Esoteric Theories and Erroneous Statistics in Studies of Prejudice

Statistical pseudo-sophistication may be the cause for Edwin H. Rhyne's “finding” that differential learning theory rather than “authoritarian personality” theory accounted for attitudes towards Negroes and Jews. There are strong logical and empirical grounds for concluding that differences in the magnitude of his summary statistic—phi—were caused by discrepancies in the row and column distributions on his data. A replication of a central part of Rhyne's survey yields results contrary to Rhyne's when a summary statistic not biased by the marginal distributions is used

Prejudice (legal term) · Statistics · Mathematics · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Social Psychology