The Case for “Physicians” To Heal Themselves First
The idea of improving society through laws and education is not new, never needed to be inspired nor influenced by social psychology and has had some effect over time… but such efforts have also elicited the opposite of intended outcomes with some regularity. Neo-sociopsychology is not only activist, but also political, and politically prejudiced at that. It’s hard to see how politically prejudiced people can be intellectually honest enough to be counted upon by the rest of us to “fix” the prejudices of an entire society.
Those prejudices are specific, and in the public arena through the work of Elliot Aronson, the “big kahuna” of the Neo-sociopsychological movement and others. In Aronson’s examples of the prejudiced, he specifically and repeatedly cites The Right, Conservatives, Republicans and certain types of Christians. Adding a note of unintended irony in the context of his most recent book, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mariner Books; 4th Reprint edition, August 4, 2020) –
Implicit in all this is my belief that social psychology is extremely important—that social psychologists can play a vital role in making the world a better place. Indeed, in my more grandiose moments, I nurse the secret belief that social psychologists are in a unique position to have a profound and beneficial impact on our lives by providing an increased understanding of such important phenomena as conformity, persuasion, prejudice, love, and aggression.
Other and more recent overt examples of political prejudice on the part of Neo-sociopsychologists can be found in the public forum such as the 2020 blog post in Psychology Today:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/bias-fundamentals/202010/dissonance-and-political-hypocrisy which repeatedly denigrates Republicans to make its point about political cognitive dissonance.
The only example of Democrat problems with dissonance mentioned is in the blog is –
“Interestingly, some Democrats are feeling dissonance over feeling empathy or compassion for Trump after he got sick because they are constantly outraged by Trump’s other behaviors (Logan, 2020).”
It should be obvious to anyone, especially reasonable psychologists of any stripe, that substituting one hate-worthy population with another is not a solution but a perpetuation of prejudice. You don’t say to a child: “Don’t destroy that. Here, destroy this instead” and end up with a psychologically healthy child
