Excellent article. It puts into light, for me, how a perfectly legitimate school of thought can become, when it acquires dominance in the social discourse for purposes other than specifically scientific.
It is not the first time -- and popular psychology and psychological fads have been deleterious for decades. But it seems to be the first time that (not in psychology alone) something goes out into the "popular" acceptation, gets trimmed down and stultified, becomes a craze, makes some people a lot of money (or power/influence/what have you), and then COMES BACK into the halls of scholarship crowned as dogma.
Interesting times, an old Chinese friend of mine would say.
“ The question is rather whether such beliefs cause unfair or illegal behavior toward others based on their group membership. In fact they do. Kteily et al. (2011) found that SDO predicted negative outgroup affect among White college students four years later. Nonwhites were not tested. In short, beliefs like Social Dominance Orientation are more prevalent in socially dominant groups and hence contribute to the maintenance of social dominance.”
Making a claim of causality—“In fact, they do.”—from test results is dicey. Making the claim with the specific statement that a control group wasn’t tested totally invalidates a conclusion of causality. In this case, “Nonwhites were not tested.” Pretty explicit. That aspect of the “study” also highlights the observers’ biases.
Why I am a Universalist
Excellent article. It puts into light, for me, how a perfectly legitimate school of thought can become, when it acquires dominance in the social discourse for purposes other than specifically scientific.
It is not the first time -- and popular psychology and psychological fads have been deleterious for decades. But it seems to be the first time that (not in psychology alone) something goes out into the "popular" acceptation, gets trimmed down and stultified, becomes a craze, makes some people a lot of money (or power/influence/what have you), and then COMES BACK into the halls of scholarship crowned as dogma.
Interesting times, an old Chinese friend of mine would say.
Another good one. I didn't know this.Thanks
Thanks for posting this. I appreciate it when Unsafe Science provides me with meaningful content.
“ The question is rather whether such beliefs cause unfair or illegal behavior toward others based on their group membership. In fact they do. Kteily et al. (2011) found that SDO predicted negative outgroup affect among White college students four years later. Nonwhites were not tested. In short, beliefs like Social Dominance Orientation are more prevalent in socially dominant groups and hence contribute to the maintenance of social dominance.”
Making a claim of causality—“In fact, they do.”—from test results is dicey. Making the claim with the specific statement that a control group wasn’t tested totally invalidates a conclusion of causality. In this case, “Nonwhites were not tested.” Pretty explicit. That aspect of the “study” also highlights the observers’ biases.