Methodological difficulty justifies rather than excuses studying personality and politics

Evidence

To the extent that this article brings out possible pitfalls in studies of personality and politics, its message to cautious scholars may seem to be the following: Find pastures that can be more easily cultivated. Even daring scholars might conclude that the prospects for the systematic study of personality and politics are too remote to justify the investment of scholarly time and effort. Nothing in this article is meant to support such conclusions. In a parable on the shortcomings of scientific opportunism, Kaplan (1964, pp. 11, 16–17) relates the story of a drunkard who lost his keys in a dark alley and is found searching for them under a street lamp, declaring, “It’s lighter here.” The drunkard’s search is a poor model. If the connections between the personalities of political actors and their political behavior are obscure, all the more reason to illuminate them. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1200

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general principle that hard-to-study phenomena warrant more effort, not less — parallels the silence literature’s insistence that elusive subjects deserve study. — connects to: The titling study’s appeal was methodological as much as substantive — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1937
• SHARE: The drunkard-searching-under-the-streetlamp parable is a shareable methodological anecdote for someone who writes about research design.