5 Topics In Psychology That We’re Not Allowed To Talk About - Dr Cory Clark
What this covers
Cory Clark is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a social psychologist and an author.
Academia is supposed to be a bastion of intellectual purity where curiosity and the truth reign supreme. But what happens when the findings of research start to become inconvenient? What happens when conclusions may be scientifically accurate, but politically incorrect?
Expect to learn what happens when you conduct a study on self-censorship in academic psychology and get reported for it, whether pervasive misogyny is actually a myth, why there is such an apparent anti-female bias, how women have fundamentally changed the culture of academia, whether men are psychologically different because of the patriarchy, which two areas of psychology are the most hated by academia and much more...
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#academia #cancellation #evolutionarypsychology
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00:00 The Myth of Pervasive Misogyny 04:49 Why Does the Media Focus on Anti-Female Bias? 18:18 How the Influx of Women in Academia Has Changed Education 23:06 Why Women Are More Egalitarian Than Men 31:53 Should We Still Trust Mainstream Science & Media Today? 42:18 Are Gender Disparities Caused By the Patriarchy? 49:38 The Gendered Differences in Slut-Shaming 53:06 Why Do People Hate Evolutionary Psychology? 1:03:08 Which of Cory’s Conclusions Has Been Most Controversial? 1:09:53 Why Academia is Censoring Studies Like Cory’s 1:22:41 The Middle-Aged, White, Female Overlords of Academia 1:32:33 What’s Next for Cory
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Modern Western societies exhibit systematic pro-female biases across multiple domains, yet mainstream narratives persist in portraying society as systematically misogynistic—a distortion driven by media bias, institutional power shifts favoring women, and self-censorship among those who recognize these patterns.
- Recent research shows people are biased in favor of women across psychology, hiring, academia, and scientific evaluation, with these biases having largely flipped from historical anti-female bias around 2009
- Media and academic institutions disproportionately amplify findings that portray women negatively while suppressing or celebrating findings that portray men negatively, creating a systematically distorted public perception
- As women have taken majority positions in academia, institutional priorities have shifted from truth-seeking toward harm prevention and moral concerns, with self-censorship preventing the silent majority from voicing disagreement
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Self-censorship is skewed by gender: academics who believe controversial conclusions are true and support academic freedom are self-censoring more, while those who believe conclusions are false and support censorship express their views openly, creating a distorted public perception that controversial conclusions are false and fringe when in fact many academics believe them but won't speak.
“the people who think that they're true are self-censoring more, which inevitably means that what we hear publicly about controversial conclusions is systematically distorted, and the impression is that these bad controversial conclusions are false, and they're fringe, and no one believes they're true. People believe they're true. It's just they won't talk about it out loud.”
Multiple correlated gender differences in personality (egalitarianism, harm concern, conformity pressure) individually appear small but collectively produce large effects in institutional priorities and decision-making.
“when you look at them like on their own, the differences don't appear huge when it comes to personality. But the fact that you get them across all of these different kinds of things... when all of those things are correlated, you end up with these pretty big differences.”
Evolutionary biology explains why societies care more about harm to women than men: women are the limiting biological resource for species reproduction—100 women and 1 man produces 100 babies, but 100 men and 1 woman produces only 1 baby per year
“if you have a 100 wo- 100 women and one men one men one man, you can have 100 babies. And one very happy man. Very happy man. If you have uh one woman and 100 men, you're going to have one, you know, in a year.”
Pervasive misogyny in modern Western societies is largely a myth; in the US, pro-female biases are now more common than anti-female biases across many domains
“I wrote this paper...that reviewed a lot of the recent research on looking at gender biases in psychology. And a lot of the time you see exactly the opposite. So people are biased in favor of women across a lot of different domains.”
In more egalitarian countries with greater gender freedom, gender differences in STEM enrollment actually increase; women in wealthy countries with strong male economic provision tend to choose caregiving over careers more than women in poor countries where economic pressure requires STEM entry
“when you look in more egalitarian countries, um you often see that actually these gender differences get bigger. And so when men and women are given like more freedom to flourish and pursue what they want to pursue, um you can see even bigger like women oh a lot of in the this is related to what you were just saying. Like a lot of women really like being a mom and staying home and taking care of their kids is the most meaningful thing to them.”
However, the evolutionary explanation for greater concern about female harm is incomplete because we see large cross-cultural and historical variations in gender bias, suggesting culture plays a significant role alongside any biological predisposition.
“The reason that I don't think that's necessarily all of it is what we briefly touched on at the start of this conversation, which is that you do see these big cross-cultural differences, and you do see these big differences over time. So if I were to run this study where say like men are smarter than women, or women are smarter than men in like 1920, would I see the same thing? I highly doubt it.”
Media exhibit gamma bias: they headline female success or male failure by gender but use gender-neutral language for male success or female failure, systematically skewing public perception of which groups are succeeding and failing
“if the article is pro-women, then they will sex the headline. If it's anti-men, then it will sex the headline. But, if it's the reverse, it will be gender-neutral...like white male shooter would be put as the headline for something or like um female CEO would be put as the headline for something, but the reverse isn't necessarily true.”
Women in academia prioritize harm prevention and protective values, while men prioritize truth-seeking and academic freedom; as women have taken majority positions in academia, institutional goals have shifted from truth pursuit toward harm prevention
“among psychology professors, men are more supportive of pursuit of truth as like the purpose of science than women are. They're more supportive of academic freedom than women are. Whereas women think we need to be balancing these things with moral concerns and harm concerns.”
Women underreport their achievements and overestimate negative performance compared to men, likely because visibility of success among women creates social costs through female intrasexual competition and physical vulnerability
“girls in school talk about achieving A grades and B grades and C grades that they're much more disparaging of their own achievements. They will underplay their own achievements a lot more...if a girl thinks that her results are going to be viewed by other people, she's much more likely to downplay her successes”
Science has lost public trust because institutional censorship and political influence make it appear science is politically driven rather than truth-driven, undermining the credibility of scientific institutions regardless of censorship intentions
“people shouldn't trust science anymore. Like there's so much political [ __ ] going on um that even if we thought it was for the right reasons for whatever progressive values scholars uh care about if they're successfully pursuing those well, they've undermined the institution of science and no one trusts us anymore because we look like a bunch of political hacks”
Evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics are specifically targeted for censorship and career punishment because they produce conclusions about group differences that make certain groups look worse than others, whereas social psychology conclusions are protected
“the kind they're really going to love are going to be in like social psychology. So, it's all these every group difference is caused by discrimination. Um, every group differences is caused by like cultural expectations of people.”
Gender biases in hiring have flipped around 2009—biases that historically favored men in male-stereotypical jobs now favor women, and biases that always favored women for female-stereotypical jobs persist
“a lot of these biases actually used to favor men. Like, for example, in hiring for male stereotypical jobs, it really was the case that people used to be discriminating against women in those jobs. Um and a lot of these things seem to have flipped around 2009.”
Media censorship and obscuring of truth downstream causes second, third, and fourth-order harms that exceed the immediate harms being prevented, yet these downstream consequences are rarely examined before implementing censorship policies
“downstream from that, there are second, third, fourth-order effects that people aren't aware of that can be more harmful than an uncomfortable-tasting medicine with a spoon of sugar to take it down type thing.”
Evolution can explain why men don't slut-shame men for sexual success: a man having sex with other women doesn't reduce another man's reproductive prospects, so intrasexual male competition doesn't incentivize controlling male sexuality the way female intrasexual competition incentivizes female slut-shaming
“men don't care that much about other men's sexual behavior because, you know, they they're only going to monopolize a woman for like 10 minutes or whatever. Um so it might be that it's really and and it might be that men only slut-shame women a little bit because women do, but women slut-shame them more.”
Women may more strongly oppose relaxed sexual standards because they have sons, increasing their desire to control female sexual access, suggesting that women's slut-shaming serves to restrict the mating pool available to younger women rather than reflecting universal ethical concern.
“a study that suggested um when we women are more uh disparaging or they they slut-shame more or they're more disparaging of like relaxed sexual standards if they have sons. And the more sons that they have, the more that that increases.”
If Clark's research on preference falsification and majority academic opinion is published, it could enable rapid institutional change because academics would realize their actual views align with colleagues they thought disagreed, creating conditions for coordinated action.
“if I ever get this paper published, we'll see, then suddenly all of these psychology professors are going to be like, oh, a lot of people feel the way I feel. Maybe it's okay for me to say this thing at this faculty meeting.”
The Alshibli et al. study on female mentorship found results about gender dynamics in mentorship effectiveness but faced no substantive scientific criticism, with opposition focused on concern about how the results would be perceived rather than on methodological or analytical grounds.
“They criticized like the operationalizations and stuff. Um let's assume it's a true effect. Well no scholar in their right mind is ever going to try to study it and figure out why did we why did this happen?”
Joyce Benenson's research on basketball shows that male opponents on opposing teams show more physical goodwill and affection to each other than female teammates show to their own teammates, suggesting women compete within in-groups while men compete across out-groups.
“Joyce Benenson has done so much good work on this where she looked at, uh, is it female basketball teams? And I think male opposition, male opponents on a basketball court show more goodwill physically to each other than female compatriots. So like the enemies on the men's teams, they show more love to each other than the same team the the same team members for for women.”
Scientific findings portraying women positively are treated as more credible than identical findings portraying men positively, as demonstrated by the Stewart-Williams study where people rejected evidence that men are more intelligent but accepted evidence that women are more intelligent
“they had one on I think it was men or women lie more, maybe and then they did men or women are more intelligent...when the evidence said that women have a worse quality than men people like this is sexist. This is bad research but when women are portrayed as better people are like oh it's even pretty good.”
In the UK, accent is a more salient indicator of social in-group membership than race; people with different accents face more discrimination than people with different races but similar accents, because accent signals class and region
“in the UK that again people are more prejudiced against those with different accents than those with different skin colors. This is a study that was done that was really interesting and quite rightly like somebody walks into a room that is of a different race to you but speaks in a similar accent Mhm. you have an awful lot more in common with that person than someone who walks into the room with the same skin color as you but a different accent.”
Women's 100-meter record, unbroken for 20-30 years, is matched by 100-200 under-18 male high school athletes, yet cultural narrative attributes this gap to socialization rather than sex differences
“the women's 100 meter record that hasn't been beaten in I want to say 20 or 30 years, is held by like 100 or 200 under 18 males. Like like high school level males hit that that female number, but that's because of socialization, as we all know.”
Evolutionary pressures created sex differences in mating competition and cooperation strategies: men evolved to compete in large coalitions and identify hierarchies, making them comfortable with inequality; women evolved to raise offspring in small groups, making them more egalitarian and focused on protecting vulnerable group members
“women essentially women were having children raising them to be successful adults that have children of their own. Um whereas men were often working in coalitions to protect the group. So men are used to uh creating coalitions, figuring out who's a good leader, who's good at what, giving that person status to make sure the group works really well together.”
Survey data shows 60% of men believe scholars should be free to pursue research without institutional punishment for conclusions, while 60% of women say 'it's complicated,' indicating female professors accept harm concerns as legitimate grounds for limiting research freedom
“60% of men said that colleges should not protect students from offensive ideas. 64% of women said that they should...71% of men reported that protecting free speech is more important than promoting an inclusive society. 60% of women said that promoting an inclusive society is more important than protecting free speech”
Google Scholar search for 'misogyny' yields 114,000 results, while search for 'misandry' yields only 2,340 results, demonstrating massive academic imbalance in studying anti-female versus anti-male bias
“A Google Scholar search for misogyny yielded 114,000 results, whereas a search for misandry yielded only 2,340.”
Nature and Springer journals have adopted editorial policies refusing to publish or threatening to retract papers that 'could' cause harm or 'undermine dignity' of social groups, a standard almost no academic respondents think is appropriate
“the Nature Springer family of journals, that have put out a series of editorials over these past few years saying that they would not publish and potentially would retract science that has like potential to um...undermine the dignity of human social groups”
Political tribalism and partisan discrimination exceed racial discrimination in contemporary society; people are more prejudiced against those with different political views than different races
“If you track If you track um political bias against uh racism Yeah. Like people are way more politically racist than they are racially racist by a huge It's like by lots and lots of multiples.”
Evolutionary psychology will likely become even more controversial as women take over academia, contrary to the expectation that it might become more accepted as controversies are settled, because expanding female power will amplify harm concerns that drive rejection of group difference research.
“uh you would think that people are going to become more accepting of evolutionary psychology cuz they kind of have been for a little while, but we might be at a turning point and it might actually become... Mhm. I I think it's actually quite likely, too.”
Post-MeToo standards for researcher conduct have strong parallels to pre-selection dynamics—just as men desire women with photos showing pre-selection by other women, women may push boundaries that appear to threaten their access to desirable older male academics, creating complex incentive structures around harassment prevention.
“55% of single men haven't approached a woman in the last year. Mhm. 77% of women say that they were approached more, but that is in the 18 to 30 age bracket. At 41 plus, the trend flips and 55% of women said that they didn't want to be approached.”
Professional female athletes repeatedly attempting to compete against low-tier men's teams have consistently failed embarrassingly, yet this remains denied or minimized in cultural discourse
“there have been a couple cases where they tried to get these professional female athletes to play yeah, like low tier men's teams, and Doesn't go well. It's embarrassing. It doesn't go well. little embarrassing. But if you were to do”
Progressive individuals talk down to Black people and present less self-confidence when interacting with Black people, while conservatives treat Black and white people similarly, suggesting progressive paternalism is more infantilizing than conservative similarity
“there are these papers that find that progressives essentially like talk down to black people. They present less self-confidence when they're talking to black people, whereas conservatives will treat black and white people more similarly.”
A UK fourth-division soccer team B squad defeated the US women's national soccer team approximately 12-0 to 14-0 in the first 25 minutes, demonstrating vast physical performance gap between lower-tier male and elite female athletes
“There was a football game that happened a couple of weeks ago in the UK. I can't remember the team, but they got like the B squad of some fourth division Oh, yeah. British team to play I think the US women's team, and they beat them I want to say like 12-0 or 14-0 in the space of 25 minutes”
Older women aged 41+ report not wanting to be approached by men, while younger women 18-30 report being approached frequently and wanting more approaches; yet feminist discourse opposing male approaches is written by and reflects the preferences of older women, creating a mismatch
“55% of single men haven't approached a woman in the last year. Mhm. 77% of women say that they were approached more, but that is in the 18 to 30 age bracket. At 41 plus, the trend flips and 55% of women said that they didn't want to be approached.”
Survey of psychology professors shows modal response of zero (maximum contempt) when asked to rate admiration vs. contempt for professors who petition to retract papers for moral reasons, yet most academics remain silent publicly or even participate, indicating widespread preference falsification
“this was my favorite question I think on in um whole survey, which was how much uh uh contempt versus admiration and respect do you have toward professors who start petitions or social media campaigns to retract papers for moral reasons. And on a zero to 100 scale, zero being maximum contempt to 100 maximum admiration and respect, the modal response was zero.”
Men receive insults about lack of sexual experience (incel, cuck, soy boy) while women receive insults about sexual excess (slut); these insults target each gender's most valuable reproductive currency, reflecting asymmetric mate competition
“the first one from any woman or man to a woman is [ __ ] and the first one from any man or woman to a man is cuck or soy boy or incel, right? So it's disparaging a lack of sexual chastity on one side and a lack of sexual experience on the other because those are the most valuable things that they have to offer.”
Clark recruited approximately 10-11% of psychology professors at top 130 US institutions (approximately 500 professors) for survey; sample size substantial enough to support generalizable findings about academic attitudes
“At the top 130 institutions, yeah. I tried. I only got like 10 or 11% of them, but so it was like about 500 people. Quite a lot.”
Self-interested institutional preferences disguised as moral concern are disguised through facade of protecting disadvantaged groups; examining whether disadvantaged groups actually benefit reveals these policies often harm the groups they claim to protect
“it seems to me to be primarily done to make the person bestowing the virtue look good, not to have genuine impact. Because if it was built to have genuine impact, you would just look at what is the impact of this thing? You would look at the consequences or the implications of doing this thing.”
Clark is attempting to popularize adversarial collaborations in science where researchers work with intellectual opponents; most men approached have agreed while most women approached have declined, with women citing conflict aversion
“I'm trying to get adversarial collaborations popularized in science. I'm trying to get scientists to work with their enemies. Um another one where there's been a gender difference. I have most men I've approached have said yes, and most women I've approached have said no. And I think it's because women are more averse to like interpersonal conflict”
When individuals Google image search 'men are stronger than women,' despite this being empirically correct, roughly 40 of the first images returned contradict this by showing women being stronger than men, revealing systematic distortion of factual information
“Google imaged uh men are stronger than women, which is just empirically correct on average. Not even on average. It's like it's just straight almost exclusively...but of the like 40 first images that popped up on the screen, I think like one of them was yes, confirming that, and then there were like two neutral, and all the rest were images of men being of women being stronger than men.”
Women mentor female students with worse career outcomes than male mentors achieve with male mentees, yet the Alshibly paper documenting this was retracted after complaints it could harm women, preventing investigation into why this pattern exists and how to fix it
“female mentees of female mentors uh had less impactful careers later down later down their careers than male mentees that were mentored by male mentors...people hated that obviously because it makes women look like they're not good mentors...And they retracted the paper.”
A New York Times opinion article claiming maternal instinct is a myth created by men to keep women domestic harms women with genuine maternal instincts who now feel they are victimized by patriarchy when they simply have authentic preferences
“Chelsea Conaboy article from the New York Times, uh 'Maternal Instinct Is a Myth That Men Created.'...my point being that like, okay, so maybe that is uh comforting to women who are from a particular cohort, you know, career women who are doing these things, but it's very damaging to women who have a maternal instinct”
The 1998 animated Mulan depicts a girl overcoming physical disadvantages through hard work, innovation, and effort, while the 2020 live-action Mulan depicts a girl with innate magical superiority requiring no effort or growth, reflecting changing attitudes toward female heroism
“the protagonist is a smaller girl who needs to be smarter and work harder and do all of the This is the animated version like 20 years ago. Um she needs to do all of these things to be able to compensate for her size...Contrast that with the most recent version of Mulan where this protagonist doesn't have to do anything. She is patronized by all of the men that are there. She's naturally better than all of the men.”
Women now comprise over one-third of all CEOs, representing a genuine shift in who wants to become CEO rather than merely removal of barriers, yet mainstream coverage treats this as merely women finally gaining opportunity
“Q1 2023 saw the highest ever number of female CEOs in history happen. It was over a third of all CEOs were women. Remembering that this isn't just like finally women have got the opportunity to do this. This is like finally we have found enough women that want to become CEO.”
Understanding sex differences through evolutionary psychology allows accurate prediction of real-world outcomes—like predicting which films will depict female protagonists as intrinsically superior vs needing to overcome challenges—demonstrating practical value of controversial research.
“because of some of the evolutionary psychology underpinnings and the research that you've done, you've been able to accurately predict what's going on in the world. Right? That is a useful skill to be able to have.”
Male self-improvement ideology views the person as mutable and the world as immutable, while female self-improvement ideology views the person as immutable and the world as mutable, with the female approach being paternalistic and denying women agency
“male self-improvement sees the person as mutable and the world as immutable. So, you need to be the best person possible and you need to accept the rules in the environment that you're in. It's in contrast to female self-improvement which sees the person as immutable and the world as mutable. So, women are taught to accept yourself and to not try and change the support structures in the society that you're in.”
Elite feminists who advocate for independence from male protection and resources may harm lower-class women who rely on chivalry and male economic provision; removing chivalry reduces dependency but harms women without independent economic means
“the um, especially women at the top, the ones who create the culture of feminism in particular, uh, don't have the interests of the women at the bottom in mind...reducing chivalry...this is the egalitarian...But, what those women at the top, the bourgeois sort of feminist believers don't realize is that there are women at the bottom for whom their partner might not have had might have grown up in a single parent household, might have been abused by”
Male academic population is declining as women now dominate undergraduate through faculty levels; this demographic trajectory cannot be reversed without significant policy changes, making the male academic increasingly rare within 20 years
“males males aren't even going to undergrad that much anymore. So, the pool of potential men that could become professors is getting smaller and smaller by the day...the the male academic is going to be a a rare breed in maybe like 20 years, I think.”
Disney's 2020 Mulan had a budget of 200 million dollars but box office of only 70 million dollars, a 130 million dollar loss, illustrating the financial cost of prioritizing female empowerment narratives over audience appeal
“Just FYI, Mulan, the 2020 film, the budget was 200 million and the box office was 70 million. So, that's a a heavy heavy price, 130 million to uphold women's fragility.”
Clark's research on psychologist attitudes toward censorship has faced institutional complaint through IRB; participant complained that survey questions about controversial conclusions would be 'jarring' to underrepresented groups
“my IRB emailed me and they're like, we received a complaint from one of your participants...you don't have to do anything. You didn't do anything wrong...an anonymous complaint...she said, and I'm assuming it's a she...the questions were like jarring to her and then she thought they would be even more jarring to like underrepresented groups in psychology and that this was not my first offense.”
Women appear to show cognitive advantages in spatial memory and object location memory (e.g., remembering where household items are), representing a female cognitive specialization as well-adapted as male athletic specializations.
“if there was a game of uh lie detection or um turning over cards on a table and having to remember the position of them all, if that had happened to become a globally recognized sport for some reason, women would wipe the floor with men... they Are we better at that game? I did I thought it's called local space local me- memorization or local specialization or something like that.”
Some individuals and groups in the US are now advocating for racial segregation in both directions: some advocating for all-Black dorms at universities and others advocating for all-White safe spaces excluding Black people from racism discussions
“there are even some people advocating for like racial segregation on both sides like well on both sides like some I think it was NYU was considering having all black dorms which is one thing but then there was another one where this group of white people were like no black people can attend this meeting about racism because they've had to put up with our [ __ ] too much as it is”