Despite accusations of liberal bias, the field of psychology is structured in ways that reinforce conservative values. Its core methodologies of individuocentrism, reductionism, and quantification serve to depoliticise human experiences, emphasising personal responsibility over systemic causes of suffering. Psychology’s historical entanglements with eugenics, colonialism, and capitalist realism have shaped a field that maintains the status quo, and disproportionately serves affluent, White populations. But rather than acknowledge these flaws, psychologists more typically instead engage in self-congratulatory practices and hyperbole that exaggerate findings and resist criticism. This grandiosity, combined with a reliance on neoliberal academic metrics, perpetuates inequality and inhibits meaningful reform. Ultimately, psychology’s self-exceptionalism and resistance to scrutiny is, by definition, anti-progressive and reinforce its inherently conservative role in society.