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Note: SPSP refers to The Society for Personality and Social Psychology. This is the text and slides of one of the talks presented at the panel on “Is SPSP a Healthy Organization?” If you prefer video, you can find videos of all four talks here

Anne Wilson’s Talk

Most of the transcript comes direct from what I said in the posted video but I have lightly edited for wording and elaborated slightly on a few points. [Elaborated asides that add minor points to the original talk are in brackets]. Video and slides can be found here. I have included screenshots of slides below only where the visual adds something beyond the text of the talk.

So, you might notice that I’m the only panelist in this symposium arguing that SPSP is largely healthy. You might even be wondering whether I’m really here to defend SPSP. You’re right to wonder. My abstract signaled something more equivocal.

Well, I am here to defend SPSP, but I’m also here to valorize dissent.

Ingroup dissent is costly and courageous, and it’s motivated by care— in this case, I think, for the discipline.

We know from the research that in-group dissent is really valuable, because it helps groups to think critically, and sometimes to course correct. It’s also dangerous for the person doing the dissenting because, especially when groups feel under threat, in-group dissenters are often seen as disloyal and as betrayers.[1]

So, the first three speakers in this symposium are dissenters, and I want to start by saying that I think it’s not out of disloyalty. Also - I think they have a real point. They may represent a minority view in this organization, but it’s a view (about universities more generally) that is increasingly evident in society.

It’s also not clear that all of their perspectives are minority views even within our organization. We don’t know how common these views are, because we know that people self-censor for both pro-social reasons, out of care and kindness, and out of fear.[2] I know I have done both. This means that we don’t really know how many people share some of the concerns that these speakers have highlighted.

Why platform this symposium? Some of you may feel that at this moment in time, when academia feels under political attack – and some of our members may be feeling that threat quite personally, that even hosting this symposium is inappropriate – that it gives ammunition to that threat.

I feel that concern quite deeply.

But my view is that even in times of threat, and perhaps especially in times of threat, we need to examine the issues that could be weakening our organization, our knowledge production, and we need to understand the reasons for rising grievances and public mistrust.

So, what I’m going to try to do in the time I have is to articulate what I think was strongest in the criticisms that we’ve heard so far. I’ll focus on content, not on tone. I acknowledge that some of the tone was quite prickly. I also want to highlight where I think these criticisms overreach or miss the mark.

I won’t spend a lot of time talking about all of the things that I love about SPSP, and there are many. I’ll focus primarily on the criticisms that have been at issue in this symposium.

This slide represents what I consider to be the biggest criticisms from Luke, Nate, and Lee. I’m going to try to go through and address each theme.

So the first critique that I want to highlight is one from Luke. He argues that the scientific method is not racist, and it’s worth defending.

At its core, is the scientific method a valuable tool? Absolutely, I agree with him entirely. However, the scientific method, and how it’s practiced, is also worth critiquing. It’s worth recognizing that neutrality and objectivity are often claimed on the basis of using the scientific method. Those claims can obscure how bias can enter through many of the decisions we make – our choice of questions, our samples, our interpretations, the gatekeeping at journals, whose work is considered valuable and impactful enough to publish, and so on.

[section edited slightly for clarity] All researchers have biases that might shape the choices they make in their scientific methods and how they interpret results. In unequal societies, however, biases in the application of the scientific method can be tilted in ways that end up benefiting those who already hold power. For example, historically, the scientific method has been used to claim the superiority of white people or men. These conclusions received insufficient scrutiny when the discipline was made up mostly of white men! One of the best protections against this is the viewpoint diversity of scientists. When people from different demographic groups, lived experiences or ideological perspectives scrutinize scientific findings, they’re better able to collectively identify biases that might go undetected in a homogenous group of scientists.

So - I agree with Luke that the scientific method is worth defending. But that also means ensuring equal access to these tools, and treating with sufficient scrutiny claims of objectivity of the results that we get from using the scientific method.

It’s also worth highlighting here that this symposium is fundamentally about viewpoint diversity. I strongly support that principle, but principles only have integrity when they apply symmetrically. So here’s where I challenge Luke on this criticism.

If we’re defending viewpoint diversity, it includes perspectives that we agree with, but also those we don’t.

And if SPSP is going to be pluralistic – in its methods and its epistemologies and its perspectives, then asking “which is it -- the scientific method or not?” I think that misses the mark.

If conservative critiques belong at the table, then so do critical theory critiques, even those that criticize the scientific method.

So I’m suggesting that critical theory gets a seat at the table. That’s part of viewpoint diversity.

Now, I have a caveat here, and it’s an important one.

No perspective, including critical theory, should be insulated from scrutiny.

And I say this because sometimes there is a move within critical theory—some critical race theorists sometimes cast disagreement in itself to be an indication of racism, or of bad faith, or of white fragility.

Now, of course, people do get defensive when their identities are threatened. This is not unique to white people, even though it can certainly also apply to white people. They might well sometimes find critical race theory claims threatening.

However, you can’t reliably reason backwards. Even though defensiveness sometimes fuels disagreement, we can’t always assume that disagreement is due only to defensiveness. Disagreement can sometimes come from principled reasons unrelated to defensiveness.

And I think this is important, because if we too automatically dismiss CRT criticism as ill-intended and bad faith, these ideas are insulated from taking critique seriously, which can ultimately weaken this framework.

Now, Luke’s critique seems to resist some of these implications of viewpoint diversity. Psychology has historically privileged more quantitative approaches, and we have been expanding our approaches to a wider range of methods and epistemologies. I think that’s worthwhile.

But another note of caution, and this one is for the epistemological pluralists. Sometimes I encounter the perspective that that different groups need different ways of knowing -- different epistemologies.

I personally reject that perspective. I hope that we can expand the toolbox of accessible tools for everyone, but that we resist epistemic fragmentation where different groups start to rely on incommensurable tools. I think that’s a real recipe for talking past each other. And this practice – different groups using different tools - may not empower underrepresented scholars but isolate them from arenas where policy, funding, and institutional decisions are made.

Okay, the second critique that Luke, as well as Nate, were making, at least implicitly, has to do with politicization of our organization and how this can threaten institutional trust. These graphs show polling (compiled by Nate Honeycutt in his role at FIRE) revealing the decline of public trust in universities.

There are likely multiple reasons for the loss of public trust. But there is something real happening. Institutional trust, it can be slow to build, and it can be very easy to lose. And I think that Luke has a point, that overtly political stances do risk of undermining public confidence. When an organization is ideologically aligned, the public may wonder if evidence is going to be weighed fairly and communicated accurately and honestly. In other words, if political bias is going to shape what we tell the public.

Now, there are a number of things we can do to protect against that.[3]

But one place that I differ from Luke and Nate is that their implication that activist research is the problem, and it should be discouraged.

As a strong supporter of academic freedom, I simply don’t think that’s a tenable solution. We can’t protect some scholarly inquiry and disallow others. Progressive and activist research is part of the diversity we need to protect with academic freedom. I also don’t think it’s feasible to be determining what is activist research and what is not. Who decides? I think that most research is for something, and the idea that we could have a binary distinction (of activist or not) is not really feasible. [added note: it should also be acknowledged that this symposium would likely fall into the category of activist scholarship].

Science vs activism -- this is a debate that’s been had for a while. People like Jonathan Haidt have argued for that activist norms can undermine good science, and that you simply can’t have both at the same time.[4] I disagree with that view, and align more with Alice Dreger’s perspective. She says that science and social justice require one another.[5] Ultimately, social justice is best served when we know the truth. We just have to remain committed, even while doing research with social justice goals, to insist on seeking the truth, not what we would prefer to be true.

So, shifting to some of Lee’s criticisms. So, Lee takes issue with the expansive labeling of white supremacy in some of the language that SPSP is using.

So first, I want to start with the defense.

Whiteness.

In critical theory, this doesn’t refer to white people.

It refers to a historically constructed system of norms and assumptions and power relations that are treated as neutral or universal in a white dominant culture.[6] This isn’t my expertise, but this is my basic understanding of what it means.

Now, I recognize that this can be confusing, because the analytical concept here, structural power, is going to be heard rhetorically by many people as a claim about individuals. And I understand that it can sound pretty hypocritical when people like us, social psychologists, who often warn against essentializing or generalizing about groups, appear to be doing exactly that when we’re talking about white people.

However, it’s also arguably defensible.

One argument for using this kind of terminology is that white people who live in majority contexts often don’t have to think about the ways in which their racial identity shapes their experience, and – it can be valuable to name that.

I sometimes think about this as the iceberg problem.

When people within a particular theoretical expertise, like critical race theory, talk about a term like white supremacy, it’s kind of like the tip of the iceberg. They’re using the term as shorthand to refer to historical patterns of oppression, systemic power structures, intergenerational transmission of wealth and opportunity, implications of over-incarceration, and so much more in a rich historical analysis.

And this deep knowledge base under the surface – these are the reasons why, the terms, whiteness and white supremacy – from their perspective - is appropriate to be using.

Now, outside of that theoretical discourse, though, we know that when people hear the word white supremacy, they think KKK, or racial hatred.

And so there really is a disconnect, and communication can be a problem here. The term is understandably going to land with many people quite differently from how it is meant by those intellectual insiders.

And I think it’s worth reflecting on, that yes, we can defend the use of these terms, but we also might consider whether there is some privilege in using language, at least in public discourse, where the defensibility of the term depends on the depth of knowledge in a very specific intellectual tradition.

I didn’t talk much about this next slide. This is Tema Okun, who is the originator of this “white supremacy culture” list. I encourage you to look into it, if you don’t know about it.[7]

[my brief added aside: Lee’s takedown of this unevidenced opinion piece by Okun was snarky, and these Okun claims were likely not immediately recognizable to everyone in the audience. But the core criticism was warranted. Okun lists qualities of rigid organizational cultures that she does not like and calls them white supremacy culture. Many of the features – when taken to extreme – may well be undesirable! Labeling them symptoms of whiteness is an opinion. In my opinion, SPSP should not promote unevidenced claims about white supremacy culture, then also ask the public to trust our scientific integrity. We have the capacity to course correct and this is a good place to demonstrate that.]

Lee’s next critique was about denunciation and censorship culture. First, there is a defense. On one hand – denunciation is a normal human impulse, and sometimes a really functional one for societies. We set social norms as a group by signalling our rejection what falls outside of what is acceptable. Also – on the same hand - criticism is part of free speech. As a defender of free speech, I must say, if you have criticisms, make them.

Now, on the other hand, I acknowledge that internet-fueled cancellation campaigns really don’t elevate the kind of critical thought and meaningful speech that I think, as an organization, we should be valorizing.

And it also does contribute to self-censorship, and I think that goes well beyond the target of the cancellation.

Lee’s next point was about the demonizing and catastrophizing language that sometimes occurs in these discourses. Specifically, Lee presented some data about how if you describe a society in these expansively racist, white supremacist terms, it has real implications for the judgments people make under attributional ambiguity. Specifically, if people perceive that racism is the norm, they may perceive racism even in places where there’s no evidence that it has occurred. This brings to mind other past research on diversity norms and how what we believe about a group (that the norm is to appreciate and welcome diversity) can potentially shape our reactions to ambiguous situations in more prosocial ways.[8]

So I think that Lee’s data makes an interesting point, and one that needs further research. I don’t find the research to date convincing enough to draw a firm conclusion about it. [though, as an aside – I imagine it would count once again as activist research!]

I also want to point out to Lee, though, that demonization and catastrophizing is not a one-sided phenomenon. I have heard Lee do it! And, more generally, I’ve heard plenty of catastrophizing in conservative and anti-woke amplification of woke campus controversies, where a single vivid instance is held up as evidence that this is happening constantly on campuses. I think that is also worth reflecting on, because it too might contribute to conservatives opting out of college or university (or fields like ours), and to the declining institutional trust in universities.

Alright, his last critique was about Diversity by discrimination.

Lee makes a long case about the Bakke decision. I’m really not going to address that. I think that that might not be the strongest basis for the critique that he has, given how contested that decision was across the political spectrum.

So I want to just articulate his core concern, which is that discrimination against one group to the advantage of another group can be a difficult principle to defend on its face.

That’s not a trivial objection.

However, I want to point out that, there’s sometimes more agreement between pro- and anti-DEI perspectives than it sometimes appears on the surface. Most pro-DEI people are anti-discrimination, and this is an anti-discrimination stance. Moreover, most pro-DEI policies are motivated by fairness, by a desire for equal opportunity and merit *with an awareness that disadvantage can sometimes obscure genuine talent, so we should try to have a more expansive understanding of what merit means.

Even in a case of preferential selection. One can argue that the intuition behind that in a lot of cases is that it’s selecting for high merit candidates whose credentials don’t quite match their potential because of the cumulative disadvantages that they face.

So I think that, in principle, many of these intuitions are fairness intuitions, and would be shared by pro- and anti-DEI, proponents even if we disagree on specific policy approaches.

Now, when Lee criticizes DEI, is he saying that underrepresented scholars don’t belong at SPSP?

I’m arguing no.

I won’t read through all of these, but these are things that I have heard him endorse in other places and times.

And a lot of these things are highly consistent with many DEI principles, including reducing socioeconomic barriers, for example, for low-income students, which he recognizes would disproportionately, although not solely, benefit historically disadvantaged racial minorities.

There’s a lot of common ground, I think we have with our harshest opponents, and we often miss that in these kinds of debates.

Wrapping up. So, my argument here is that SPSP is a largely healthy society on both science and justice fronts.

And that the kinds of mechanisms that it has in place for establishing and scrutinizing the scientific process, I think, bode well for its continued health.

Part of that health is reflected in a continued willingness to listen to dissenters and – I hope - to engage seriously with their criticisms.

To loop back to what I said at the beginning, why should we do this now, in the current political context? Well, I think that especially now, when we feel under threat, we need all perspectives at the table.

We have made science better many times over by incorporating methods that can build trust and capture the perspectives and lived experiences of many underrepresented groups. We’ve made real progress on this in recent years.

One group that hasn’t had that treatment, though, is conservatives. So we’re stuck right now trying to understand the current political moment with a woefully one-dimensional understanding of half the country.

So I’ll leave you with this.

Dissent is an epistemic resource.

And science is a collective process. We all bring our own biases, so science works best when multiple perspectives are at the table, and this includes demographic and viewpoint diversity.

When all claims can be challenged, and no idea is insulated from criticism.

When standards and principles are applied symmetrically, and when no one is pressured to self-censor.

I don’t think we protect science by protecting ourselves from these kinds of disagreements, but by protecting the conditions under which disagreement can occur.

[1] Adelman, L., & Dasgupta, N. (2019). Effect of threat and social identity on reactions to ingroup criticism: Defensiveness, openness, and a remedy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(5), 740–753. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218796785

Hornsey, M. J. (2009). Resistance to group criticism and recommendations for change: Lessons from the intergroup sensitivity effect. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3(3), 275–291. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00178.x

Packer, D. J. (2014). On not airing our dirty laundry: Intergroup contexts suppress ingroup criticism among strongly identified group members. British Journal of Social Psychology, 53(1), 93–111. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12017

Shahar, E., Hameiri, B., Bar-Tal, D., & Raviv, A. (2018). Self-censorship of conflict-related information in the context of intractable conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 62(5), 957–982. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002716680266

[2] Clark et al. (2023). Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda. PNAS. 120(48), e2301642120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301642120

[3] Al Gharbi, M. (2024). Human nature is our problem. Inquisitive Magazine. https://inquisitivemag.org/articles/theme-essay/human-nature-is-our-problem/

[4] Haidt, J. (2016). Why Universities Must Choose One Telos: Truth or Social Justice. https://heterodoxacademy.org/blog/one-telos-truth-or-social-justice-2/

[5] Dreger, A. (2015). When science and social justice collide. https://psmag.com/social-justice/science-social-justice-activism-alice-dreger-galileo-middle-finger/

[6] “White supremacy and whiteness.” Summary and some citations can be found here: https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/cld/unleading/systems-oppression/white-supremacy

[7] Grim, R. (3 February 2023). “Deconstructed Podcast: Tema Okun on Her Mythical Paper on White Supremacy”. The Intercept.

Yglesias, M. (2021). Tema Okun’s “White Supremacy Culture” work is bad.

Slow Boring

Tema Okun's "White Supremacy Culture" work is bad

Debating abstractions is difficult and frustrating, and the discourse about “wokeness” and “cancel culture” has become a snakepit of semantic debates, bad-faith actors, and people of goodwill talking past each other…

Read more

5 years ago · 635 likes · 387 comments · Matthew Yglesias

[8] Isenberg, N., Brauer, M. Diversity and inclusion have greater support than most Americans think. Sci Rep 14, 28616 (2024).

Murrar, S., Campbell, M.R. & Brauer, M. Exposure to peers’ pro-diversity attitudes increases inclusion and reduces the achievement gap. Nat Hum Behav 4, 889–897 (2020).

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Note: SPSP refers to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. This is the text and slides of one of the talks presented at the panel on “Is SPSP a Healthy Organization?” If you prefer video, you can find videos of all four talks here.

Nate’s Talk

When considering, “is SPSP a healthy scientific organization,” I’m going to be going at this from a slightly different angle, looking to see if we can quantify the health of SPSP.

Some of you reading might have been at SPSP last year when it was in Denver. I was not in attendance, but I did hear a lot about the conference after. In particular, Salty Psych took time to post a summary of last year’s conference, which I found absolutely fascinating, very illuminating, and quite helpful to read through. There was also a lot of discussion and debate online in response to her summary.

In her summary, Salty Psych observed out how psychology isn’t letting go of woke. In fact, she said the field appeared to be doubling down on woke, and from her perspective, about a fifth of the talks or posters or presentations that she saw or attended at SPSP were explicitly woke. Now, again, I found this absolutely fascinating. I’m thankful to Salty Psych for the time she took to post this summary.

For me, this led to a number of questions. In particular, I wondered, ‘are these observations that Salty Psych is offering quantifiable?’ ‘What proportion of SPSP talks have a conservative tilt, or have a liberal or progressive tilt?’ ‘How, if at all, has this potentially changed or morphed over time?’ And ‘what could these data points indicate about the health of SPSP?’

And more broadly, what makes a scientific society healthy? I would argue, that what a scientific society deems worthy of including within their programming, what they choose to accept for symposia and have presented as symposia at a conference might offer us some really helpful insight to the intellectual priorities, the health, and the blind spots of the organization.

If we look at this from a signaling framework, these accepted symposia sessions are a signal. They are a signal conveying information about the priorities of SPSP, the values of SPSP, the interests of SPSP, and the direction of SPSP. Or at least of the priorities, values, interests, and direction of the organization’s gatekeepers: the reviewers, perhaps the program selection committee, and others. Because, again, the symposia are competitive, they’re curated, and in some ways, that could be consequential.

So this led to the present study. I wondered, could we take information that we have about known talks that were given at SPSP, and use this to quantify the health of the organization, the health of SPSP?

So, with the assistance of my collaborators and a number of RAs, we gathered all available SPSP convention symposia abstracts. Many of these are in conference programs that are online. Others, we had to obtain with the assistance of SPSP. This led to a collection of a population of nearly 7,500 symposium abstracts from the past nearly 2.5 decades--so 7,469 symposia abstracts in total. And again, why symposia abstracts? Compared to, for example, posters, symposia are more competitive, they reflect not only member interests, but also institutional and member judgments about what merits scientific muster and should merit attention at the conference.

After we collected all of the abstracts, we then submitted them to our abstract analyzer tool. This is a command line tool developed for this project was used to analyze the conference abstracts. In essence, it sent all the conference abstracts through multiple large language models via Open Router, collected the ratings, and then gave us the output. I’ll have a link to this at the end if anyone’s interested in taking a look and tinkering around with the tool.

Specifically, we had three independent large language model raters that (these specific three chosen in part because they are optimized for speed and cost). Each of these three raters rated all 7,469 abstracts on a number of outcome variables. The two I’m going to talk about today are political valence, and a binary activism orientation classification.

All three raters rated all the abstracts on these, and then the scores were averaged across the raters.

So, what did we find?

I’m going to start with political valence first. Political valence was on a 5-point scale from negative 2, strongly conservative, up to positive 2, strongly liberal or progressive, and then zero was right in the middle as neutral or balanced.

To give a sense of what corresponds to the two ends of the scale, here are a couple examples. First, a strong conservative example one was: “[SPSP] has allowed itself to become a participant in the sectarian corruption of science.. [and] has become a club for leftists and an engine for far left/progressive activism.”1

This is an excerpt from Lee’s abstract for his talk as a part of this panel. And interestingly, four of the five abstracts rated as having a strong conservative-lean were talks that were critiquing the ideological health of SPSP, which apparently is a conservative position!

Then a strong liberal/progressive abstract: “Addressing racism and promoting racial justice requires identifying barriers to systemic change and developing tools to overcome these barriers. Given that White people often occupy ‘gatekeeping’ positions of power, one key barrier is rooted in White people’s emotional and emotion-regulatory responses when considering their own role in racism.” So clearly leaning into very progressive topics.

Now, to the results. What did we find? To orient you to the first figure, we have average political valence of SPSP symposia abstracts (y-axis) over time (x-axis).

What did we find over time? What was the trend that emerged in the ratings for political valence?

We find that over time—over the last two and a half decades—SPSP Symposia abstracts have always leaned liberal or progressive. The mean hovered around 0.2 up until around 2016, when it took off. And we do see an interesting dip in the last few years. There are number of reasons we might speculate for why that’s occurring. But overall we see SPSP symposia abstracts have consistently liberal-progressive, on average, over time and have become increasingly so within the last 10 years.

If we look at this from a slightly different angle—percentages by year—we see an illuminating trend emerge. The three bins are conservative, neutral, and liberal/progressive.

Up until 2014, over 70% of SPSP symposia abstracts were rated as neutral or balanced, and on average around 20-25% were rated as leaning liberal/progressive lean,

Then in 2016, we start to see a sharp increase for liberal/progressive. And then between 2020 and 2021a flip takes place, with symposia rated as liberal/progressive overtaking neutral for the majority of symposia abstracts each year. In the last 6 years, now, the majority of SPSP symposia abstracts have had a liberal or progressive lean.

Additionally at the very bottom of the figure you can see a red line that just barely hovers above zero. It’s not that there weren’t any conservative-leaning abstracts, but it was pretty close to zero, about 1%--85 out of 7,469 abstracts in the last 2.5 decades were rated as leaning conservative. And there really hasn’t been any movement on that over time. It’s been low, and consistently low.2

Next, activist orientation. This variable was a binary classification, 0 or 1. An abstract was rated 0 if it was explicitly framed as explanation or prediction. An abstract was rated 1 if it was framed as trying to produce some sort of change. Social change, political change, institutional change.

As an aside, it’s important to note that activist orientation could apply to any research. For example, research that has a liberal lean could be a 0 or a 1 here. Conservative could have a 0 or a 1. Neutral could have a 0 or 1. That is, this is operating independent of political valence.

As an example, an abstract rated as 1—explicitly framed as trying to produce some sort of change: “The Marley Hypothesis states that those who are ignorant of the injustices of the past are less likely to recognize the injustices of the present, and are therefore bound to perpetuate them… Results support the notion that interactive historical education has the potential to increase … support for policy reform to address systemic racism.”

This abstract is directly calling for some sort of change.

So, what do we find for the average activist orientation in these abstracts over time? Similar to political valence, the proportion of SPSP symposia abstracts coded as have an activist orientation has steadily increased over time, most substantially in the last 10 years.

As with political valence, it’s helpful to also look at the percentages. Up until 2014, 90% or more of SPSP symposia abstracts were rated as not activist (rated “0”). That is, up until 2014, 90% or more of the symposia abstracts were explicitly framed as explanation or prediction. And then we see a change in the last 10 years with a steady rise in abstracts having activist orientation, hitting a peak of around 40%.

To recap, what did we find looking at the last 2.5 decades of SPSP symposia abstracts?

Digging into these SPSP symposia abstracts we find that over the last two and a half decades, SPSP’s symposium programming appears to have shifted from a politically mixed or neutral framing toward a more consistently progressive framing. These abstracts have, on average, always leaned liberal/progressive, but they become increasingly so. Additionally, a greater percentage are now framed or aimed at producing some sort of change.

The pattern itself appears to no longer be anecdotal.

How does this fit?

If you’ll indulge me just briefly, let’s consider a few major events related to the ideological health of psychology or social and personality psychology in particular. (There are many more important milestones than this, but I just want to briefly highlight a few)

The field has grappled with issues related to its ideological health for a very long time. We had Phil Tetlock’s paper in the early 1990s on politicized psychology. That was addressing the whole field of psychology, not social and personality psychology in particular. But still relevant for our field.

Then Haidt’s keynote in 2011 was a pivotal moment for SPSP. Haidt claimed that social and personality psychology had become a politically homogenous “tribal moral community.” And back in 2011, Haidt challenged the field to set a goal of becoming 10% conservative by 2020. Though instead of accepting Haidt’s challenge, we see from data produced by Inbar and Lammers, and also data from SPSP’s 2019 climate survey, that SPSP has actually gone in the opposite direction. The field has, over time become even less ideologically diverse.

If we consider some of these milestones and map them onto what we’re seeing with the political valence ratings, perhaps… for example, Haidt’s talk in 2011. Interestingly, we see a slight dip in average political valence for the abstracts the year following Haidt’s talk. So maybe his talk had an impact on the immediate horizon. But then, in the years following that, we see the steady increase in average political valence over time, with greater proportions of abstracts having a liberal or progressive framing.

So… so what? Just a few takeaways here as I’m getting close to the end.

I think we see from these data that the pattern is no longer anecdotal. We see in a quantifiable sense that political valence has shifted over the last 2.5 decades, and quite dramatically in the last 10 years. SPSP’s programming, arguably, could be shaping what graduate students see as respectable. Grad students and junior faculty show up, they’re seeing what research is being actively conducted in the field, what’s being presented, how it’s being discussed—what topics are active and up for debate and discussion versus settled. What is the field not talking about, or what is taboo?

And these programming trends, arguably, may be functioning as norm-setting mechanisms. Or, to return back to the signaling framework, functioning as signals.

To harken back to Haidt’s question or challenge for the field: is SPSP a moral community, or is it a polaristic scientific one?

I think these data could stand as a diagnostic, they’re scalable, and I think these data show that the intellectual culture within SPSP is measurable—it is quantifiable.

So, a question I want to close with is: what is the trajectory for SPSP? In this talk I didn’t get in to why viewpoint to intellectual diversity may or may not matter, because the results I’ve presented are diagnostic and descriptive. They can’t really tell us what the cause is. Though that’s an important question for future research.

But a broad takeaway here is that if symposia programming reflects what SPSP—what our field—considers worthy of attention, what does the decline of neutral framing and the rise of liberal and progressive framing signal about SPSP’s intellectual trajectory?

I think this is a really important question for the field and for researchers within it to grapple with as we look ahead to what is the trajectory for SPSP and for research and researchers within this field.

I’d like to thank a handful of people. First, I’d like to thank Michelle Jester at SPSP. We are very grateful to her for her assistance helping us collect abstracts that weren’t available in conference programs online. Thank you, Michelle.

I would also like to thank my collaborators, who are from many different institutions and backgrounds and brought all sorts of unique and helpful skills to the table for this project. I’m very thankful for their assistance and for being willing to collaborate. Thank you to Aaron, Marius, Luke, JP, and Mitch.

Commenting

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Footnotes

1

Lee here. That quote about SPSP becoming an engine for far left political activism? I am not raising concerns about Nate’s LLM-based coding system. However, in my personal politics (who I vote for, campaigns I have supported, etc.) I am definitely not conservative (not that there is anything wrong with that, in fact, for SPSP’s health, and academia’s health more broadly, I think there is quite a lot right about adding more conservative faculty). I am not emitting a “dogmaflare” (from The Orwelexicon) to curry favor with my more progressive colleagues — who I definitely think have been mostly either enthusiastic participants in the political corruption of social psychology (and beyond) OR passive bystanders who have permitted that corruption with (for the most part) nary a peep of pushback.

At this point, given how corrupt and/or craven so many have been, I’d rather garner their ire than their approval. More important, I think the statement Nate quoted is simply epistemically true. And I have never had any problem agreeing or working with anyone, including but not restricted to conservatives, when I think they are right or working towards goals I endorse.

2

Lee here again. This paper conducted a similar, but far broader analysis, covering all available social science articles in major journals going back to the 1960s, a total of about 600,000 publications:

It found results quite similar to Nate’s":

• About 30% of the 600k articles had a political lean.

• 90% of those leaned left.

SPSP refers to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, perhaps the largest society for personality and social psychologists in the world. You can find a video of this talk (without the Epilogue) here, where you can also find a video of my talk (Lee here); you can find the text/transcript/slides of my talk here.

Luke’s Talk

[This is a transcript of my 2026 SPSP speech. It deviates slightly from the posted video only because I added a bit of nuance after I watched the video. But the two are almost the same, and this speech transcript more accurately captures what I said at the live performance. I have selectively included slide screenshots below when I thought they added something].

In a 2024 American Psychologist article, Rogers and colleagues essentially argued that the scientific method is an arbitrary cultural construction rooted in white supremacy. Interestingly, in that same article, they singled us – this organization – out for praise as people especially likely to attack the scientific method as racist. In this talk, I’m going to first argue that I don’t think that’s praiseworthy, because I think the scientific method is fundamentally good. Then I’m going to ask the question: Are they right about us? Is this really who we are now? Are we really the people who don’t believe in the scientific method anymore? Then I’m going to draw some conclusions based on this analysis.

Let’s start here. Is the scientific method an arbitrary cultural construction? No. It is not.

Francis Bacon, in his famous treatise Novum Organum, laid the foundational logic of the scientific method that we still use today. In that treatise, he argued that if you want to say A causes C, you have to first slowly, methodically, empirically rule out the possibility that other things related to A instead caused C, a process he called “true” or “eliminative” induction, and we call “ruling out confounds.” It doesn’t matter whether the idea of eliminative induction was first articulated by the Chinese, the Japanese, the ancient Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Incans, the Mayans, or some white guy in England. In all those times, in all those places, if you want to say that A causes C, and you know that B is related to A and a temporal precursor of C, the presence of B – all over the globe – reduces the likelihood that A is the cause of C. That is not an arbitrary cultural construction. That represents a pan-cultural truth.

Now is that truth racist? No.

It has certainly been used for racist purposes. But then so has a guitar. That doesn’t mean the guitar is the source of the evil. No, music is good, the guitar is good. So too with the scientific method.

In fact, there’s an irony here. Francis Bacon said we needed a new method to begin with because human beings have deeply embedded biases, which he called idols of the mind. One of his idols, the idol of the cavern, translated into our modern language, essentially says that people have very narrow sociocultural experiences that serve as obstacles for our ability to perceive larger truths. Bacon believed that one of the best ways to overcome these cultural biases was the scientific method, and I think he had a point. So no, I don’t think the scientific method is racist. If anything, it’s one of the best methods we have of overcoming racism. Probably not coincidentally, markers of the adoption of the scientific method around the world are associated, not with racism, but with positive outcomes for disenfranchised minorities:

So no, I don’t think the scientific method is racist.

Now what about the originator of the idea? Was he a fountain of white supremacy? Was Francis Bacon a racist? I don’t know. Pretty sure he was a corrupt public official. But I’m not suggesting that SPSP become the “pro-political corruption” organization:

You see, we’re just not obligated to say and do every single thing that Francis Bacon – or any other scientist – said and did. Frankly, I’m not fit to judge Francis Bacon’s soul from a distance of lo, these 400 years, but I am fit to judge the method that he produced. And I judge it to be not an “arbitrary cultural construction rooted in white supremacy,” but a pan-cultural truth.

Is that what this organization believes? I suspect there will be 3 different kinds of pushback to what I’ve said so far. Box 1 will say “how dare you suggest that we don’t believe in the scientific method?” Box 2 will say “how dare you suggest that we should believe in the scientific method?” And Box 3 will say both of those utterly incompatible beliefs at the same time. If we could represent the collective psyche of SPSP, we’re that third box. We have a pro-science face and an anti-science face, and we’re not talking about the fact that those two faces are utterly incompatible with each other. Let’s start with the pro science face.

SPSP has science, science, science all over its materials. I don’t think that this is just posturing. For example, I’ve been an associate editor at PSPB, our flagship empirical journal, for over 6 years. In that time, I’ve worked with three separate editor-in-chief teams. As I’ve written about extensively on my Apologetic Professor Substack, I’ve got nothing but positive things to say about my experiences there. All of my EICs were great scientists and great mentors who were focused on scientific rigor, and I never experienced any of the biases I’m going to talk about in a minute in that context. I’ve also worked with hundreds of reviewers. That represents a sizable chunk of the SPSP establishment. Overwhelmingly those reviewers leaned progressive, but also overwhelmingly they tried to set aside those potential biases to make judgments based on scientific criteria. This suggests to me there’s a will at this organization – a will in this room – to do good science.

And then there’s this face. This is a map of the conservative states that would have been excluded from hosting this conference based on SPSP’s stated criteria last year:

I wrote a Substack piece complaining about the obvious bias in this policy. And SPSP changed the policy…they made it worse. Now these are the places in red that would be excluded from hosting the conference under our current policy.

That’s most of the country geographically. Now look at that map. SPSP, that is our organization. That is a crude pictorial parable of who we are. Because that’s not about science, that’s about politics.

When you introduce a political standard into the heart of the organization, inevitably the scientific method has competition and it gets demoted. And that’s happening. Here’s the title of our current governing editorial of our primary flagship journal, PSPB.

Notice anything? Scientific rigor is in there…it’s just last. Now, I have deep respect for the people who wrote this editorial and there are a lot of good things in there. I don’t have time for nuance. But the title is a fair representation of its hierarchy of values. In the editorial, they cite as authoritative (“embraced” is their word) the ACEMAP report from 2024 that Lee mentioned earlier. So let’s take a quick look under the hood, shall we, at this ACEMAP report that is “embraced” in our current governing editorial of our primary flagship journal. What’s the report like?

That report throws the scientific method under the bus. It barely talks about science at all. What does it talk about? Politics. And they leave no ambiguity that their primary guiding principle is not scientific, but political.

Now this has disastrous downstream subjective consequences for all of us. And that can be illustrated with three if-then statements. If these are measurements of a pathological, irrational fear of Muslims, then these should be measurements of a pathological, irrational fear of Christians:

But they’re not.

If these are microaggressions when white people say them, then they should also be microaggressions when other people say them to white people:

But they’re not.

If these are measurements of white supremacy, then these should be measurements of black supremacy:

But they’re not.

Now, these are not scientifically controversial statements. They’re debatable, but not controversial. We don’t talk about them, we don’t ask these hard questions, not because of science, but because of political taboos. And that, my dear SPSP, is not a marker of a healthy organization.

Now what are we going to do about this? I know what I’m going to do about it. I’m going to give you a patronizing pep talk.

I don’t think Lee Jussim likes this organization a whole lot. Is that fair, Lee? If the number of words he throws in your direction that I would have been uncomfortable with my daughter using in Sunday school are a metric, he’s not a big fan. I, on the other hand, quite like this organization. It’s fair to say that I like it more than Lee. I have warm feelings towards the organization and many deep ties within it. I’ve probably gotten more pushback from Lee for defending this organization and its research than I have gotten from the organization for attacking it. Though clearly the night is young on that last score! Nevertheless, I like you.

My next words are going to be harsh. They are going to sound more arrogant than I intend. But I respectfully submit these words – words from someone who likes you – for your thoughtful consideration. (You know when someone puts that on a slide, it’s about to get rough).

If you think the proper response to a poster you find offensive is to whine to senior leadership to have them rip it off the wall…

If you don’t want MAGA people in this room because they make you uncomfortable…

If you run from a vigorous scientific debate on Twitter to a Bluesky echo chamber…

I have words for you. Two words primarily. Words from a candid friend who likes you.

Grow up.

This organization does not exist for your comfort – or mine.

This organization does not exist to validate your political opinions – or mine.

This organization does not exist to soothe your fragile self-esteem – or mine.

This organization properly exists for one reason and one reason only: To pursue the objective truth of social psychology via the scientific method.

Now I’m a freedom loving, live-and-let-live American. I have no desire to stop any of us from finding a political group therapy session, and there are millions of places we can go for that purpose. But this? This cannot be that.

Now what’s going to happen if you ignore us? Me, Lee, Nate, and the many sensible people trying to tell you that you’re going off your moorings. That’s the easy part. This is going to happen:

This organization is currently on a long, slow slide to cultural irrelevance. It’s already happening. Remember this guy?

He probably has more cultural influence right now in his pinky finger than all of the scientists at this conference combined. Lee Jussim has written about how his career has taken off since he’s broken with you. And quite frankly, I sell more books the farther I get from you.

Your temptation is going to be to say it’s those darn rich conservatives. No. No, this isn’t about them. SPSP, this is about you. It’s about the fact that people don’t trust organizations that are not supposed to be political when they turn political; and you’ve turned political. That’s true, by the way, even when people agree with your politics. So you’re not just losing conservatives; you’re losing liberals.

SPSP, you cannot have this both ways. You have to choose between these two faces. This is a crossroads moment. You have to decide what you really believe. You can either put the scientific method back in its proper place as the central guiding principle by which we make judgments in this organization, or you can prepare to be irrelevant.

What’s it going to be, SPSP?

It’s your call. The End.

Epilogue

Lee here, temporarily. After the SPSP panel, I shared my recommendations for depoliticizing SPSP with the other panel members, including Luke. You can find mine here. This inspired Luke to come up with his own list, which partially corresponds to mine, partially revises some of the same ideas, and also expands on the list. Those are presented next.

Luke’s Recommendations for De-Politicizing SPSP

1. Have a fully bi-partisan committee of SPSP members audit its website, journals, and conference for political demonization rhetoric, progressive value statements, and progressive policies that are essentially pre-scientific. Any policy that promotes a pre-scientific political agenda should be removed.

• 1a. Things that almost certainly will have to be removed include anything about “white supremacy,” “colonialism,” “anti-racism,” any use of the political word “equity,” positionality statements at journals, and DEI requirements for conference and journal submissions.

2. An immediate rescinding of the criteria for conference selection that explicitly exclude conservative locales, and a formal acknowledgment of the bias of the current policy.

3. Formally remove the ACEMAP report as an officially-sanctioned policy of the organization.

4. Develop a serious plan for creating an environment for welcoming non-progressive scholars. This would include, but not be restricted to, conservatives and Christians. None of these recommendations should promote a pro-conservative or pro-Trump organization, nor should any of them discourage progressive scientists. Rather, they should signal a welcoming big tent to excellent scientists of all persuasions, regardless of politics (or lack thereof), religion (or lack thereof), race, creed, LGBTQ+ status, or any other variable.

• 4a. This plan should include, at a minimum, a formal public acknowledgment that the organization has become too overtly anti-conservative, anti-Christian, anti-Western, and anti-Trump – and that it has intentions to change course and welcome non-progressive scholars who want to pursue good science (in addition to maintaining a welcoming attitude to progressive, and all other, scholars).

• 4b. This plan should also include, at a minimum, statements on SPSP’s materials that formally welcome political persons of all ideologies (including, but not limited to, conservatives and Christians), in addition to maintaining welcoming statements to progressive and all other scholars across the board.

5. Efforts should be made across the board, at every level on every committee, to ensure better ideological representation from non-progressive members.

• 5a. That is especially true for any committee designated to discuss “Diversity and Inclusion,” where it is vital that such a committee would purposefully (and formally) include a range of balanced ideological perspectives.

6. A public commitment that the conference “themes” will always be centered around basic science themes, and never around political activism.

7. Create a committee whose sole purpose is to actively promote the scientific method within the organization, to explore ways to create a vigorous, objective science, and have that committee author a formal report/statement that is to be included in the organization’s policy.

8. Commit to a policy of selection for the Presidential Plenaries that focuses more on science and/or is more ideologically balanced. Specifically, I recommend that a standing bi-partisan selection committee be formed to judge the political status of the proposed plenary speakers. That committee should focus on the following criteria (not just for the immediate future, but forever):

• 8a. Only one of the two speakers each year at the Plenary should be selected to give a speech that has a progressive activism theme. The other speaker should either be a neutral science-first speaker or a conservative.

• 8b. To ensure better balance, at least every other year – so one out of every four Presidential Plenary speakers – the speaker should be explicitly conservative. This serves to ensure that SPSP is giving a voice to the currently most proportionally underrepresented group at the organization: Conservatives.

Commenting

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2. Stay relevant to the post.

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SPSP Is Not Healthy Talk

Title slide:

Main themes:

The next slide is titled Delusions of White Supremacy. It is a screenshot of something that can be found on the SPSP website, in its Diversity and Inclusion section. The “delusions” will be identified forthwith.

When one clicks the link for White Supremacy Culture, one finds a link to Okun’s completely loony tunes list. The list on the left of the slide below are some of the examples of supposed “White Supremacy” that you will find there. They are so bizarre that I felt it necessary to remind an audience of people with PhDs what the term “White Supremacy” refers to.

This did not appear in my talk:

Back to the talk:

But it gets worse. SPSP does not act like it believes its own Okun rhetoric. I mean, its one thing to be wrong, but people often sincerely hold those wrong beliefs. Not SPSP. Not only is the list bonkers, even they do not believe it.

For those not in the know… Academic publishing goes like this. At some point, some articles are accepted for publication. This often takes months, sometimes years. But after acceptance at a print journal, the last step pre-publication involves the publisher drafting a near-final version in the journal’s format. These are called “proofs.” Typically, and at all SPSP journals as far as I know, authors are typically given 2-3 days from receiving the proofs to respond to the publisher with any final editorial changes.

Put differently, this policy instills “time urgency” in everyone who publishes in SPSP journals. If time urgency is White Supremacy, then, despite their pronounced dedication to anti-racism and diversity and inclusion, SPSP, by its own standards (not by mine), is implementing White Supremacy. If SPSP believed its own rhetoric, it would change this policy to give authors more time. That might be a good idea on its merits, but that is not the point. The point is, rather, that, if those in charge at SPSP do not think giving authors 2-3 days to return the proofs is actually White Supremacy, then we know even they do not believe the rhetoric promoted on their website that time urgency is White Supremacy Culture.

Calling objectivity “White Supremacy” is probably even worse, at least for an ostensibly scientific organization. If objectivity is White Supremacy, and if SPSP rejects White Supremacy (which it clearly does), then they do not believe the research extolled on their website is objective because that would be White Supremacy (which they reject). If the science they promote is not objective, then it is subjective — which means no one needs to take it seriously as anything other than opinion.

Of course, they are constantly promoting the research of their members, as if the SPSP notables take it seriously and think you should too. But the only reason to take any research seriously is if it is at least mostly, approximately and reasonably objective. So either SPSP is a White Supremacist organization (by its own standards, not by mine) for promoting research that, in fact, it believes is valid and credible (which kinda subsumes objective) or it is entirely disingenuous when it promotes Okun’s White Supremacy Culture’s claim that objectivity is White Supremacy. White Supremacy for thee but not for me.

Brief Orwelexicon Detour

None of this was in the talk, but I can’t resist presenting it here. I did not have time for all of this, but Okun’s list of features of White Supremacy Culture is much longer than my slide and includes:

perfectionism, defensiveness, quantity over quality, worship of the written word, only one right way, paternalism, either/or thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, “I’m the online one,” progress is bigger and more, right to comfort.

The Orwelexicon, (a sort of Devil’s Dictionary for the 21st century) really had much of the Okun nonsense covered.

And of course:

End Detour, Back to Talk

“Ok,” you might think. Maybe it was just some oversight. Some extremist/activist thought it was a good idea, got Okun’s White Supremacy Culture on the website, and no one else was paying much attention. Perhaps.

But then there is this 2024 official report by a special SPSP appointed committee, that appeared in an SPSP journal:

As I have pointed out in a paper in press, in a section on anti-racist extremism:

This report cited many articles in support of their claims. None, however, constituted empirical evidence that, all else equal, research or people are excluded or discriminated against in academic publishing because they are not White, English-speaking, from particular countries or cisgender. Such evidence is widely available in the broader discrimination literature, such as in audit studies, which examine whether identically qualified Black and White (or male and female) job applicants are treated similarly

Regardless, the report has some pretty intense demonization rhetoric:

Interestingly, about the time SPSP was publishing this report, we were conducting studies on the effects of extremist anti-racist rhetoric. We purposely focused on Rutgers college students, because this sort of rhetoric was all over academia for a long time.

Here are excerpts from the essays we had students read (each went on for three paragraphs in the same vein).

After reading whichever essay they were assigned, they then read the following scenario (this is the entire scenario):

We only had 14 minutes for our entire talk, so I only presented two outcomes (more details are here). The students were asked to state how many microaggressions the admissions officer committed and to rate how biased he was.

So it is reasonable to believe that SPSP’s rhetoric likely leads at least some people to “see” prejudice where none exists. Which is probably how you get moral panics over things like The Attack of the Racist Mule.

Not surprisingly, one downstream consequence of this sort of demonization rhetoric is censorship. Shown below is a poster that was presented at SPSP. On the right, you will find a tweet by an attendee denouncing it. SPSP, in its infinite wisdom, took down the poster (a fuller story can be found here).

Another unsurprising (at least to those of us who have studied leftwing and academic extremism) consequence of this type of demonization rhetoric is discrimination. If, as per the 2024 SPSP report:

Mainstream academia’s scientific culture, institutions, and practices originated in a system created by, for, and about wealthy, white, non-disabled, English-speaking, straight, cisgender male scholars from a small subset of countries

then what is reasonable is not policies to mitigate against (largely undemonstrated) biases in modern science and its institutions, but vengeance. Thus no one should be surprised to find SPSP adopting policies that explicitly engage in discrimination — you know, the type of “reverse” discrimination that, for decades, academics have denied even exists (often accompanied by attempts to taint as racists and sexists anyone who claimed it did).

Well, then. If discrimination for “social justice” reasons is illegal, how was it even possible that the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the use of race in admissions in its 1978 Bakke decision? That turns out to be a question with a very interesting answer:

Bakke slide 1:

Bakke slide 2:

Bakke slide 3:

Some academics are now trying to rewrite history, claiming literally that “viewpoint diversity is a MAGA plot.” That is the actual title of an article you can find here:

Putting the lie to the MAGA plot claim, SCOTUS justified using race as one factor in admissions in the 1978 Bakke decision on viewpoint diversity grounds, maintaining that racial discrimination for social justice reasons (e.g., to compensate for past discrimination) remained illegal. Had institutions of higher education actually implemented policies to advance viewpoint diversity rather than just admitting more and lower qualified Black students with no assessment of whether their viewpoints brought any diversity, it is possible that the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions case (the one that led SCOTUS to ban use of race in admissions altogether) would never even have been brought, and, if it had, it might have been decided differently.

Regardless…

So, what should social and personality psychologists do about this? Well, it depends on their “values” now, doesn’t it? I raised three possibilities:

Postscript

I can’t resist adding a few slides from my backups, even though they were not presented at the actual panel.

Ok, that is sorta tongue-in-cheek because its not like they are going to do any of that, though it is the kind of stuff they’d need to do if they were to take their own rhetoric seriously. What about something that, however unlikely, is in the realm of possibility?

Rumors have it that these proposals (and others not listed here) for reforming SPSP are being taken up at its next executive council meeting. I am not expecting anything to come of it, but you never know. Usually, when you beat your head against the wall all you get is a headache. And if you keep doing it, the only thing that happens is the headache gets worse. But, once in a while, not often, but not never either, you bang your head against the wall and you get a headache and you keep doing it and the headache gets worse and worse, and then, all of a sudden, the wall comes crashing down. I did not say I am expecting that. But you never know.

Coming soon: The full sets of slides by the other three presenters at The Singeing.

Commenting

Before commenting, please review my commenting guidelines. They will prevent your comments from being deleted. Here are the core ideas:

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2. Stay relevant to the post.

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5. Do not mindread, its a loser’s game.

6. Don’t tell me how to run Unsafe Science or what to post. (Guest essays are welcome and inquiries about doing one should be submitted by email).

Four of us went to the conference hosted by what I am pretty sure is the largest social psychology organization in the world — the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (hence, “SPSP”) — to tell warn them that the politicization of the society is either a disaster area (me), not yet a disaster area but at risk for becoming one (Luke, Nate), or not really even close to being a disaster area but if they want to prevent it from becoming one they might want to take these criticisms seriously (Anne).

This post includes videos of each of the four talks. To understand the commentary after the talks, you need to have first listened to them. Introductions to the speakers below, but first…

The Singeing of the King of Spain’s Beard

Amidst rising tensions that are way beyond the scope of this little corner of academia, the Spanish decided to build their Great Armada to invade England. They had begun preparations in 1586. Elizabeth I, the Queen of England, got wind of the plan and, in 1587, sent Sir Francis Drake, with a small fleet of four ships, to disrupt those preparations. Drake had become “Sir Francis” because of a slew of stunning accomplishments, including as a privateer plundering Spanish treasure ships (the Spanish considered him a pirate, which I enjoy mentioning).

Drake sailed his four ships right into the Spanish port of Cadiz, where the armada was being prepared. He spent three days there, wreaking havoc, destroying about 30 ships, capturing four more, and plundering many of the rest. Drake named this “The Singeing of the King of Spain’s Beard.”

This did not prevent the Spanish from sending their Armada. But it did set them back a year and that was an extra year for England to prepare its defenses. And the rest, as they say, is history.

There were four of us. We sailed into the progressive heart of one of psychology’s major professional organizations — and raised a bit of Hell by telling them their politicization was leading them to go off the rails.

Is SPSP a Healthy Organization? The Panel

Four of us presented a panel titled “Is SPSP a Healthy Organization”? To SPSP’s credit, as both Luke and Anne correctly pointed out, they accepted our proposal to hold this panel (led and organized by Luke and Nate, who were the Sir Francis Drakes of this expedition).

Who Are We?

Lucian (Luke) Gideon Conway, III is Professor of Psychology at Grove City College. Luke was one of the first academics to break through social psychology's denial of the existence of left-wing authoritarianism. His most recent book is Liberal Bullies, and you can follow him on his Substack The Apologetic Professor.

Nathan Honeycutt is Manager of Polling and Analytics and a Research Fellow at FIRE. Nate studies higher education, often involving surveys or experiments with university faculty on topics including expression, political bias, and the evaluation of DEI statements. His recent work provides the first empirical evidence that such statements can function as ideological litmus tests in faculty hiring.

Anne Wilson is a Social Psychology Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University whose work explores identity, motivated reasoning, subjective perceptions of inequality, and political polarization. Although personally left of center, she has been a quiet but consistent advocate for open inquiry, academic freedom, and good-faith debate across political divides.

And of course, me.

Setting the Stage

It was held in a medium size auditorium style room. I estimate the crowd was at least 200, which was about 5 times what I expected. SPSP notables, including their Past President (capitalized because this is an official position) and current President were there. I am pretty sure, but not certain, that at least a few current or former members of some of its other major committees were also there. My sense of the rest of the crowd was this: overrepresentation of those harboring dissatisfaction with SPSP as well as a good hunk of folks not exactly dissatisfied but genuinely willing to listen to and consider the critiques.

We were all on edge going in. Quite a few SPSP bigwigs participated in The Attack of the Racist Mule. As Luke, Nate and my presentations documented, SPSP, like so much of academia, is infatuated (and that is putting it kindly) with “social justice.” Social justice types have a long and ugly track record of intolerance, demonization, and censorship. And they have a unique form of defense against criticism; to find out more about this, you are just going to have to see Anne’s talk below.

We were all concerned about interruptions, outright protests, and insults. But none of that happened. No protests, no interruptions, no insults. The audience sat through the panel like they would do at any normal academic panel. The Q&A at the end was completely reasonable. There was some counterpoints, but that was completely reasonable too. Considered argumentation and disagreement is “academic normal” — healthy even (while we are on the topic of SPSP’s health…).

SPSP did not record the session. So what you will find here are us giving the nearly the same talks, but not to an audience. I was in my home office and I suspect Nate, Luke and Anne did more or less the same. The slides are mostly identical to those at the actual panel. One or two have been improved subsequently with slight changes. There is probably some minor deviation in the specific words we used because none of us spoke from a script.

The Talks

Each talk is about 14 minutes. This makes them easy to watch and listen to in small bites. I like things written down, though. You can read them and come back to them. You can more easily track down something that struck you later. So I am planning a second post that presents each of my slides one at a time, surrounded by text that explains anything that is not self-explanatory. Luke has already done this for his talk (and I have an invitation out to Nate and Anne to do the same here with their talks).

SPSP is Not Healthy: My Talk

I focused exclusively on ways SPSP has gone wrong, all of which stemmed from its overt embrace of political ax-grinding. I argued that it promotes:

• Attributions of “White supremacy” to innocuous behaviors

• Demonization rhetoric

• Racial/ethnic/national discrimination

• Progressive virtue signaling

• Denunciations & censorship

I ended by pointing out that nobody actually needs SPSP and invited all those so interested to “step outside.” Here is my talk:

What Makes a Scientific Society Healthy: Nate’s Talk

The centerpiece of Nate’s analysis was a large language model content analysis of the political valence and activist orientation of 26 years of abstracts of presentations at SPSP. He ended his talk with this question: “What does the decline of neutral framing and the rise of progressive framing say about SPSP’s intellectual trajectory?”

Here is Nate’s talk:

The Scientific Method is Not Racist: Luke’s Talk

Luke argued that SPSP is a two-headed beast. One head is strong science, objectivity, and rigor. The other is politics, especially the type of radical politics that makes claims such as “the scientific method is White supremacy,” a claim that has been endorsed and advanced in some official SPSP sources. He argued that the second, political head is corrosive to the scientific head but that SPSP is on sound footing when it sticks to science. He concluded with this: “SPSP you have to choose, you cannot have this both ways…you can either put the scientific method back in its proper place as the central guiding principle by which this organization makes its judgments or you can prepare for irrelevance.”

Here is Luke’s talk:

The one thing this misses because it is Luke redoing his talk rather than the original before the audience is this. I do not want to spoil it for those who have skipped ahead. His whole talk is excellent, but from about 10:40 to 11:41 Luke got on a wicked good roll — and got a spontaneous round of applause from the audience for it. Must listen stuff…

In Defense of SPSP — and Its Dissenters: Anne’s Talk

Anne’s talk was the most nuanced of the four, and it’s hard to capture her points in a soundbite, or, the Substack equivalent, a brief thematic excerpt. But this slide, while not summarizing her talk, captures some of that nuance:

Here is Anne’s talk:

Anne’s talk was a (partial) defense of both SPSP and some of the ideas of its most progressive members. If you are tempted to bristle at any of it, consider this: you do not need to agree with every thing in her talk (or in any of our talks), but what Anne did was tactically, politically, and interpersonally brilliant. By affirming some of SPSP’s progressive values and policies, she got through (at least some, I am pretty sure) of their defenses. I am pretty sure some in the audience actually heard and were, perhaps, more receptive to the many criticisms (which she also affirmed, and added some of her own) because of her talk. She wrapped the bitter pill in, if not sugar, at least a coating that made it easier to go down.

Aftermath

A pretty lively, constructive and most of all, reasonable Q&A session then ensued. Except for a question about how to limit partisan/political biases in one’s own work, which I responded to with a mini-presentation that I will upload at Unsafe Science separately, it is now a blur to me (we were all pretty fried after the panel, Luke and me for at least a couple of days). Then Q&A was over, but tons of people came up to each of us and all sorts of lively (and pleasant in that intellectual academic way) conversations took place.

What Changes I Expect to Occur at SPSP Because of Our Panel

I am speaking only for myself, but here is my full list of expected changes:

So Why Did I Do This?

Two main reasons and a distant third:

1. The best way to protect the right to dissent is to publicly dissent. This presentation was one way I did my part to implement that. As Anne’s talk correctly pointed out, one effect of the rise of progressive academics engaging in denunciation and cancelation attacks directed at dissenters is to risk creating a great deal of self-censorship; others with doubts similar to those of Luke, Nate, and me may well keep quiet, not because they support developments at SPSP (and really, throughout academia) but out of fear. If my talk encouraged even one member of SPSP to publicly dissent in the future, a person who otherwise would not have done so? It would be enough for me. Anything beyond that is gravy.

2. I do not know how many folks were there harboring their own reservations about SPSP or academia, let alone how many did not come in with reservations, but left with food for thought that they would chew through over the next weeks and months. My presentation said (implicitly but clearly) to those folks, “if you ever want to talk about any of this, you know where to find me.”

3. Maybe I’m Wrong

Maybe my deep pessimism that anything will change is wrong. You never know.

Here are the most likely changes to occur (keeping in mind that “most likely” is not remotely synonymous with “likely”):

Trivial Window Dressing

Note: You really have to listen to our talks first to understand this section.

Maybe they will remove the ridiculous Okun White Supremacy “resource” from their website. Maybe they will revise their Editorial Fellowship policies so they appear less discriminatory (but still implement discrimination in practice). Maybe their website and official reports will use more “science” words, while they stay focused on political goals.

This would be in some ways worse than doing nothing, because it would create the appearance, but not the reality, of change at SPSP.

Real Change

This is from one of my backup slides that I did not actually present (I confess to revising it after the conference).

And just in case you, gentle reader, see point 4 as “affirmative action for conservatives” (a comment heard in the Q&A), feel free to interpret it as follows: “Develop a serious plan for creating an environment welcoming to scholars, regardless of their politics. Being that you have failed so miserably on the political front for anyone but progressives, you have some compensatory work to do — not by favoring non-progressives, just by treating them the same as you treat progressives.”

Hell, if SPSP did any one of those things in my “True Reform” list above, I’d feel like our panel did some good in the world. But I won’t be holding my breath.

Related Post

From the post:

This post documents the extent to which we warned you, over and over for at least 25 30 50 100 years. At the end, it presents over 50 (update) 70 80 90 100 115+ and still counting² references documenting the historical attempt of dissident academics to warn the rest of academia that this could come if they did not get their house in order.

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