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Political bias, explanatory depth, and narratives of progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2015

Steven Pinker*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. pinker@wjh.harvard.eduhttp://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/about/

Abstract

Political bias has indeed been a distorter of psychology, not just in particular research areas but in an aversion to the explanatory depth available from politically fraught fields like evolution. I add two friendly amendments to the target article: (1) The leftist moral narrative may be based on zero-sum competition among identity groups rather than continuous progress; and (2) ideological bias should be dealt with not just via diversity of ideological factions but by minimizing the influence of ideology altogether.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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