Berkeley researchers’ category labels begged the question by assuming the unprejudiced reports were truthful

Evidence

One ought, in the first place, to consider the possibility that the two kinds of self and of parental appraisal are the simple truth. Prejudiced people and their parents may, in fact, be superior to the unprejudiced. As you might guess this was not the view of the Berkeley researchers. Their interpretation is actually revealed in the labelling of the categories: “Self-glorification” vs. “Objective appraisal” and “Conventional idealization of parents” against “Objective appraisal.” These titles make it clear that the reports of unprejudiced subjects are presumed to be accurate or truthful (“objective”) whereas the reports of prejudiced subjects are presumed to be inaccurate (“idealized” or “glorified”). What ground have they for treating the prejudiced as liars and the unprejudiced as truth tellers? Is this a prejudice of their own, a device to evade the unpalatable conclusion that prejudiced people are generally pleasanter people than the unprejudiced? — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 535

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: An artifact, not just a finding: the shadow side of the Authoritarian Personality is that its measurement categories carry an unexamined moral bias. This is a genuinely recursive moment — accusing the researchers themselves of a prejudice — that rewards sitting with.
• XREF: Connects to any critique of social-science measurement where the category labels smuggle in normative verdicts — echoes the objection that ‘objectivity’ claims in authority research encode the researcher’s own values.