Group items tagged

(1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years. (2) This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike. (3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority's thinking. (4) The underrepresentation of non-liberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination.

Based on the second wave of the Citizen Political Ambition Panel Study, we provide the first thorough analysis of how gender affects women and men's efficacy to run for office. Our findings reveal that, despite comparable credentials, backgrounds, and experiences, accomplished women are substantially less likely than similarly situated men to perceive themselves as qualified to seek office. Importantly, women and men rely on the same factors when evaluating themselves as candidates, but women are less likely than men to believe they meet these criteria. Not only are women more likely than men to doubt that they have skills and traits necessary for electoral politics, but they are also more likely to doubt their abilities to engage in campaign mechanics. These findings are critical because the perceptual differences we uncover account for much of the gender gap in potential candidates' self-efficacy and ultimately hinder women's prospects for political equality.

But beyond that, not addressing a racially discriminatory status quo in policing is itself a choice. Indeed, it's a kind of identity group appeal - to white people, whose preferred means of striking the balance between liberty and security, in many contexts, is that security should be achieved by depriving other people of their civil liberties. This is where the at-times tiresome concept of privilege becomes very useful. The truth is that almost all politics is, on some level, about identity. But those with the right identities have the privilege of simply calling it politics while labeling other people's agendas "identity."

why do females make up only about 17% of the current Congress? According to a recent study, it might be because they're lacking a good, old-fashioned daily affirmation (ideally as delivered by now-Sen. Al Franken). The findings, published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Political Science, suggest that the current gender gap has more to do with female self-perception than the society they live in.

"Most economics courses taken by first-year college students cover the textbook tools - supply and demand curves, the theory of comparative advantage, the analysis of profit maximization, and so on. We have that course at Harvard as well (and I run it), but my seminar is entirely different. It is more like a book club. Every week, we read a book by an economist that is aimed at a general audience. The books represent a wide range of views. Together, the students and I wrestle with each author's ideas. Which are dubious and which are persuasive? Which force us to rethink our preconceptions? The first book is the classic "The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers," by Robert L. Heilbroner, who taught at the New School before his death in 2005. Even the book's title reminds us of the field's roots. At times, modern economics can seem like a branch of applied mathematics. But it began more as an offshoot of moral and political philosophy. After all, philosophers can improve the world only if they understand how it works. [...] Whenever I offer this course, about 10 times as many students apply as there are slots. The university gives its faculty wide latitude in choosing which students to admit. My main goal is diversity. To begin, I admit an equal number of men and women. The economics profession has been accused of having a toxic environment for women. To the extent that's true, gender balance helps counteract it. More important, I also aim for political balance. My seminar application asks, "On issues of economic policy, do you tend to lean toward the LEFT (liberal, progressive, more active government) or RIGHT (conservative, libertarian, more limited government)?" I choose a roughly equal number of students from the two sides of the political spectrum. People are often surprised that I can find enough conservatives at Harvard. But while Harvard's faculty is mostly left of center, I've found that

The Strauss-Kahn case, it was said, was so embarrassing it would finally change the gender landscape in French politics. "The way we interact in France with women, in particular the political circles, and it's true some people did say. 'maybe we don't treat our women as we should do,' so that may be the positive outcome of the story," said Christian Roudait, a correspondent for Radio France.

with so many people in so many countries demanding far-reaching change, the politics of gender is very much in play - in Europe and beyond. The main question is whether the growing number of women in politics will deliver the different perspectives and modes of leadership that many voters (or protesters) now seem to crave.

"This is the catch-22 of seeking socio-political stability through nationalism: it is inherently an unstable ideology. Certainly on the surface, nationalism can be a stabilising value that places faith in the Chinese Communist Party leadership as the wise guides toward the goal of national revitalisation. Yet nationalism is always far more than submission to powerful leaders. It is also a highly affective phenomenon, mapping out insiders and outsiders, enemies and friends, the twists and turns of which are reliably unpredictable. A state that relies upon nationalism for stability is making use of a fundamentally unstable ideology. And a state that relies upon nationalism for legitimation also opens itself up to de-legitimation as 'not nationalist enough'. [… B]y cultivating generations of xenophobic nationalists as the core of public opinion, the Party has in fact made the prospect of sudden democratisation a scary thought. A government that actively responds to and is guided by sentiments of the type we saw in the Mack Horton affair is potentially even more disconcerting than the current regime. Examining this paradox of nationalism in China today, it becomes apparent that any future political change must start from cultural change. This would allow for a wider and considerably more open airing of viewpoints beyond the current politically correct, nationalist perspective. But such cultural change remains highly unlikely so long as a party that relies upon nationalist ideology for legitimation remains in power. [Source]"

""Why were you defending an authoritarian regime?" Tina, a friend from Comparative Politics class, asked me this as we walked out of the seminar room. We had began our graduate course at Oxford three years ago, and both carried on with doctoral research in Politics. Despite the occasional hostilities between our home countries (China and the US), we quickly became close friends and suspended the ideological differences between us. Still, her question left me half shocked and half puzzled. During the past two hours, we had been debating furiously about the "doomed future of democratization" and the "crisis of liberal democracy." As usual, I was critical of mainstream political thought, especially any definition of democracy that delimits itself to a few institutional yardsticks, along with a tone of moral proselytism that renders democracy as a dividing battle between us and them. Yet this critical perspective did not categorise me, in my peers' eyes, as a cynically postmodern left-wing liberal, as perhaps it would have my European or American counterparts. Rather, I was seen as an international student who came to the "free world" from an "authoritarian regime" that once suppressed his rights of free speech. Following this logic, anything that I said against a liberal democratic regime must be a remnant from my past life, haunted by the fears and shadows of a police state and ideological propaganda. It was therefore not surprising that my reflections on Western democracy were thought to be too similar to my home country's official clichés criticising the Western model. As I dwelled longer on Tina's question, I became restless. Was I defending China's authoritarian regime unconsciously? Could I separate my national identity from my intellectual stance? And why didn't I develop a stronger resonance with the so-called liberal world? Almost immediately, I realised I was not alone. Years of conversations with other Chinese students ab

Inequality in the world's poorest countries is considered one of the main barriers to development. But this column points out that the inequality is about much more than the über-rich and the destitute - it is about access to political power. This column looks at political dynasties, where leadership is passed down through family ties, to see if these are a cause of the persistent social and economic divides.

"Elliott's chief sin appears to have been that he dared to disagree with the two young feminists and political activists. He and Guthrie, for instance, initially fell out over his refusal to endorse her plan to "sic the Internet" upon a young man in Northern Ontario who had invented a violent video game, where users could punch an image of a feminist video blogger named Anita Sarkeesian until the screen turned red. Guthrie Tweeted at the time that she wanted the inventor's "hatred on the Internet to impact his real-life experience" and Tweeted to prospective employers to warn them off the young man and even sent the local newspaper in his town a link to the story about the game. Elliott disagreed with the tactic and Tweeted he thought the shaming "was every bit as vicious as the face-punch game". Until then, the two were collegial online, with Elliott offering to produce a free poster for Guthrie's witopoli (Women in Toronto Politics) group. As serious as the ramifications of a conviction could be for Elliott, so could they be dire for free speech online, Murphy suggested in his final arguments. He said the idea that all it takes to end up charged with criminal harassment is vigorous participation in online debate with those who will not brook dissent "will have a chilling effect on people's ability to communicate, and not just on Twitter". In fact, Murphy said that contrary to what Guthrie and Reilly testified to at trial, they weren't afraid of his client - as suggested by both their spirited demeanour in the witness box and their deliberate online campaign to call Elliott out as a troll. TwitterA screenshot of Gregory Elliott's Twitter page. Rather, Murphy said, they hated Elliott and were determined to silence him - not just by "blocking" his Tweets to them, but by demanding he cease even referring to them even in making comment about heated political issues. To all this, Guthrie pointed out once in cross-examination t

For advocates of women in politics, such sexual shenanigans raise two questions: Why don't women lawmakers fall prey to such temptation? And if more women were elected to office, would political sex scandals disappear?

It's not just a lazy stereotype that men and women speak differently. In fact, researchers who have sifted through thousands of language samples from men and women have identified clear statistical differences. Some of these differences are exactly what you'd expect-men are more likely to swear and use words that signal aggression, while women are more likely to use tentative language (words like maybe, seems or perhaps) and emotion-laden words (beautiful, despise). But other patterns are far from obvious. For example, contrary to the common stereotype that men can't resist talking about themselves, women are heavier users than men of the pronoun "I" whereas the reverse is true for the pronoun "we"; women produce more common verbs (are, start,went) and auxiliary verbs (am, don't, will), while men utter more articles (a, the) and prepositions (to, with, above); women use fewer long words than men when speaking or writing across a broad range of contexts. Jennifer Jones, a doctoral candidate of political psychology at the University of California at Irvine, has combined these statistics into an index capturing the ratio of "feminine" to "masculine" words, and applied it to the language of 35 political candidates over the past decade. Hillary Clinton's language falls above the average on this index-more feminine than George W. Bush's, but less so than Barack Obama's. Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/trump-feminine-speaking-style-214391#ixzz4OIj3fLLQ  Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

the decision is of course political and has been informed, but not dictated, by science. Expert opinion on safety is one, but only one, factor in the HHS decision. Setting a legal age-threshold for buying the morning-after pill is no different than setting a legal age threshold for buying alcohol.

This was the same inversion of victim and victimizer at work last December. In both cases, the threat was deemed not the angry mobs out to crush opposing ideas, but the ideas themselves. The theory animating both attacks turns out to be a durable one, with deep roots in the political left... After political correctness burst onto the academic scene in the late '80s and early '90s, it went into a long remission. Now it has returned. Some of its expressions have a familiar tint, like the protesting of even mildly controversial speakers on college campuses...