Lee Jussim
Appearances
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
This is great. Sonia's a fan of your podcast. I'm sure she's going to see this. I'll probably talk to her before, but hi, Sonia.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah. Right, so... I think that's right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah, okay. We'll have to try it. We'll have to try it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Try it out. Absolutely.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And it was exactly as you described before we went down the large language model path that liberals who are not... So we use statistical regression. We can separate out... from being liberal but not authoritarian, from being a left-wing authoritarian but not liberal. Liberalism predicted endorsement of the sort of humanistic diversity image. The people together are under an American flag.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
We're all different, but we're all in it together. We love America, blah, blah, blah. It was left-wing authoritarianism powerfully predicted endorsement of the Soviet propaganda. The Statue of Liberty is KKK.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes, yes. Oh, that's good.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So that's one. We did this kind of thing.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Well, it's a lot. It's a lot. We include it in almost everything. And we include measures of left- and right-wing authoritarianism in most of the studies we've been conducting. Right, right. So tell us more. So the...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
The most recent splash, and I think that's what got your staff member interested in having me on here, were three experimental studies assessing the psychological impacts of common DEI rhetoric and pedagogy. Right, right. And we did it with three different kinds of DEI rhetoric.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I remember that now. Yeah, that's fairly recent. And they've made more of a splash than I would have expected.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So let me walk through Let me qualify this a little bit. We examined the rhetoric that is common to many DEI interventions. ChatGPT can do a very good job of that, by the way. Kind of. The problem is a lot of the materials... used in DEI trainings aren't publicly available. So it's actually hard. And we can say they're common to things we had access to, but a lot is not publicly available.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And that's an important limitation that your listeners, viewers should understand. It's not like we evaluated the effectiveness of the DEI training program instituted by the HR department of the city of Milwaukee. We didn't do that. We took the intellectual ideas from three different kinds of sources.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Anti-racism rhetoric, anti-Islamophobia rhetoric, and anti-caste, the Hindu caste system, anti-caste oppression rhetoric. And there are For race, we used passages from Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist and from D'Angelo's White Fragility. These books were widely required for our colleges. You know, sometimes she's paid $40,000 a session to come in and give her training. So...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And we also actually used this sort of large language model, this sort of language network analysis to examine the extent to which this type of rhetoric was common throughout the training materials we had access to, and it was very common.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
You know what, I have this here. So let me give an example from the race... And this is just a short excerpt. So people would read, so they would read, say, an anti-racist passage or a control passage. The control passage in these studies, in two out of the three, was about how to grow corn on the farm. It was completely separate. And this is only a short excerpt of a longer passage. Yeah, okay.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
This is the anti-racism. White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview. Racism is the norm. It is not unusual. It just went on for a full paragraph. And it was quotes smoothed together with a little writing by us of Kendi and D'Angelo.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
All right. So they then were presented with a very brief scenario in which a college admissions officer interviews an applicant and ultimately the applicant is rejected from admission. That's the whole scenario. The words are slightly different because I'm doing that piece from memory, but that's basically the whole scenario. They were then asked a series of questions
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
assessing how much perceived racism and bias was... Was the causal factor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the part of the admissions officer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And what we found is when they got the Kendi D'Angelo essay, they claimed to have seen or observed the admissions officer committing more microaggressions treating the applicant more unfairly, and that the admissions officer was more biased.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes, that is probably what D'Angelo would say. I don't know. Actually, I can tell you a little bit what Kendi did say because he was asked about it. He did not say that. If someone said that, I would say, well, in our scenario, none of that was evident. You had to read that into the scenario. And that is the point.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Because anyone can look at the scenario. People didn't even have racial information about the admissions officer and the applicant.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Well, it is germane. Kind of. So on the narrow issue of how long do the effects we observed in this study last, we didn't study that. Right, right. So I have no answer to that. Yeah, of course. Okay. But given that we observed the effects that we did, the sort of people concocting racism where there was no evidence of it,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
on the basis of a very minor intervention, that's like reading a single paragraph, it at least raises the possibility that when people are in a culture or organizational context in which this type of rhetoric is pervasive, that they are constantly being exposed or primed to think about race in these terms
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And because of the steady diet of this kind of rhetoric, the effects are likely to be more enduring than anything we could possibly observe.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I mean, you're speaking to the social reward.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Well, I think most of his was from actually—what's his name? Jack Dorsey from Twitter, I think, gave him $10 million. So at least it wasn't state money, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
No, it's three studies. Three studies. So it's essentially the same structure for an anti-Islamophobia intervention and an anti-caste oppression. And it's essentially the same results. There's little minor differences. But it's essentially the same pattern of results. They're not— So these studies I conducted in collaboration with the NCRI. NCRI is the Network Contagion Research Institute.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
They are a freestanding research institute that started out mostly doing research along the lines of this sort of large language model stuff that you were talking about earlier, analysis of social media and analysis of technology. radicalism, conspiracy theories, hate, sort of groups and individuals mobilizing online. And they've done it with all sorts of stuff.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
They've done it with COVID conspiracies. They've done it with QAnon. They've done it with Islamophobia. They've done it with anti-Hindu hate. They've done it with anti-Semitism. They were the first group of any kind, as far as I know,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
In the summer of 2020, the height of the George Floyd social justice protests, which as you remember the rhetoric on the left, this is consistent with what you were talking about earlier about how the left isn't – the reasonable left is in complete denial of the far left. It is literally true that most of the protests were peaceful. Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Whenever someone would present evidence of some protests not being peaceful at all, like firebombing a police station or capturing downtown Seattle or all sorts of, you know, setting, by creating a sort of setting the stage for lawlessness, you would have looting and robberies that weren't really part of the protest, but people were taking advantage of the sort of police-free zones and stuff.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
When you would talk about that, the response was, this is all just right-wing... Of course.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And that's seriously wrong. Okay, so this, enter the NCRI. So... In summer of 2020, when this was all the record, most of the protests, complete denial, mainstream media, that there was violence and bombings and all sorts of other stuff, the NCRI, this is the first project I did with them, produces an analysis finding that the far-left groups
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
not conventional liberals or Democrats, but these far-left radical groups were exploiting the earnest commitment to anti-racism or the social justice on the part of people justifiably upset about George Floyd's murder and the implications about that for racism beyond that. But these far-left groups were exploiting that
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
to both gin up supporters and to mobilize online, this is all occurring on social media, to capture protests, to ratchet up and inspire more aggressive violence at the protests.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I know, right. Clearly. If you believe in criminals. Yeah, right. Right, okay. So, and then Sarah would... in this report would then link the increased online activity. You know, there'd be memes like ACAB, all cops are bastards. You know, so there'd be things like that. And some of the groups were actually using social media to coordinate their, you know, the sort of violent protest activities.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So live, I'm making this up, but it was this kind of thing. People would be, you know, at these protests on their phones. They would get instructions from some sort of central place that the cops were over here, so everybody needs to go over there. And that's how they would avoid.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So they were getting tactical instructions live via social media in addition to sort of ginning up the rhetoric to garner support and adherence. Okay. So before they brought me on, maybe two or three months before, the NCRI had posted a report on how far right groups do essentially the same thing.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
You know, sort of mobilize online using memes and catchphrases and, you know, garner adherence, you know, gain adherence and stuff. So they bring me on, we do this thing, and this paper on the far left, which really looks to me, it looked to me like the far left groups were seeking to ignite an actual revolution.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I know, right? Yes, this doesn't seem far-fetched, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes. I was kind of new to that at the time, but in hindsight, yes, absolutely. Yeah, well, it's a shocking thing to know. The NCRI, to no credit to me, I'm an academic, I'm a professor, I don't do this kind of thing, had access to journalists at the New York Times and Washington Post who ran stories on this report.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And it was the first time there was any acknowledgement in the mainstream media that there was any level of violence and danger in the protests. I felt really good about it. This was like September 2012. We did the work over the summer. But that report is not published in a peer-reviewed journal. NCRI has its own website. And they published these reports kind of like old time.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It's insane. It's insane.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes and no. So as of right now, that's where they are. They're available on the NCRI website. Okay, and who did that? Was it a postdoc, a doctoral student? It was a bunch of all, it was, so... It was me, two of my grad students, although both of my grad students also work closely with the NCRI. And then there were a series of analysts at the NCRI, including their head researcher.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So a bunch of us are co-authors on this. We have this, so I've not been working with them for several years. And it took a while for us to get used to each other. You know, their strength is this online social media, large language model, topic network stuff, right? you know, with an eye towards threats and conspiracy theories and hate. And my strength is conventional social science.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah, that's a nice overlap. It is. Yeah, it's a nice overlap. It is. We needed to figure out the best surges. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. It took a while, but we have this rhythm.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah, so... One of the things—first, let me give context, a little more context. So our rhythm is first we post stuff essentially as a white paper, as a report on the NCRI site. It gets some attention, some public vetting. We get some feedback on it, and then we scale it up for peer review. Well, that's not unlike doing a pre-release in a convention. Yes, okay. Now, it's a little different.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It's different, it is like, I have taken to calling it a homespun preprint. And here's why I call it a homespun preprint. It's like a preprint in that it's a report of empirical studies that is posted online that haven't been peer reviewed. It is unlike a conventional preprint in that it is, and this is the answer to your question, why did we do it this way rather than wait for peer review?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
This is part of the answer. It is, even though some of it is highly technical, a lot of the worst of the technical stuff is stripped down so that it is comprehensible to the lay intelligent audience. And... That has a value in and of its own right, because the problem with peer review is that it could ease... Well, there are many problems with peer review, especially now. Many, many.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
You're right, there's many. Yeah, right? Okay. But one of them is that it could take a year or two years... Yeah, lagged public... Right, right. It's horrible. Right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It needs to be upended. Completely.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It's crazy. That's right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Sure. There are probably too many of these attempts for me to go through, so I'm going to pick one. Yeah, pick the cream of the crop. Yeah, this is probably the cream of the crop. Okay. It is... I refer to—so I have a very active sub-stack site, Unsafe Science, and I have several posts on this. You can find it under the Pops Fiasco Racist Mule Trope. There's a whole series on this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Okay, so what is Pops? Pops is Perspectives on Psych Science, one of the very prestigious journals within the field of psychology for publishing reviews and commentaries and the like. The short version is that I was invited by the editor to do a commentary on a main paper that was critical.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
The main paper by a psychologist named Hummel, Bernard Hummel, was critical of prior work in psychology advocating for diversity in a variety of ways. The nature of his critique was that much of the rhetoric in psychological scholarship around diversity was narrowly focused on—and the terms are constantly changing—underrepresented, minority, minoritized, disadvantaged, oppressed groups.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And that from a scientific... Intersectionally... Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. That's right. And so... Intersectionally deprived. And there was a recent article which argued that on scientific grounds, we need to do exactly that. Hummel's critique was that, was really multiple, but two of his key points were that, well, there are some types of things, it's irrelevant.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Diversity is irrelevant for certain kind of theoretical scientific tests.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And then the other point is that if diversity matters, it matters for scientific purposes, it matters extremely broadly, and it's not restricted to underrepresented groups.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And a very simple example would be if you would compare a study based on undergraduate psychology students versus one based on a nationally representative sample, the research based on the nationally representative sample is going to be broader and more generalizable and more credible. A nationally representative sample represents the population.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It's not focused entirely on any subset of the population. That would be a very simple example of Hummel's point. I was asked to do a commentary I did.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Completely different. Completely different. That was part of Hummel's critique. But I guess, again, the editor invited me to publish a commentary on this exchange and The title of my commentary was, is, it eventually got published, is Diversity is Diverse. Because there's lots of different kinds of diversity.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And if we're arguing for diversity on scientific grounds, then what the science needs to be is fully representative of the, whether it's the participants or the topics, or it goes way beyond diversity. I mean, repression is a part of that and shouldn't be excluded, but it's only one piece of that. So I basically was in agreement with Hamel's critique and augmented it. As part of that, I critiqued
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
progressive academic rhetoric around diversity as disingenuous and hypocritical. And the way I framed that, the way I captured it, was using a quote from Fiddler on the Roof. So in Fiddler on the Roof, which is what, early 20th century Jewish life in the
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Everyone should watch it. Probably its most famous song is Tradition, which is about the importance of tradition and keeping the community together. But then there were exceptions. So there's an interlude in the song Tradition where the villagers get into an argument because one chimes in, there was a time he sold him a horse but delivered a mule.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And I use that to frame my discussion of progressive disingenuousness. They all disintegrate into fractious arguments in the middle of this song about unity when that comes up. When that comes up, that's right. Yeah, yeah. That's right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And I argued in this paper that the way and the reason that's a good metaphor for progressive rhetoric around diversity is that diversity sound, you know, superficially, it sounds good to a lot of people, right? Because who doesn't want to be included? No matter what group you're a member of, the idea that someone is advocating for diversity, you know, it's kind of appealing. And
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes, with two seconds of thought, it's a positive thing.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Arbitrary exclusion. Yeah, of arbitrary exclusion. That's right. That's right. And, for example, one thing you might—one might think if one had a little bit of knowledge is that, especially in the social sciences and humanities, but really in academia writ large, there's hardly anyone who is not left of center. I mean, the range goes from sort of center-left to the far, far left. I have a—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
No one disagrees with that claim. Well, so Nate Honeycutt, my former student, he's now a research scientist at FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, did a dissertation on this. He surveyed almost 2,000 faculty nationwide at the top colleges and universities and found that
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
There are measurement issues across the board, but that is with respect to both left- and right-wing authoritarianism. There are questionnaires, commonly used questionnaires, to assess right-wing authoritarianism and to assess left-wing authoritarianism. They're different. The reason—let me give a little context— For a long time, people tried to develop nonpartisan politics.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So this is the extreme left. This is no longer just like Democrats or liberals. This is nearly half on the far left. And that was a sample of how many people? It was almost 2,000. Yeah. Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I have looked into this. It's hundreds of thousands. I don't know the number. I don't remember.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I don't know if you could go that far because he looked at the top colleges and universities. If you wanted to generalize to all colleges and universities, you would have to include community colleges and, you know, primarily liberal arts.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Okay, we don't know. I don't know.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So one might think, if someone is advocating for diversity, given the extreme political skew and given the extent to which academia deals with politicized topics, that there would be an embrace of people, an attempt to bring into academia diversity professors, researchers, scholars, teachers from across the political spectrum. That has never gotten any traction in academia.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And in fact, it's gone in the complete opposite direction. If you go back 50, 60 years, I think it's fair to describe the way academia has functioned is to produce a slow-moving purge of conservatives and even people center and libertarians from its ranks. So...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
My point in this commentary was using things like that as examples of the disingenuousness of progressive rhetoric around diversity, that it wasn't really diversity in the broadest sense.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It's like rejected. It's worse than off the table. So that was my paper. And... There's more to the story than this, but to keep this succinct, eventually what happened was almost 1,400 academics, probably mostly psychologists, signed an open letter denouncing – So my paper was one of several commentaries. All of the commentaries were critical of this oppression framing of diversity. All of them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
All of them were. And this was in POPS? Yeah, Perspectives on Psych Science.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
authoritarianism scales if authoritarianism right psychological construct rather than a political one right and they couldn't really do it right because one of the core toxic elements of authoritarianism is a motivation to crush deprive of humanity and human rights one's political opponents
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes, I do know this history. Okay, okay. In the first place, APS started out as the American Psychological Society. They changed their name to the Association for Psychological Science in an attempt to be broader. And what triggered the breakaway of APS from APA in the 90s, maybe? 90s, yeah, I think so. It wasn't political.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It was the scientists who formed APS believed that APA was too focused on clinical practice and practitioner issues. Right. And it was becoming unscientific, but not because of the politics.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah, I think that's fair.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It's probably worse politically, but it's probably not worse practically because social psychologists don't really – aren't responsible for helping anybody get on with their lives. I mean they're responsible for teaching and students and things. They're not – typically they're not – They are responsible for implicit bias, technically.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
that's all we can you're gonna get me you are gonna get me distracted you started by asking me to tell the story of my yeah yeah let's continue with that yes okay so now you're there's 1400 people who write a letter yes declaring all of us me as well as uh the other commentators we're all racists yeah um the editor should be fired and our articles should be taken down they
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So you need to assess either right or left-wing authoritarianism vis-a-vis the attitudes towards one's opponents in order to measure the construct.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It was 1,400. I mean, I didn't recognize many of the names. But if you assume the first five or ten names are the likely organizers, those were all well-established psychologists, especially social psychologists. Okay, social. Okay. Yes. So you got a backlash from— A huge backlash. And part of the accusation for me in particular was that by using this—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
from Fiddler on the Roof, there was a time he sold him a horse but delivered a mule, as a frame for progressive disingenuousness around diversity, I was comparing black people to mules.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So this is very new. Actually, part of this backstory is very interesting. The editor of the journal at the time is a European psychologist named Klaus Fiedler. Klaus Fiedler is very accomplished. He's an unbelievably honest. Hundreds of journal articles, multiple editorships and awards published. He was the editor overseeing all this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And my and the other commentaries that he eventually accepted started out as simple reviews. So when Hamel submitted his paper, it was subjected to peer review. I was one of the peer reviewers. Oh, yeah. So was one of the other. Fiedler so liked the reviews that he asked all of us to scale them up to full-length articles.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
But I warned Fiedler, the editor, in my review before...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
anyone had the idea that a version of my review would get published, that if he accepted Hamel's critique of the way in which psychologists write and think about diversity, what they've been advocating with respect to diversity, that he would be at heightened risk of people coming after him, demanding the papers be retracted, and coming after his job. This is in my review.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I'd have to go back. I think I may have taken it out because it wasn't really appropriate because the commentary wasn't... It was about the exchange. It wasn't a message to the editor. Fine. I mean, it's not necessarily the case that it would stick. Yeah. So, Firestorm... APS, the executive director or committee of APS, whatever that group is, of committee, put an immediate kibosh on this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It was going to be all published as a... As a discussion forum. That's how Fiedler framed it, as a discussion forum about diversity issues. They put an immediate halt. Okay, who's they? It's the officers of the Association for Psychological Science.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
No, they don't. And shouldn't. And shouldn't, right. But the editor is, to some extent, beholden. I mean, that's who he's working for.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Well, so the open letter had two main demands. They weren't even required, they were demands. That Fiedler be fired and the papers be retracted.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
They conducted what looked to me, and really to all of us involved, like a kangaroo court, you know, into what happened. They concluded that Fiedler had somehow violated editorial ethics and norms. Which is a serious accusation. Yes. Like a career-ending accusation, if it's true. Yes. Well, he's had a very nice career since, so it did not succeed.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I say they have not succeeded. Actually, one of my current graduate students is... for her master's thesis in the process of trying to develop a nonpartisan authoritarianism scale. Based on that idea. Yes, based on that idea. I don't know if she's going to succeed.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes, exactly. That's right. So he was ousted almost immediately. And then the papers, mine included, that were part of Fiedler's discussion forum... And that had been published. They had been accepted but not published.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Okay, okay. Accepted but not published. That's right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Someone must have, you know, maybe through the... The editorial process is largely online, so I'm sure they could have accessed the papers through the online editorial process. I'm sure they could have asked Fiedler for the papers. Had they asked us for the papers, I would have... Well, they weren't secret. They weren't secret. Yeah, they weren't secret. I mean, people looked.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
They were publishing their papers so that people would read them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Right, exactly. It was accepted, but not published. So they ousted him almost immediately. And then the papers, they brought in two special... editors to figure out what to do with the papers accepted as part of the discussion forum. And who were these special editors and what made them special? Well, there was Samin Vazir and E.J. Wagenmacher.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And both of them, I think Samin is now the head editor at Psychological Science. So they both have had long careers advocating with some success for upgrading the and credibility and rigor of psychological science. They both have made important contributions that way. And so I think that's why they were brought in. They had a certain cachet as able to figure out what to do.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I think that's what the APS directory believed.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Like, from their perspective— Are you willing to speculate? Well, so, sure. The main object of Hummel's critique was a— black or biracial social psychologist at Stanford, Stephen Roberts. And Roberts denounced the whole process as racist. Publicly. Okay, okay. Publicly. And I do think that... On what grounds?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
He probably had three main grounds. Yeah. That was one of them. Absolutely. You know, you criticize this. This shows that you're racist. Racism is pervasive throughout psychology. Right. That would be one ground. Second ground was my use of this, me comparing blacks to mules with, you know, there was a time he sold him a horse and delivered a mule.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And then the third was, there was a considerable, so Fiedler offered- Kind of missing the point of that. I know, yeah, right. Fiedler offered Roberts the opportunity to respond to the full set of papers, which were supporting, were generally supporting Hamel's critique of, which was really about diversity in general, but its jumping-off point was a prior paper by Roberts. Okay, got it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
But it gave Roberts a chance to reply to the critiques. But there was a considerable back-and-forth between Roberts and Fiedler about whether, when, and how to publish Roberts' response. Okay. That... Feedlow was probably kind of a pain in the ass.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
But in my experience, editors, I don't know how many times, I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times I have subjectively experienced editors' comments as pains in the ass.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? But whatever. But those were his grounds for denouncing all of us as racist. Fiedler made his life difficult. This whole critique of diversity is a testament to white supremacy pervasive in psychology and me comparing black people to mules. Yeah, okay, got it. Right, that was the grounds. And you asked me to speculate...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I have no, I don't have, I have at best very circumstantial evidence. I may not even have circumstantial evidence. I strongly suspect, I would really like to test this in the lab or in surveys, that liberals, especially white liberals,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
are so wracked with guilt and shame over the bona fide history of white supremacy and discrimination and oppression in the United States, in Europe, and especially in the UK, it's more about colonialism, right? Are so wracked with guilt that there is a vulnerability to just believing
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Anything a person from one of these oppressed, stigmatized groups says, denouncing others... Yeah, well, it's a very quick and easy way to signify the fact that you're not part of the oppressor camp.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Well, it needs to be. Yes, I agree. It totally needs to be.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So the first step forward, To do that is to develop scales that – survey questions that adequately get at left or right-wing authoritarianism and then correlate them with things measuring narcissism or sadism or whatever. People have done that on the left, and it does correlate with left-wing authoritarianism. Yeah. I don't know, you know, you never know for sure the limits of your own knowledge.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Also zero. Yes, zero.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Well, so, you know, you... I mostly agree, certainly in the short term, the personal consequences of engaging in this sort of denunciation behavior are non-existent. But the consequences are not non-existent. So... The credibility and trust and faith in academia has been in decline for a very long time. People hate this kind of stuff.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I was recently listening to your interview for this podcast with Keith Campbell on narcissism.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And that was one of the things you talked about, this sort of impulse control and short-term benefits versus long-term benefits, especially regarding social relations. Yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah. Reputation's a long-term game. It's a long-term game. Yeah, yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And there has been emerging evidence that people high in left-wing authoritarianism, sort of extreme— Now that we all agree that that exists, which only started in 2016. I know, I know. Yeah. That's a whole back story. That's for sure. But it's correlated with narcissism. And that this pleasure that people on this sort of cancel culture that has emerged.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I mean, the right is not immune to cancel culture type activities. But it emerged primarily originally on the left.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I don't know if anyone has even tried to do this on the right, or maybe they have and it doesn't actually correspond with narcissism on the right. It corresponds with other things on the right, but not so much with, well, if there's evidence on narcissism correlating with right-wing authoritarianism, I don't know it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes, absolutely. We're all racists, and the whole thing was racist, and an abuse of editorial power, and there's all these accusations. Right, and the editor loses his position. He loses his position, and these two special editors are brought in. Negotiations go on for almost two years. Like, what are they negotiating about? Who's going to... So, part of Robert's denunciation...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
public denunciation of all of us was he posted the draft of his commentary response that was headed for the discussion forum and the full set of emails he exchanged with Fiedler. about publishing it. And those are typically confidential communications between an editor and an author. And so... Or at least typically private. Yes, right. They're typically private. So that...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
That added to the difficulty on the part of the special editors to decide what to do because they didn't want to just publish those. Roberts didn't agree not to at first. Fiedler, they wanted Fiedler's permission first. to publish the correspondence, he wouldn't grant it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
blew up the journal by firing Fiedler. Right, right, which is like an admission of fault. And about two-thirds of the editorial board resigned when he was ousted. That was protest resignation. Yeah, I don't know whether it was protest. We know they resigned, whether it was protest or not.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Right. I mean, these are generally...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Right, exactly. Right, okay. So the journal was a mess for a long time, and these editors—and there was this exchange between the editors, Roberts, Fiedler, and the other contributors, myself and the other contributors— about whether and when to publish it. And again, this went on for almost two years. So there was like, first a discussion, we're going to publish it. Then there was radio silence.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Well, it turns out we've run into an obstacle. Can we resolve? And it just went on for almost two years. Eventually that was resolved and it was all published. It's all published. And... You know, your original question was framed as, you can't believe I haven't been subject to cancellation. In fact, I have. I have. You then asked, well, how did you survive it? So let me add this little punchline.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
At the time that all this was happening, my immediate associate dean, so I was chair of the psychology department at Rutgers, and... Rutgers is in the School of Arts and Sciences. The School of Arts and Sciences has a dean. But the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers is gigantic. Even as chair, I had very little direct contact with the dean. The dean was doing big deanly things.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
But the department chairs have a lot of contact with an associate chair. So there might be an associate chair for the sciences. Associate dean. Dean? Associate dean, yeah, sorry. Associate dean, yeah, sorry. Associate dean. So there'd be an associate dean for math, for STEM, associate dean for social science, and associate dean for humanities.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I had a lot to do with the associate dean for social sciences, who was a psychologist from the psychology department. Okay, so I never actually had this conversation exactly with him, but I'm pretty sure he knew about the whole thing. A year, so at the end of my term, so this is now 2023, I go on sabbatical. Remember, this event occurred, the POPs event occurred in 2022.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
It's not till almost two years later that this stuff was published. So I complete my term as department chair 2022. 2022, 23, I go on sabbatical, still not published. And then at the end of that sabbatical term, the associate dean approaches me with an offer to chair the anthropology department. Okay, so this is very weird. Yeah, definitely. It's very weird.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
There was an internal political snafu, which is beyond the scope of this discussion. and they couldn't appoint an internal chair, and they wanted an external, you know, the department needed a chair, the dean's office had a lot of faith and confidence in my ability.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
One of the things they said to me was, you know, this is going to be a difficult situation because the department is not going to be happy about having an outside chair imposed on them, but we know you have a thick skin. Wow. And I parlayed that into a very large raise. Jordan, it was one of the best things I've ever done.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So not only did I escape cancellation, I parlayed it into an improvement in the quality.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Jordan, I wouldn't wish that, at the time that it was happening, it was horrible. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. In hindsight, it has made me a better person, and I wouldn't undo it now if I could.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah. Well, no, FIRE, the same outfit, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, keeps a faculty under FIRE database of faculty who have been subject usually to mobs, sometimes administrative investigations, seeking to punish them for what should have been legitimate speech protected by academic freedom or even free speech. At U.S. state colleges, there are...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
subject to the First Amendment, which means they shouldn't be in the business. However, hypothetically. Well, yeah. Well, yeah. But they have documented that hundreds of faculty have been fired for what should have been legitimately protected speech.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Well, I will. So... Or liberals for that matter. Your metaphor about the dragon is dead on. That there's no guarantee, you know, people have lost their livelihoods running into these dragons. So that's not, I mean, I've been fortunate that way.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah, yeah. So that was not my first, as I mentioned at the beginning, this was not my first go around with this kind of thing. It helps to have some experience. It helps to have done some reading. People have addressed – there are some good articles and essays out there about what to do when you're subject to these attacks. Some of them have very good – make very good points.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And so get – about six months ago – I, again, I posted an essay on my sub stack. What's the name of your sub stack? Unsafe Science. Unsafe Science. It's called my Vita of Denunciation. Okay. And it's called my Vita of Denunciation because it goes through several of these sorts of attacks that I have been through. And how, first place, it also goes through the tactics. It's a short version.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I have a longer version in a different place. But it goes through a short version of how to deal with these attacks. So the very first piece is that if you find yourself in the midst of such an attack... Go silent. Go silent. Do not engage. Do not engage with your attackers because nearly all of these cancellation-type attacks are massive, brutal, and short. Right, right, right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah, and most. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
As a kid, we used to go to the beach and body surf. And occasionally, like a wave that was way bigger than you could handle would. And there was nothing you could do except let it wash over you and knock you around. And you come out and it washes you on shore. As long as you don't do anything to make it worse. Yeah. Yeah. Like apologize, for example. You know, I would add this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
If you genuinely, in your heart of hearts, believe you have done something wrong, then maybe you should apologize. Yeah, yeah. But you should not apologize.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
I agree with that. You need that. Yes, that's good. I'm completely on board with that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes, definitely. That's a very good point.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Okay, so go silent.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Go silent. Record everything. Yeah, that's for sure. Everything. Everything. You don't know how you're going to use it. You may use it To defend yourself going forward, depending on how things unfold, you may decide after the wave of the attack passes that you want to counterattack. Yeah, right. Carefully and strategically. Carefully and strategically.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And by recording everything, you have the raw material to damn your attackers. So that's it, right? Go silent.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah, record all of it. Seek allies. Yeah. Because you may feel alone. Yeah. Mobs are very good at coming after somebody who seems alone. But if you have networks, support networks, activate those networks. If you don't have them, and if you're in the intellectual type of professions, whether it's academia or mainstream media, could be in something else, you probably have a support network.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Let them know what's going on. Most... My experience has been, at least the kind of networks that I have, people will stand up for you. I mean, I had numbers of people writing essays that got posted in some pretty good places. Real Clear Politics, I think, was one, right? On this Pops fiasco. So, actually, of all places, the Chronicle of Higher Ed did a great, some great reporting on it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And it really kind of damned the mob.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Temperature drops. Yes, that's right. That's absolutely right. So go silent, record everything, activate your support networks. And then, again, it depends on the situation. It's going to vary from person to person and situation to situation. It depends in part on what your skills and resources are. but then you are ready to either defend yourself and or counterattack.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And I don't, Jordan, I don't know how many essays I posted on unsafe science surrounding this event. One of them is titled, There Is No Racist Mule Trope. So the argument, the grounds for denouncing me as a racist for comparing black people to mules was that there was a historical trope of making an equivalence between black people and mules.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Roberts presented this, and he had one reference to support this. Right. Which I was not familiar with. Yeah. So I tracked it down. That's what you say. I know. Let's see what the article actually says. Yeah. This article was a really good article. And...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
What it documented was that there was a historical linkage between Black people and mules because originally American Blacks were overwhelmingly in the American South. in the agrarian South.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And so the mule was a symbol of both the kind of work that was done in the South, this agricultural work, and it was a symbol of the flawed liberation of Black people from slavery, because one of the promises that they never delivered on was 40 acres and a mule. And even though that was never delivered on,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
for a very long time until you had the mass migration into the North, the Black people living in the American South, you know, aspire to be successful farmers. And getting a mule was one way to have a successful farm. And so you would see images, paintings, even, you know, if you go to Southern museums, there's some very famous paintings of Black people in fields with a mule pulling a wagon or a,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Or, I don't know, you know... Plow? Yeah, like a plow. Yes, right. That's very, very common. And, in fact, the mule figures fairly largely in African-American folk stories from the American South. So he documents all this. Yeah. So much so that the mule... really became a symbol of people who were oppressed and part of the liberation of people who were oppressed.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
So that when, after Martin Luther King's assassination, His casket was pulled in a wagon, pulled by mules.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes, right, right. So... But it is ironic because the mule is the symbol of the liberation from the oppression rather than the oppression. Right, right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Absolutely. Okay, so back to your research. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so first of all, let me be clear. We're... Other than my student, Sonia, who is trying to develop a nonpartisan authoritarianism scale, the work that we have done using either left-wing or right-wing authoritarianism scales are scales developed by other people. We haven't developed the scales.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Absolutely, yes.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yeah, well, so that and some of the prior experiences... fueled what my... what was then very early interests in... left-wing authoritarianism and far-left radicalization and its consequences. And so I've been doing all sorts of studies on that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Adequate for right, yes, and pretty good for left. Even though the research on left is much more recent, you might think it would be, therefore, less well-established. There's two teams, one led by Luke Conway and a different one led by Tom Costello, have done a lot of very good, both psychometric—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
sort of statistical assessment of how things hang together and also validity assessment of their two slightly different, somewhat different scales.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
How do you miss that?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
How are you investigating this? Well, it does depend on the study. So this is one good one that I think I can describe shortly, quickly. We administered cartoons, like political cartoons, as if they were memes, like social media memes to an online sample, about a thousand people, um, and ask them how much they liked the cartoons and memes and which, and we, we told them, uh,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
to vote for their favorite because the one that received the most votes, we would actually post on social media. Now, that was a lie. It was deception, and we explained that at the end. But we wanted them to believe that when they were selecting something, that this was as close as we could get to a behavior. It was close to them posting it. They believed their vote could influence what we posted.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Right, right. So it was a real-world outcome. A real-world quasi-behavioral. Of something that would be promoted. Rather than just, like, liking or disliking. Right, right. Or self-report that they believe something. That's right. So two of the—I'm going to describe two of the cartoons, which were quite a contrast to each other.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
We actually had a set kind of like the first and a set like the second. Okay. But I can describe the two quickly enough. Okay. The first was actually a political propaganda cartoon from the Soviet Union. We didn't tell them that, from the 1930s, 1940s, anti-American propaganda. But we didn't tell them that. We just presented the cartoon, which showed a long-distance shot of this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
And the top panel was a long-distance shot of the Statue of Liberty. The bottom panel was a close-up of her head and her crown, and the spires of the crown were KKK members. People dressed in KKK whatever. Right, right, right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Right, so that's a power reference. Typical Marxist trope. Yes, right, okay. That was one. And then the second... was an image of a diverse group of people. People, different racial and ethnic groups, wearing clothes for different professions. It might be a bus driver or a businessman or a secretary or a teacher or whatever.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
There were a whole bunch of different kinds of people in obviously different roles, kind of in a crowd with their arms around each other under an American flag. sort of pluralistic diversity. That's kind of humanistic form of diversity. And then we simply ask people, you know, we ask them, which ones do you like the most? Which ones do you want to share on social media?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
507. The Insanity of Woke Psychologists | Lee Jussim
Yes, exactly. That's right.