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From Ben Shapiro at Daily Wire:

You’ve undoubtedly seen those preening headlines from major outlets about how conservatives are more “authoritarian” by nature than Leftists. See, for example, here and here and here and here and here and here. But it turns out that this is nonsense. Such studies are generally vague and deliberately constructed to make it appear that conservatives are more “authoritarian” than Leftists. In reality, authoritarian personality types exist across the political spectrum. All you have to do is change the incentive structure in the questions, and you’ll suddenly find Leftists who hate freedom and conservatives who love it.

Jesse Singal of New York Magazine has a long and worthwhile piece about the scientific flaws in the authoritarian modeling.

Confirmation bias has allowed too many members of the Left to ignore embarrassing scientific reversals like this one from 2016, when a study suggesting that conservatives were psychotic was actually recalibrated to show the reverse. More.

The principal question is and what to do about the fact that social psychology is — with a straight face — thought of as a science. In the meantime, we can afford a cackle or two at the people who wonder earnestly why the public does not trust science.

See also: How political bias affects social science research

Stanford Prison Experiment findings a “sham” – but how much of social psychology is legitimate anyway?

A BS detector for the social sciences

All sides agree: progressive politics is strangling social sciences

and

Study of causes of science skepticism sails right by the most obvious cause

Comments
timebet I would agree except I think we also have to accept that every attempt to evaluate anything from news, politics, arts, history, science - any kind of human communication and learning -- all of that comes from a belief system. We can't do anything without a belief system -- that must come before we are able to think and analyze and draw conclusions. Philosophy and/or religion are the systems we use. Nothing is possible without them.Silver Asiatic
July 31, 2018
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The major reason for the social psychology death is political bias. Fake news is only the most recent term for what we used to think about promulgation. Controlling the considerations of people in general I has been done like this all through my lifetime. Everybody in control has a motivation. Blame dispensing, affirmations lies over Lies whips the populist into a befuddled state. Being a social culture we are inclined to wholeheartedly back are sports groups our convictions in eating meat or vegetarianism, one of the numerous religions you can pick from or obviously now the special one game governmental issues. on the off chance that you've picked a side then whatever you see or hear that backs up your perspective should obviously be reality, if obviously it's against your perspective it's phony news. I question that anybody will comprehend this however you ought to think about everything similarly counterfeit news (differences on dissertationwriter.org Social Bias Section), utilize your own cerebrum, have a problem solving attitude, don't give belief system a chance to do your reasoning for you.timbetancourt
July 31, 2018
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