Jordan Peterson on psychology: what the evidence says · JRE #877
SUBJECT: PSYCHOLOGY
The short answer
Peterson claims his research found that trait agreeableness and being female are good predictors of holding politically correct views. Peterson is referring to research he supervised with graduate student Christine Andary-Brophy (formerly Christine Brophy) at the University of Toronto, which developed a political correctness (PC) scale administered to several hundred participants alongside personality, intelligence, and disgust-sensitivity measures.
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
our research indicated, research on political correctness indicated that this trait agreeableness is a good predictor of holding politically correct views, and also that being female is a good predictor of holding politically correct views.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Peterson is referring to research he supervised with graduate student Christine Andary-Brophy (formerly Christine Brophy) at the University of Toronto, which developed a political correctness (PC) scale administered to several hundred participants alongside personality, intelligence, and disgust-sensitivity measures. That research, summarized in Andary-Brophy's MA thesis, found that trait Agreeableness (particularly its Compassion facet) was the strongest and most consistent personality predictor of PC attitudes; a 2020 peer-reviewed PLOS ONE study independently cites this Agreeableness finding when building on it. The claim about being female is less rigorously supported: Scientific American's coverage of the Brophy/Peterson study reports that PC endorsers 'tended to be female, non-White, and report higher levels of compassion,' but this reflects a descriptive pattern in the sample rather than a formal regression establishing sex as an independent predictor on par with Agreeableness. No peer-reviewed publication from this research program was found reporting sex as a rigorously tested, independent PC predictor. Overall, the agreeableness-PC link is well supported by the primary research and corroborated elsewhere; the female-as-predictor claim is directionally consistent with reported patterns in the same study but overstates the analytical rigor behind it.