Re: The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt
I've read some of Haidt's stuff. He has done some interesting work studying the politics of conservatism and liberalism, sees them them as sort of two sides of the same coin, like Yin and Yang. More recently, he has discussed liberal bias in academics.
Excerpt:
"The fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology have long attracted liberals, but they became more exclusive after the 1960s, according to Dr. Haidt. “The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy,” he said, arguing that this shared morality both “binds and blinds.”
“If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community,” he said. “They’ll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they’ll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value.” It’s easy for social scientists to observe this process in other communities, like the fundamentalist Christians who embrace “intelligent design” while rejecting Darwinism. But academics can be selective, too, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan found in 1965 when he warned about the rise of unmarried parenthood and welfare dependency among blacks — violating the taboo against criticizing victims of racism. . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/scien ... .html?_r=1
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