Political Psychology Links, 1/12/2026
Josh Zlatkus and Rob Kurzban on scientific failings in psychology; Ralph Nesse on the weaknesses of genetic prediction; my review of Nicholas Wade on evolutionary psychology and politics
Josh Zlatkus and Rob Kurzban write,
Replication is a cornerstone of science. If a field’s findings systematically don’t replicate, then it’s not similar to the situation in physics, in which new theories were needed to account for new data. Instead, it’s not clear that that field was doing science in the first place. The solution to the replication crisis isn’t new theories—it’s new procedure. That is the crisis faced by psychology.
My hypothesis is that psychology usually operates close to the boundary between science and baloney sandwich. The reason is that all of us believe in some sort of folk psychology. In order to navigate the social world, we have to try to predict how other people will behave. We necessarily formulate psychological theories. We end up judging an academic’s psychological theory by how well it aligns with our personal folk psychology. This creates a playing field on which it is hard to tell by the uniform who is on the scientific team and who isn’t. It is likely that none of us are fully on the scientific team.
Complexity arises not only because many genes influence one trait, but also because most genes influence many traits. This is pleiotropy. It is especially evident in the findings from studies of mental disorders; most genes that increase the risk of one disorder also increase the risk of others, dashing hopes of finding specific genotypes that could define specific disorders and resolve the confusion that swirls around psychiatric diagnosis.
Another issue is that diagnosis creates binary data out of what is almost surely an underlying base of multiple scalar properties. Complex combinations of genes help form personality tendencies (which are not easily defined and measured) which in turn interact with experiences and circumstances, all of which gets classified into “has disorder X” or “does not have disorder X.” Not surprising that the statistical analysis is unreliable.
Reviewing Nicholas Wade’s Thee Origin of Politics, I write,
If I had written a book on these themes, I would have taken more care to take a stance of “Often, but not always.”
Often, cultural experiments fail when they go against evolutionary instincts, but not always (we have found ways to overcome nepotism).
Often, the way that women approach cooperation and competition differs from men’s approach, but not always (personality differences are prevalent among women and among men that may be as large or larger than average differences between the sexes).
Often, evolutionary mismatch is exacerbated by liberal policies, but not always (one can argue that dramatic income inequality is an example of a phenomenon that is an evolutionary mismatch that is exacerbated by conservative policies).
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It is kind of amazing how many of the most famous psychology experiments were later demonstrated or revealed to be egregiously fraudulent but which still get repeated over and over as if their findings are true insights into human nature and remain the consensus of the scholars in the field. It's one thing to make unfalsifiable claims, but it's another when public perception is impervious to actual falsification. These are undead / zombie lies: you can try to shoot them down but they just keep getting up and circulating again as if nothing happened. The truth is not just slower at "pulling its pants up", sometimes it's kept in a medical coma so never gets out of bed at all.
It might be just my lack of imagination but I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a "conservative" policy that directly fosters income inequality unless you want to argue that "them that has the gold (and the guns) makes the rules" is a specifically conservative attitude. Robbing Peter to pay Paul in a quasi-legal fashion to make them more equal in income if you include such transfers is functionally the same sentiment. High levels of taxation, government directed industrial policies, restrictions on entering various professions including quite menial ones, and identity based hiring quotas are all examples of generally liberal policies that would tend to prevent people from using their monetary and human capital in ways that would increase their income. I don't think it's an accident the Democrat party has a wide disparity in income levels among its supporters.
I can see how you could argue in the current moment the trade policy favored by many conservatives could foster such inequality but it wasn't that long ago liberals were championing trade restrictions to achieve various policy goals.