Jan-Erik Lönnqvist

Manufacturing Pessimism: Structural Incentives and Social Psychology's Narrative of Human Nature.

Social psychology presents itself as liberal, yet its dominant narratives-obedience, cruelty, conformity, and bias-reflect a persistently pessimistic portrayal of human nature. Here I argue that this pattern is structurally produced. A two-level framework distinguishes the content level, in which pessimistic narratives...