“Elective Affinities”: On the Psychological Bases of Left–Right Differences

Abstract

Drawing on the concept of “elective affinities” from the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Max Weber, I seek to articulate a scientific framework for understanding psychological receptiveness to ideological messages. More specifically, I summarize converging lines of research that link basic personality, cognitive, motivational, and even physiological processes to ideological differences between left and right. I also discuss situational factors such as the presence of threat that increase the affinity for political conservatism through its effect on “cognitive narrowing.” These findings and many others suggest that, contrary to Wildavsky (1989) and other skeptics, ideology is a meaningful force in people's lives and that it may be rooted in fundamental psychological antinomies, including preferences for stability versus change, order versus complexity, familiarity versus novelty, conformity versus creativity, and loyalty versus rebellion. Directions for further research are also discussed.

Key words:

• political orientation
• ideology
• liberalism
• conservatism
• religion
• uncertainty
• threat

This article is based on a lecture delivered at Princeton University on October 14, 2008, in the “Dilemmas of Inequality” lecture series associated with the Joint Degree Program in Social Policy. There I benefited from extremely helpful discussions with John Darley, Susan Fiske, Katherine Newman, and Stacey Sinclair, among many others. An earlier version was presented at the International Congress of Psychology meeting in Berlin in July 2008, where I received feedback and inspiration from Gian Vittorio Caprara, Stanley Feldman, Shalom Schwartz, and Kip Williams. I also thank David N. Smith for reading recommendations regarding Weber's concept of “elective affinities” and Tina Schweizer for administrative assistance. The writing of this article was supported in part by the New York University Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response and the National Science Foundation (Grant # BCS-0617558).

Notes

¹ Laponce (1981) also observed that for many centuries in Europe (even before the French Revolution) the right was regarded as the “side of God” and was “universally associated with the notion of privilege, dominance, and sacredness” (p. 10).

²In denying that meaningful Left–Right differences exist with respect to attitudes about social change, Greenberg and Jonas (2003) wrote that “all political movements borrow from the past in some way. At the very least, leftists rely on the long-dead Karl Marx, and often on a myth of prehistoric egalitarian communalism” (p. 377). It seems to me that this comment ignores the relentlessly forward-looking character of Marxist thought (and ideology)—or what the conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet (1973) referred to as “the unmistakably, profoundly, and undeviatingly revolutionary character of Marx's own mind” (p. 282). The contrast between Marx and Burke with respect to their attitudes concerning tradition and custom, as in the quotes assembled above, seems too striking to overlook.

³Even Edmund Burke (1790/1987) wrote that “a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.” As Viereck (1956) noted, “The Burkean … does come to terms with the reality of inevitable change. But he does so without the liberal's optimism and faith in progress” (p. 12).