April Bleske-Rechek
Articles
This research may be of interest to scholars interested in epistemology and scientific thinking (motivated reasoning); censorship of unpopular ideas (such as that the sexes differ in part for biological reasons); harm and victimhood; and sex differences in general.
I submitted a similar version of this manuscript to the Journal of General Psychology. I don't think it was even sent out for review, because after waiting THREE months, I received this very vague response, which reinforced my perception that this research does indeed touch a nerve:
"Thank you for submitting the aforementioned manuscript for possible publication in The Journal of General Psychology. I appreciate the work that you put into it. Unfortunately, the journal will not be able to publish that particular manuscript. The study is interesting, but in need of follow-up work using a stronger research paradigm to make a more definitive case. I hope that this decision will not discourage you, that you will consider any comments that are below my signature, and that you will continue to consider the journal as a possible publisher of your manuscripts."
There was no additional constructive feedback on what that stronger research paradigm might look like (not that we don't acknowledge in the manuscript limitations of our method!).
Steve Stewart-Williams has already seen a draft of this manuscript, because I wanted to be sure I described the results of all his studies (which are similar but different) correctly.
If I can recommend reviewers, I would really like to know what Lee thinks of this work, and also what Cory Clark thinks of it. I would also really appreciate feedback from Jaimie Krems, David Buss, or one of David's current students, like William Costello.
Some of the most controversial information in psychology involves genetic or evolutionary explanations for sex differences in educational-vocational outcomes (Clark et al., 2024a). We investigated whether men and women react differently to controversial information about sex differences and whether their reaction depends on who provides the information. In the experiment, college students (n=396) and U.S. middle-aged adults (n=154) reviewed a handout, purportedly provided by either a male or a female professor. The handout stated that (1) women in STEM are no longer discriminated against in hiring and publishing and (2) sex differences in educational-vocational outcomes are better explained by evolved differences between men and women in various personal attributes. We found that college women were less receptive to the information than college men were and wanted to censor it more than men did; also, in both the college student and community adult samples, women were less receptive and more censorious when the messenger was a male professor than when the messenger was a female professor. In both samples, participants who leaned to the left politically and who held stronger belief that words can cause harm reacted with more censoriousness. Our findings imply that the identity of a person presenting controversial scientific information and the receiver’s pre-existing identity and beliefs have the potential to influence how that information will be received.
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