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Cory Clark10 August 2023

5 Forbidden Topics That Psychology Won’t Discuss - Cory Clark - #665

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 2

Myth Buster

Is pervasive misogyny a myth in the modern West?

Cory Clark argues that in modern Western societies, systematic bias against women is largely a myth, and that the reverse is now common. Across many domains people favor women: they like women more, punish them less for the same behavior, and reject scientific findings that portray men better than women. He suggests the intense vigilance about harm to women stems from the fact that society cares more about women than men.

  • People are biased in favor of women across many domains and punish women less for the same things
  • Findings that favor men over women meet more resistance than the reverse
  • Biases against men rarely make headlines because few people care
  • Overt anti-women treatment still exists in parts of the world (e.g. Clark's Cairo elevator story)

“So people want women to be better than men.”

Cory Clark

“I would say it is largely a myth in modern Western societies, yes.”

Cory Clark
#gender-bias#psychology#misogyny#society
Myth Buster

Hiring bias flipped to favor women around 2009

Drawing on audit studies that send matched applications under male and female names, Clark says biases that once favored men in male-stereotypical jobs flipped around 2009 and now favor women, while female-stereotypical jobs always favored women. Yet both everyday people and academics still assume a large bias against women in male-typical hiring, and read women's underrepresentation in STEM as proof of discrimination rather than differing preferences.

  • Audit studies send matched male/female-named applications to real jobs
  • Biases in male-stereotypical hiring flipped to favor women around 2009
  • People still assume the opposite is true
  • STEM underrepresentation is read as discrimination, not as differing interests

“we see this flip around 2009, where all of a sudden, um, even for male stereotypical jobs, the biases favor women.”

Cory Clark
#hiring#discrimination#stem#audit-studies

Hot Take· 2

Hot Take

Protective concern that infantilizes the people it claims to help

Clark and Williamson argue that harm-focused advocacy often treats disadvantaged groups as too fragile to handle criticism or jokes, which is itself a form of prejudice. Clark cites research that progressives present less competence when talking to black people and shield minority groups from humor, while conservatives treat groups more similarly. They suggest much of it is 'fake virtue' aimed at making the advocate look good rather than delivering real impact.

  • Treating groups as unable to handle criticism is itself patronizing
  • Studies: progressives show less competence toward black people; conservatives treat groups alike
  • The stance can read as infantilizing rather than caring
  • It looks driven by self-presentation more than measured consequences

“it it seems to me to be primarily done to make the person bestowing the virtue look good not to have genuine impact.”

Chris Williamson
#virtue-signaling#paternalism#politics#advocacy
Hot Take

Male vs female self-improvement: change yourself or change the world

Williamson offers a worldview model: male self-improvement treats the person as mutable and the world as immutable, so you must become the best version of yourself and accept the environment; female self-improvement treats the person as immutable and the world as mutable, telling you to accept yourself and change society's structures. He illustrates it with the animated versus 2020 versions of Mulan, and predicts the directors' genders from the story's framing.

  • Male framing: person mutable, world immutable — improve yourself, accept the rules
  • Female framing: person immutable, world mutable — accept yourself, change the structures
  • 1998 Mulan trains and outworks her limits; 2020 Mulan is innately superior
  • Williamson correctly predicted each film's director gender from the framing

“male self-improvement sees the person as mutable and the world as immutable.”

Chris Williamson
#self-improvement#gender#worldview#culture

Explainer· 9

Explainer

People judge the same scientific finding differently by gender

Clark describes Steve Stewart-Williams' studies and his own seven-year struggle to publish similar work. When a finding says women score worse than men, people call it sexist and bad research; when it says women score better, they accept it readily. Crucially, 'women are better' and 'men and women are equal' are received about equally well, while 'men are better' provokes anger.

  • Identical study framed 'men better' vs 'women better' gets opposite credibility judgments
  • 'Women are better' and 'equal' are rated similarly favorably; 'men are better' irritates people
  • Clark struggled for ~7 years to publish a study on perceived intelligence differences
  • Both men and women show the pro-female bias, though it is usually larger among women

“when women are portrayed as better, people are like, oh, it's even pretty good.”

Chris Williamson

“So that's the one that really irritates people.”

Cory Clark
#research-bias#gender#science#publication
Explainer

Gamma bias: how headlines make women's wins and men's failures visible

Chris Williamson explains gamma bias, a concept popularized by Dr John Barry of the Centre for Male Psychology. In popular media, pro-women and anti-men stories get gendered headlines ('female CEO', 'white male shooter'), while the reverse cases stay gender-neutral. Because most people experience the world vicariously through news and social media, this asymmetry skews everyone's perception of reality.

  • Pro-women and anti-men stories are gendered in headlines; the reverse cases are not
  • Successes of women and failings of men are both foregrounded
  • People increasingly live vicariously through media rather than direct experience
  • The asymmetry systematically distorts how people see gender in the world

“if the article is pro-women, then they will sex the headline. If it's anti-men, then it will sex the headline. But if it's the reverse,…”

Chris Williamson
#gamma-bias#media#gender#perception
Explainer

Even 'men are stronger than women' triggers denial

Clark recounts Google-imaging 'men are stronger than women' and finding almost all results showed women overpowering men. Williamson adds sporting examples: a lower-tier men's team thrashing a national women's team, and the women's 100m record being matched by high-school-age boys. Both note that obvious physical sex differences are widely denied or attributed to socialization.

  • Google image search for a true statement returned mostly images contradicting it
  • Lower-tier or youth male teams routinely beat elite women's teams
  • The women's 100m record is matched by under-18 males
  • Denial of physical differences is often reflexively blamed on socialization

“even when you Google this this fact, men are stronger than women, everyone's like, no, women are stronger than men.”

Cory Clark
#sex-differences#sports#physical-ability#denial
Explainer

The academic sex-ratio hypothesis: how a gender shift changed academia

Clark argues that as women moved from a small minority to the majority of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty, academia's goals shifted to prioritize women's values: harm-protection, egalitarianism, and trigger warnings over open truth-seeking. On his survey items, whichever gender holds the majority view is the one whose priorities win, which he and Williamson jokingly dub the academic sex-ratio hypothesis.

  • Women moved from a tiny minority to the majority at every level of academia
  • Institutional goals shifted toward harm-avoidance and egalitarianism
  • On controversial questions, majorities of men and women hold opposite views
  • Whichever group is the majority gets its priorities enacted

“it's the majority of men hold view A and the majority of women hold view B. So whichever group has more people, they're going to…”

Chris Williamson
#academia#gender#institutions#culture
Explainer

Why men skew hierarchical and women skew egalitarian

Clark offers an evolutionary account: men formed coalitions to protect the group and are comfortable with hierarchy and unequal status, because a strong leader benefits everyone. Women focused on raising vulnerable offspring, producing heightened harm-concern and a preference for equal outcomes. Williamson adds that women's greater physical fragility raised the cost of making enemies, encouraging conformity and the hiding of one's own success.

  • Men evolved to build coalitions and tolerate status hierarchies that help the group
  • Women focused on protecting vulnerable offspring, driving harm-concern and egalitarianism
  • Women's fragility made conflict costlier, favoring conformity
  • Joyce Benenson's work: male opponents show more physical goodwill than female teammates

“men were often working in coalitions to protect the group.”

Cory Clark

“the enemies on the men teams, they show more love for each other than the same team, the same team members for for women.”

Chris Williamson
#evolutionary-psychology#sex-differences#hierarchy#egalitarianism
Explainer

Truth-seeking vs harm-avoidance: the competing goals of science

Williamson and Clark debate why science should pursue truth. Williamson argues truth lets society accurately perceive the world and make good predictions; suppressing findings to avoid immediate harm can create far larger second- and third-order harms. Clark notes both often justify truth-seeking by appeal to consequences, and that the female-mentor retraction case shows suppression can itself harm the very group it claims to protect.

  • Suppressing a finding to avoid first-order harm can cause larger downstream harm
  • Accurate science enables good predictions; motivated research produces costly errors
  • The retracted female-mentor paper meant a real effect will never be investigated or fixed
  • Politicized suppression erodes public trust in science itself

“harm in the immediate avoiding immediate harm can cause much worse harm down the road.”

Chris Williamson
#philosophy-of-science#truth#harm#censorship
Explainer

Why evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics get you fired

Clark explains that the conclusions that get scholars in trouble cluster in evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics, because people dislike group differences, especially when supported by an evolutionary or genetic cause. The reaction is strongest when a difference favors men over women or white over black people. He notes the irony that these fields have weathered the replication crisis best, while the most politically favored field, social psychology, is the least reliable.

  • Controversial conclusions cluster in evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics
  • Reaction is worst when a difference favors a group perceived as advantaged
  • Delegitimizing whole fields is easier than rebutting individual findings
  • These fields replicate better than the politically favored social psychology

“If you if you want to avoid the replication crisis, two places that you want to be are in evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics.”

Cory Clark
#evolutionary-psychology#behavioral-genetics#taboo#replication-crisis
Explainer

Self-censorship makes taboo conclusions look fringe when they aren't

Clark's survey found that people who think a controversial conclusion is true self-censor more than those who think it is false. Because the believers stay quiet, public discourse systematically overstates how fringe and false these conclusions are, distorting the perceived scientific consensus. The people concerned about harm speak loudly online while the truth-oriented majority stays silent.

  • Those who believe a controversial conclusion self-censor most
  • Public discourse therefore makes true conclusions look false and fringe
  • The vocal minority pushing harm-based policy is small but loud
  • The quiet majority stays silent out of fear of being targeted

“the people who think that they're true are self-censoring more, which inevitably means that what we hear publicly about controversial conclusions is systematically distorted.”

Cory Clark
#self-censorship#consensus#academic-freedom#distortion
Explainer

Preference falsification and the chance of sudden change

Williamson introduces Timur Kuran's concept of preference falsification: people publicly professing beliefs they privately reject to protect their jobs and reputations. Clark's data suggest widespread private contempt for moralized retraction campaigns (the modal admiration rating was zero). If people learned their private view is actually the majority, they might speak up, and norms could shift rapidly, though demographic trends in academia cut the other way.

  • Preference falsification: publicly professing beliefs you privately reject
  • Modal admiration for moralized retraction campaigners was zero out of 100
  • Widespread private disagreement is masked by public silence
  • Revealing the true majority could trigger rapid change, but demographics may not favor it

“preference falsification is essentially when people publicly are saying that they believe or support something that they don't actually truly believe or support.”

Chris Williamson
#preference-falsification#timur-kuran#academia#social-change

Story· 1

Story

Why politics and accent tell you more than race

Clark and Williamson note people are far more prejudiced along political lines than racial ones, because politics reveals more about a person's worldview than skin color. Williamson extends this to the UK, where accent signals class and people are more prejudiced by accent than by race. He recounts pinning down a stranger's region, class, and schooling purely from how he spoke, arguing race is a comparatively weak signal of who someone is.

  • People show far more political prejudice than racial prejudice
  • Politics reveals worldview better than race does
  • In the UK, accent encodes class and drives more prejudice than skin color
  • Williamson identified a stranger's region, class, and schooling from his accent alone

“people are more prejudiced against those with different accents than those with different skin colors.”

Chris Williamson
#class#race#politics#prejudice

Takeaway· 1

Takeaway

The most taboo conclusions psychology won't discuss

From Clark's survey of psychology professors at top-130 US institutions, Williamson lists several of the ten most taboo conclusions: that men and women evolved different psychological traits; that biological sex is binary for the majority; that sexual coercion may have conferred evolutionary advantages; and that gender bias is not the main driver of women's STEM underrepresentation. Other taboo clusters concern race and politics, including bias against conservatives.

  • Men and women evolved different psychological characteristics
  • Biological sex is a binary for the majority of people
  • Gender biases are not the main driver of women's STEM underrepresentation
  • Further taboo conclusions concern race and anti-conservative bias in the field

“Those are four of the ten. There are other ones related to uh race as well, and then there are other ones related to politics.”

Cory Clark
#taboo-topics#psychology#sex-differences#academic-freedom