ABSTRACT
Explanations are a core part of science. People tend to explain things that are unusual and out of the ordinary. We think psychologists are humans, and so we use this finding to explore how political beliefs may affect scientific explanations. In an environment, like academia, that is dominated by political liberals, political conservatism may be the position that is out of the ordinary and in need of explanation. This results in models that aim to explain conservatism and the behavior of conservatives, while ignoring the possibility of explaining liberalism and the behavior of liberals. If we persistently explain conservatives, we will miss out on explanations of liberals and we will communicate that conservatives are not the norm, further entrenching the field’s political imbalance. Hope is not lost. We outline three suggestions for asking more complete questions aimed at more complete explanations of political phenomenon in social and political psychology.
