The notion that academia is dominated by liberals isn't a new one, and everyone has a pet reason as to why this may be (self selection, conservatives are too stupid, etc.) But a new Dutch study (here) indicates that workplace hostility may play a role in the statistically improbable paucity of conservatives (and non liberals in general) in the field of social psychology.

The takeaway: "One in six respondents said that she or he would be somewhat (or more) inclined to discriminate against conservatives in inviting them for symposia or reviewing their work. One in four would discriminate in reviewing their grant applications. More than one in three would discriminate against them when making hiring decisions."

Respondents also thought that their colleagues would be more likely than themselves to discriminate against people who hold conservative beliefs.

No surprise there. Liberals are more racist than conservatives IMO.

Interesting study. I imagine that you would probably find the same in reverse in many business schools and some economics departments -- particularly those that espouse public choice theory.   (Related to this, I wonder if there is self-selection bias on the part of people who pick particular disciplines of study, based upon the "belief system" of that discipline.)

Also, while I only skimmed the study, it was not clear to me if the "discrimination" would be the result of differences in political philosophy or differences from the theory norm of the discipline (which I am fully willing to admit may espouse a particular political philosophy). This difference thought would be one of semantics, not of results. And it would limit the true discussion on the nature of many issues.

Mike from Morgantown

You know why I don't invite my conservative friends anywhere? Because they ruin parties and events every single time and make me look bad by association.

All of them? Every conservative friend you have?

How do they ruin these parties?

Yep, I just had my friend richmond (doesn't go by rich) show up to a mutual friend's party, ended up getting a jewish girl upset for moving a topic about freedom of speech into a religious debate in which jewish people were "over the top sometimes", told someone that he didn't believe they'd been doored on a bike in boston because bike lanes, and there was one other thing he said which amounted to "you must not X a lot", which was almost word for word things he said about the jews, and biking.

I won't lie, a lot of my friends are liberal, but there are a lot who aren't, and I don't bring them places because it happens everytime. Sure maybe I'm generalizing, but it hasn't ever not happened. I give in, invite them, and they upset people. It's like it's lurking behind the nice, cool facade. They can't not be in everyone's face.

My best friend was into fox news for a while and was like disowned by all our friends because he called someone who got laid off and on unemployment a "leech", meanwhile that friend had cooked food for everyone, and baked goods, and bought beer for everyone. Things like that had been going on for a while though.

It's just always very embarassing.

So I understand why these people in the study don't invite their conservative friends anywhere.

I'm thinking in line with MikeIntellivision on this one. It depends on how we define "conservatives" here, in the sense that yes, you're going to discriminate against certain popularly held conservative viewpoints, because it's pretty clear that they're wrong

Supply-side economics, or a conservative historian would probably pass muster (so long as they weren't conservative revisionist) but not, for instance, a climate change skeptic or a creationist.

It sounds to me like those people are dicks. I don't think that's because they're conservatives. They just happen to be conservative dicks.

That and i'd have to wonder what would happen if Prof brought his liberal friends to a conservative party.

Also, how good of a party could it really be if people are talking politics?

Actually... I think most economics departments also tend to skew liberal... despite most economists being conservative.

It's led to quite the split between Academic and Private research and outlook.

Most Academic Economics now mostly looks at abstract theoretical questions, while Private economists focus on actual practical real world economics.

It's why you can have people like Paul Krugman when a Nobel Prize... yet not actually have any sort of understanding on how markets actually work on a mecanical level.  Instead relying on overly simple equations that suggust cure all solutions only when used in aggregate.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/07/26/a-great-divide-holds-back-the-relevance-of-economists/

It's intersting, because often you'll find when someone shifts from one realm to the other, they also tend to shift accordingly when it comes to the right or left of economic beliefs.