At a recent social psychology convention, a group of 1,000 psychologists in attendance included only three self-identified political conservatives, John Tierney reports in a New York Times column:
Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) told the audience that he had been corresponding with a couple of non-liberal graduate students in social psychology whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s. He quoted — anonymously — from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.
More: "In a 2007 study of both elite and non-elite universities, Dr. Gross and Dr. Simmons reported that nearly 80 percent of psychology professors are Democrats, outnumbering Republicans by nearly 12 to 1."
The Times column reports that Dr. Haidt at the social psychology convention made a "call for a new affirmative-action goal: a membership that's 10 percent conservative by 2020."
The whole column is worth a read.