Hypocrisy? Cowardice? in Psychology and Science

 Clinical psychologists explicitly or implicitly communicate to patients the importance of their speaking as honestly and completely as possible, especially when asking and answering questions.  And, expecting honesty and completeness, non-clinical psychologists regularly use surveys of various sorts to conduct their research. Given that honest and complete communication often requires courage and resolve, Cory J. Clark and colleagues (2024) wondered whether psychologists had sufficient grit and conviction to follow their own advice.  Their study was important because the psychologist-participants were university professors-- meaning that they profoundly influence the current and future direction of psychologists, psychology majors, and students of all other majors enrolled in their classes. The candidate professors taught at “the top 100 universities and the top 100 psychology graduate programs in the United States according to U.S. News & World Report rankings.”  The study was even more important because many, if not most, of these very accomplished students presumably will become leaders of American people and policies.

At the end of 2021, the investigators solicited participation of 4,603 psychology faculty members.  Only about 10 percent (N=470) agreed to answer questionnaire items, and not all answered all questions.  Moreover, even fewer participants (N= 417) revealed their demographic information.  Most of these intrepid? psychologists / scientists apparently feared answering and/or accepting personal responsibility for answering at least some of the following questionnaire items:

 

“The tendency to engage in sexually coercive behavior likely evolved because it conferred some evolutionary advantages on men who engaged in such behavior.”

“Gender biases are not the most important drivers of the under-representation of women in STEM fields.”

“Academia discriminates against Black people (e.g., in hiring, promotion, grants, invitations to participate in colloquia/symposia).”

“Biological sex is binary for the vast majority of people.”

“The social sciences (in the United States) discriminate against conservatives (e.g., in hiring, promotion, grants, invitations to participate in colloquia/symposia).”

“Racial biases are not the most important drivers of higher crime rates among Black Americans relative to White Americans.”

“Men and women have different psychological characteristics because of evolution.”

“Genetic differences explain non-trivial (10% or more) variance in race differences in intelligence test scores.”

“Transgender identity is sometimes the product of social influence.”

“Demographic diversity (race, gender) in the workplace often leads to worse performance.”

The investigators asked psychologist-participants how much, if at all, they believed that the questionnaire respondents might not answer the “taboo” items openly due to concerns about:

 

Being ostracized by some peers

Career-damaging biases against me (e.g., in publishing, promotion, awards, grants, talk invites)

Being stigmatized or labeled pejorative terms

Disciplinary actions (e.g., losing classes, losing leadership roles, formal reprimand)

Guilt-by-association harm to my students and colleagues

Being fired

Being attacked on social media

Student boycotts

Threats of physical violence

Persons who remain curious about the study can fully access it via the reference that I cite below.  Because its psychologist-participants lacked the courage to cooperate adequately, this study failed abysmally in its well-intended attempt to generate useful information.  In the interest of brevity, I will not belabor you with the minutiae of this grossly inadequate study.  My point is not to explain reasons for the cowardice, hypocrisy, or corruption of psychology, but to underscore contemporary threats to science, in general, even to the so-called “hard sciences.” (See Restoring the Sciences: Science Under Attack, 2023) I am sure that everyone reading this posting is quite familiar with the basic tenets of scientific inquiry.  We have been taught since grammar school how it should proceed.  In simplest terms, there usually is: Observation, Question Formulation, Hypothesis Development, Experimentation or Some Other Objective Valid and Reliable Means of Assessment, Data Collection, Analysis, Conclusion, Communication About the Issue and Conclusion, Peer Review and Replication, and, often, Theory Development.

Although in the typical explanation of the scientific method, only step eight specifies the word “communication.”   However, communication is ubiquitous in real science—communication with other past and present scientists, if only via impersonal written, visual, and oral material.  All this, of course, presumes that scientists honestly say what they mean when they mean it. Decide for yourself whether those qualities are common and pervasive in contemporary American (and Western) science.   If you agree that the topics studied by Cory J. Clark and colleagues (2024) really should be “taboo,” ask yourself who will decide the next batch of taboos and whether you will agree with them.

There is an even larger national problem implicit in this study, however. We know that countries fail when leaders’ surround themselves with advisors afraid to tell them what they truly believe. That circumstance can lead to wars and to disintegration. I hope that the psychological study just reviewed is not the proverbial canary in the coal mine that signals American retreat from vigorous open and honest questioning and answering of all issues—scientific and otherwise—essential to our nation’s growth and survival.  Do you care enough to speak against science and social censorship? If you do, consider following and/or joining the non-partisan free speech group, FIRE | Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression at  https://www.thefire.org/

References

Clark, C. J., et al. (2024).  Taboos and Self-Censorship Among U.S. Psychology ProfessorsPerspectives on psychological science. May 16     https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3083-9179

National Association of Scholars (December 08, 2023).  Restoring the Sciences: Science Under Attack.  https://www.nas.org/blogs/media/video-restoring-the-sciences-science-under-attack

Homeostasis and Allostasis

Virtually everyone is familiar with homeostasis.  To refresh that concept: it refers to the fact that a healthful physical condition must be maintained within a narrow range regardless of the external environment  wherein we find ourselves.   Among  the many processes to be maintained are those such as temperature control, pH balance, and glucose levels. 

Not so widely known,  however, is the allostasis concept—the process by which the body regains homeostasis when homeostasis is challenged or lost due to stress.  Some of the stressors are purely physical, such as frigid weather and some are less so, such as angry disputes.  Most stressors, of course, include an amalgam of physical and non-physical stress (e.g., mental) in various combinations.  Unlike homeostasis, allostasis operates by ANTICIPATING increased bodily demands and challenges.  For instance, allostasis begins to operate long before your body temperature has deteriorated to a critical, life-threatening  level.  ALLOSTATIC LOAD is defined as the bodily wear and tear (e.g., heart disease) due to chronic stressors  whether more physical, more mental or a combination of both.

To a considerable extent, our health and happiness depend on how we manage our physical and non-physical allostatic load, and  the management often is very difficult.  We have an improved chance of succeeding if we augment the automatic, unconsciously directed allostatic  physical anticipation with a consciously directed allostatic  mental anticipation.   Ideally, we must  develop the habit of anticipating stressors before they occur, or at the very start of their deleterious action.

Because physical homeostasis and physical allostasis  are automatic, we rarely think about their functioning.  So, we are unlikely to attempt to predict their failure, and we do not feel responsible when they do fail.  By contrast, we can exert a modicum of both mental homeostasis and mental allostasis stress influence by the manner through our by employing  stress anticipation.  Sometimes that stress anticipation enables us to forgo or mitigate stress, and sometimes it causes us to instigate or accentuate stress.  In the latter case, we increase our stress and allostatic load only eventually to discover that the anticipated stressor never materializes.

One common cause of mental stress  and its mental allostatic load  is our mistakenly using affect (emotion) as information  (Schwar, & Clore, 1983).  But unlike the just-cited authors, I must replace their use  of the generic word “information” to my phrase, OBJECTIVE  DISPASSIONATE VALID INFORMATION.  I do so  because affect is information that , at minimum, is a highly personal, sometimes idiosyncratic, emotional information signal, causing us to predict that something noteworthy might, will, or soon will occur.

The major issue, of course, involves what one does with the affective information signal that is received.  Try transforming  an uncontrollable, affective information signal into controllable, objective  dispassionate valid information by asking yourself  questions such as the following:

Am I about to improperly use my CURRENT emotional state as a heuristic or shortcut when making judgments or decisions. For example, if I am feeling  poorly right now, will I evaluate a situation more negatively than is warranted, or vice versa?

Am I about to attribute my current feelings to the wrong source and make an unwarranted decision?

Might my present affect be more current context-dependent than I realize,  causing me to make a decision now that harms my long -term well-being?

Conversely, could my present affect prompt me to overestimate the impact of my current decision on future events that will deleteriously influence my emotional well-being?

The bottom line of all this is to say that we should mindfully think about all our homeostatic and allostatic circumstances in order to reduce our stressors or, at least, to better cope with them.  However, since we have relatively greater control over our mental homeostasis and mentally-induced allostatic load, that should be our central concern.  Moreover, given that the social environment usually is our most common and intense form of encountered stress (Almeida, 2005), we should strive to maximize our salutary interpersonal relationships and minimize our negative ones.   

REFERENCES

Almeida, D. M. (2005).    Resilience and Vulnerability to Daily Stressors Assessed via Diary Methods

Current directions in psychological science, Volume 14, Issue 2.   https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00336.x

 

Schwarz, N. & Clore, G. (1983). Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(3), 513-523. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.45.3.513