9 thoughts on “Psychological Insights into Leftism”

1. I am sure this essay captures some essential truths about some leftists and some liberals. But there are, in my personal acquaintance, both leftists and liberals for whom this analysis is not obviously true — and some people on the Right who match the ‘psychopathyic personality’ description nearly perfectly.

   The description of liberal/Leftists as low-self-esteem haters seems to fit pretty well the ignorant shrieking spoiled cry-baby brats on America’s elite campuses. But that’s only a section of the left-of-center spectrum.

   Does it really apply to the unionized auto worker who wants a national health care plan, a higher minimum wage AND a strong military, who voted twice for Obama and then for Donald Trump?

   Having read a lot of Left-and-liberal psychological analysis of conservatives — showing that we are more fearful, that we have shrunken anterior cingulate cortexes while having enlarged amygdalas, etc — I am very skeptical of anyone’s argument that “politics is a function of personality”, just as I am of the argument that “politics is a function of economic status”.

   Most of these studies are based on a narrow sample of humanity (both temporally and geographically and socially) and ignore the difference between correlation and causation.

   For a relatively — I stress ‘relatively’ — objective look at this issue, readers may wish to consult http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/09/07/your-brain-on-politics-the-cognitive-neuroscience-of-liberals-and-conservatives/#.WPSuy6K1uUk

   And, yes, the general observation that it’s the wealth created by societies which are basically capitalist — but only ‘basically’, no purely capitalist society has ever existed — that allows genuine advance in human well-being is clearly true. (Although the growth in wealth and knowledge is only loosely coupled to an increasingly-humane social/political system, as the Nazis showed us.)

   The Old Left understood this, by the way. The Communist Manifesto includes extravagant praise of capitalism, and Marxists argued for socialism NOT because it was ‘fairer’ but because it would be far more productive than capitalism. They’ve gone quiet about that claim in the last fifty years, but it used to be their central argument.

   But … there is still a huge amount of room for reasoned argument about to what extent the state should intervene in the pure free market to alter what would otherwise be less-than-desirable outcomes.

   Thus the (true) observation that a close-to-free market in the economy produces far more wealth over time than a close-to-planned economy does not say anything yet about whether, for instance, we should have compulsory social insurance, free-at-the-point-of-consumption social services (like education), and so on.

   Why is this important? It’s important that people on the Right don’t fall into simplistic ‘feel-good’ analyses of the world that prevent us from understanding it. Leave that to the Left.

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2. The publication of this comment was delayed because it contains a link, and so was caught by my very tight spam filter. I’ll reply at length later. In my reply I’ll address the article to which the link leads. I skimmed the article and quickly spotted some serious flaws in the descriptions of liberals and conservatives. Perhaps I’ll devote a post to the comment and the article.

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3. To add to this discussion, John Ray’s understanding of psychopathy couldn’t be more flawed. If he’d said “narcissist” instead of “psychopath” and “narcissism” instead of “psychopathy,” I’d at least agree that he was able to delineate between narcissism and psychopathy – but, given what he wrote, I’m positive that he can’t. Psychopaths’ emotions are, for the most part, dialed down very low, so they don’t have “need for praise and ego boosting” or, more generally, suffer from low self-esteem. The article doug1943 supplied in his comment corroborates this in stating that psychopaths’ amygdala (being one area of the brain that’s implicated in emotional arousal) is smaller than the average person’s. Kevin Dutton and neuroscientist James Fallon would be better authorities on psychopathy.

   Now to THIS, “liberals are far more likely to break social ties with people over politics,” I say yes! I’ve seen studies that have been saying this and it corroborates with my experience. However, I understand there’d be individual differences and exceptions on this matter within each political camp despite any group differences that may exist.

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4. This is a quick reply to you and Doug1943, which I hope will lead to further discussion. I gather from Wikipedia that there’s some overlap between psychopathy and narcissism. This is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy:

   Otto Kernberg, from a particular psychoanalytic perspective, believed psychopathy should be considered as part of a spectrum of pathological narcissism, that would range from narcissistic personality on the low end, malignant narcissism in the middle, and psychopathy at the high end.[18] However, narcissism is generally seen as only one possible aspect of psychopathy as broadly defined.

   Psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism, three personality traits that are together referred to as the dark triad, share certain characteristics, such as a callous-manipulative interpersonal style.

   The dark triad is discussed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad. Again there’s similarity between narcissism and psychopathy:

   Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy….

   Psychopathy is characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callousness, and remorselessness.

   The adjectives are different but they paint similar pictures of the two conditions. So, while a psychopath’s brain may (or may not) be somewhat different than a narcissist’s brain, with respect to the amyglada, there seems to be a lot of behavioral overlap, as I understand the conditions.

   Of course, as Doug1943 points out in a different connection (degrees of leftishness), there’s probably a broad spectrum of psychopathic and narcissistic behavior. The point of all this is to suggest that John Ray may not be wrong to call leftism a manifestation of sub-clinical psychopathy (http://jonjayray.com/psycho.html).

   Of course, not all leftists are psychopaths (sub-clinical or otherwise). As Doug1943 suggests, a lot of the people who adhere to or identify with left-wing parties and movements do so because they want something in particular and believe that the left-wing part or movement can deliver it, or protect it. Prominent among such things are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage, and various programs and policies meant to “empower” groups that have been “marginalized” (same-sex marriage, affirmative action, diversity in university admissions, etc., etc.).

   I’ll defer a detailed reply to Doug1943’s comment for now, but I must make a few observations about the article to which he linked. First, it’s hard to square the purportedly greater emotionalism of conservatives with the obviously over-the-top emotionalism of the screeching leftists who are not prominent on so many campuses.

   The author of the piece, Andrea Kuszewski, then stoops to some rather biased characterizations; for example:

   So can we really say there is a liberal or conservative “thinking style” if the issues paramount to each party are always evolving? Actually, I think we can. Really, it isn’t so much the specific issue that defines the thinking style, it’s the preference for either stability or change. Depending on the current events, this can mean very different things.

   There was a recent article in the Guardian titled, “What does it mean to be a liberal?” in which liberalism is described as adaptability to a changing environment. If you look at liberalism as adaptability, and conservativism as stability, the party reactions to various events such as gay marriage (liberals want acceptance and change to new ways of thinking, conservatives want stability of previously held values), war (liberals are willing to adapt to shifting world views, while conservatives see war as a means of “preserving the stability of the homeland”), or even the current financial crisis—all make perfect sense.

   First, the writer’s obvious bias is that change is good, which is really rather a stupid thing to believe. It all depends on what the changes is and what effects it will have. Second, conservatives aren’t for stability for its own sake, but because — like good scientists — they believe that the null hypothesis (the status quo) holds true until they see strong evidence to the contrary. That is, they actually rely on evidence, not emotion — and it’s unthinking emotion that often fuels leftists. The global warming scare is a perfect example of this.

   Which leads me to Chris Mooney, the Discover staffer who commissioned the piece. Mooney (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Mooney_(journalist)) is the author of such books as The Republican War on Science and The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science — And Reality. There’s a whole lot of psychological projection going on there. Most anti-scientific activity these days is on the left. In addition to the over-hyped and poorly understood subject of AGW (rife with pseudo-scientific charlatanism), there’s IQ (which leftists like to disparage while claiming at the same time to be more intelligent than conservatives), the Keynesian multiplier (a mathematical con game), guns and crime (how are those strict gun-control laws working out for Chicago?), biological differences between men and women (quite real and wide-ranging), the effect of the minimum wage on unemployment (leftists like to cite the one study out of dozens that shows little or no effect), and on and on.

   I’ll stop for now, in the hope that this will incite replies by L.P. and Doug1943.

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5. See my reply to L.P.

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6. Thomas, you might also look at Borderline Personality Disorder and Dependent Personality Disorder because what John Ray describes also resembles those too. There does tend to be what you call co-morbidity between the DSM clusters such that cluster A “disorders” overlap (Paranoid PD, Schizoid PD, and Schizotypal PD); cluster B (the anti-social group) – Anti-social PD which may soon be regarded as separate from Psychopathy, Narcissism, etc; and cluster C – Dependent PD, Avoidant PD, etc.

   What this means is that if John Ray’s description does point to, say Dependent PD instead then it’s not likely to be conflated with either Narcissism or Psychopathy. On the other hand, in cases where Narcissism and Psychopathy overlaps, John Ray’s description still describes Narcissism and *not* Psychopathy – see what I mean? (Red is a warm color, blue is a cool color, but the warm color that contributes to purple is still red, not blue.) That’s why, I think John Ray’s description is wholly inaccurate.

   In any case, it’s probably best to steer away from what Psychopathy is and is not for the moment because this category is being debated among experts currently and may be due for revision – in particular because even experts conflate Anti-social PD (ASPD) and Psychopathy. I’ve lurked the Psychopathy board of Quora for awhile and I’d say the majority of the diagnosed (take this with a grain of salt since anyone can lie) have politically right-wing views. This doesn’t mean right-wingers are psychopaths or horrible people of course. Even neuroscientist James Fallon found that he’s wired as a Psychopath through encountering his own brain scan but, since he’s a productive member of society, he’s what is called a Pro-social Psychopath – see his book, “The Psychopath Inside.”

   By the way, I too recognize some inaccuracy in Andrea Kuszewski’s article because my life experience has taught me that leftists are the more emotionally sensitive ones, on average. On the other hand, this “Those with the ability to maintain low emotional arousal and have high cognitive control are generally better at handling conflict in the moment, plus tend to be the least permanently affected by trauma in the long term2. They tend to be more adaptable to changing situations (or have a higher tolerance for complexity), and have what we call cognitive flexibility.” describes me even though I’m not a leftist (so either the article is wrong here or I’m an exception).

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7. A quick reply to your final paragraph. I, too, fit the description of low emotional arousal and high cognitive control, and I’m certainly not a leftist. A big part of the problem here (and in general) is definitional. Leftists are statists who seek control of others in order to advance a certain agenda. But there are also right-statists, whose agenda is generally the opposite of the left-statists’ agenda. Right-statists are often wrongly called conservatives. They are not conservatives, who prefer to rely on the institutions of civil society, not the state. But the mislabeling allows leftists to get away with calling conservatives anti-scientific and emotional, when they’re really talking about their kindred spirits: right-statists.

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8. What I’d also add to his categorization of people being either pro-change or pro-stability is that there is a lot of perceptual subjectivity here. If those of us who want to *change* some things back to the way they had been before, isn’t that still being pro-change in that way?

   In fact, I’d characterize the right’s youth movement as having fostered out of a sense of rebellion against the left (which is being perceived as the establishment – the stability agent here as they want to hold onto their alteration of the culture).

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9. I agree with you. Changing things back to the way they were is pro-change, in that it’s an attempt to make things better. A good example is the originalist movement in constitutional jurisprudence — stripping away unconstitutional, authoritarian laws and precedents to get back to the libertarian roots of the Constitution.

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