American Politics: Well Past the Time to Give a Lash to the Stragglers
In a time of dispersal, those who combine their strengths prevail...
The Problem
According to psychological science, people with different personalities function with what amounts to significantly different human operating systems, operating systems that have varying and contrasting strengths and weaknesses. In the always-changing natural environment, cooperation between different people1 with different assemblages of the personality traits that constitute overall personality usually results in improved individual and group functioning -- and increased survival over that otherwise available to independently operating individuals.
History indicates that in the best of times the American political dyad of left and right balances the proclivities of each of the partners, thus helping to maintain the competency, strength, and endurance of the nation over time. Lately, however, the left in the US (and elsewhere) has increasingly entered a chronic state of very strong anxiety and concern, moving it to heroically attempt numerous large-scale measures solely on its own. The right, on the other hand, has done very little – if anything – to calm and reassure the nervous left by listening to and helping to answer and address its concerns.
Personality Traits and Political Party Preference
Xu et al. (2021) have employed psychological trait theory to objectively survey and identify the behavioral and temperamental characteristics marking the endmembers of the American left and right wings.2 The resulting characterizations provide insight as to the underlying causes of the current political and cultural alienation in the US (and elsewhere).
The most commonly employed psychological personality trait scheme, “The Big Five”, uses 5 major traits to characterize and describe human personalities. These five major characteristics have been further subdivided into 10 different aspects by DeYoung, Quilty, and Peterson (2007). Xu et al., ibid., employ both the Big Five and its 10 aspects to discern the generally characteristic personality differences between the American left and right wings. See the Figure below illustrating the personality trait hierarchy of this human personality classification scheme.
Definitions of the Big Five traits shown above are condensed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits. The secondary aspect descriptions are extracted from DeYoung et al., 2007, DeYoung 2011, and Xu et al., 2021:
1. Neuroticism as a trait is the tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression. Those who score high in neuroticism are emotionally reactive and vulnerable to stress, and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening. At the other end of the scale, individuals who score low in neuroticism are less easily upset and are less emotionally reactive. They tend to be calm, emotionally stable, and free from persistent negative feelings.
Neuroticism associated with the withdrawal aspect connotes depression, and a slowness to accept and respond to change. In contrast, the volatility aspect of neuroticism is associated with irritability or anger.
2. The agreeableness trait reflects individual differences in concern for social harmony. Agreeable individuals value getting along with others. Low agreeableness personalities, on the other hand, are more competitive or challenging people who are often seen by others as being argumentative.
The compassion aspect of the agreeableness trait is marked by warm and sympathetic emotional affiliation with other people, while the politeness aspect of agreeableness is associated with a more reasoned, conscious respect and consideration of other people’s needs and desires.
3. The trait of conscientiousness is the tendency to act with self-discipline, and strive for achievement against outside or internal resistance. High conscientiousness is often perceived as being stubborn and focused. Low conscientiousness can be associated with flexibility and spontaneity, but can also appear as sloppiness and lack of reliability.
The industriousness aspect of conscientiousness refers to level of personal activity. In contrast, the aspect of orderliness is reflective of the tendency to act to maintain order and organization.
4. Extraversion is characterized by breadth of activity (as opposed to depth) and surgency towards external activity/situations. The trait is marked by pronounced engagement with the external world. Extraverts enjoy interacting with people and things in their environment, and are often perceived as being full of energy. Because of their energetic involvement with ‘what’s going on’, extraverted people may appear more dominant in social settings than introverted people in the same setting.
Enthusiasm is the extraversion aspect reflecting sociability, gregariousness, and associated experiences of positive emotion. The assertiveness aspect of extraversion concerns personal feelings of agency and can lead to, and help maintain, dominance in economic and other social endeavors.
5. Openness/Intellect. At the trait level, openness⁄intellect reflects the tendency to detect, explore, appreciate, and utilize patterns of abstract and/or sensory information.
The openness to experience aspect of the openness/intellect trait denotes a more sensory appreciation and/or appetite for art, emotion, adventure, and unusual ideas. People who are open to experience are more willing to try and accept new things. Conversely, at the aspect level of the openness/intellect trait, those with higher intellect emphasis, and corresponding lower openness to sensory experience, seek to gain fulfillment through perseverance and are characterized as being pragmatic and data-driven – and are sometimes therefore perceived to be dogmatic and closed-minded.
Not surprisingly, the data collected and analyzed by Xu et al. (ibid., especially their Table 3) show that the American left- and right-wing have, on average, almost perfectly diametrically opposed personalities. The two Figures below summarize their research findings.
Cautionary Sidebar…
The personality differences between the American political left and right wing being discussed here are, again, based on very recent published academic measurements of the variation in personality traits of people from each end of the American political spectrum. Notwithstanding extremely significant personality trait average differences between the American people leaning towards the Republican Party, and the American people favoring the Democrat Party, there is still, nonetheless, very considerable common overlap in the distribution of personality traits of Americans with liberal and conservative tendencies. Figure 10 of Weisberg et al., 2011, illustrates this extremely important point: that groups of people can simultaneously be both very different yet still retain much similarity. Contrast this exampled real frequency distribution to that much exaggerated one shown in the meme inserted at the top of this post.
With regard to this illustration of the overlap in personality traits between two markedly different human populations (human adult females and males in this case), Weisberg et al. (ibid.) remark:
“Although the mean [average] differences in personality between genders may be important in shaping human experience and human culture, they are probably not so large as to preclude effective communication between men and women. … we are optimistic that any difficulties in communication between men and women are due primarily to cultural norms that are amenable to change, rather than to differences in basic personality traits, which are much more difficult to change [emphasis added].”
The same thing can be said of the differences in personality that exist between the American left and right wings. The graph below shows examples of recent real shifts in cultural norms with regard to American politics.
End of Sidebar…
The Average American Liberal Personality Profile
Xu et al. (ibid.) summarize their findings with regard to the personality traits of the American left wing with this narrative statement: “Overall, it appears that, compared to their more conservative counterparts, liberals tend to be more open to aesthetic experiences and new ideas, but are more prone to sad affect, and are less orderly, productive, and assertive.”
The work of Xu et al. (ibid.) also shows that liberals are generally more emotionally compassionate [as in Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain”], less polite, and more psychologically withdrawn than American conservatives.
The strengths, then, of liberals compared to conservatives are their compassion and their attraction to new experiences and new ideas. Their (numerous) weaknesses, on the other hand, are elevated anxiety and a slowness to accept and to respond to change (see the withdrawal aspect of the neuroticism trait above), less industriousness and orderliness, less assertiveness, and a generally heightened degree of impoliteness towards others.
Note that the liberal strength of compassion is consistent with the Democrat party’s historical labels as being the “party of the people”, or the “party of the working man”. The psychometric observation that the left wing is characteristically attracted to new ideas and experiences makes much sense of the recently exhibited liberal fascination with legalization of marijuana (and other ‘street’ drugs), the possible legalization of sex work, gender re-definition, the man-made global warming hypothesis, postmodernism, and radically sudden experimentation with longstanding community law enforcement policies and procedures.
The identified liberal tendency to be less polite to others is congruent with the commonly-to-habitually rude tenor of the liberal side of dialog with others, particularly in social media.
Finally, the elevated chronic level of anxiety of the left wing explains the negative spin the left wing reactively places on new events or findings of any sort originating from the natural or cultural environment. Recall from above trait definitions that “Those who score high in neuroticism are emotionally reactive and vulnerable to stress, and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening.”
For a depiction of an animal (horse) model of this chronic state of the average liberal mind’s anxious arousal see the photograph below. Untrained (wild type) horses immediately bolt explosively whenever something unexpected or unusual happens near them, and only very slowly return to an unalarmed state. The COVID19-is-a-big-problem graph following the photograph of the anxious horses illustrates particularly well the horse-like high anxiety of liberals and the comparatively long amount of time it takes for the left wing to calm down after being startled.
Average liberal slowness to accept and to respond to change, less assertiveness, and less industriousness and orderliness (see the explanation of the conscientiousness trait above again), helps to account for the increased general level of chaos and disarray repeatedly introduced into the nation consequent of the implementation of left wing-only-legislatively-mandated administrative decisions, laws and regulations. New ideas are generally not energetically and thoroughly analyzed and critiqued by liberals before implementation, and once committed, errors in left wing-mandated decision-making and subsequent action are, at the best, slow to be recognized, much less corrected.
The Average American Conservative Personality Profile
In contrast to the average American liberal, the strengths of American conservatives are their reasoned politeness towards others, greater industriousness and orderliness, their greater assertiveness, greater emotional stability, greater freedom from negative feelings, and their pragmatism and focus on data, rather than on feelings or on novel ideas or experiences. The twin character trait weaknesses of conservatives appear to be lesser compassion for others, and a greater tendency to be dogmatic -- and therefore more hesitant to entertain new ideas.
A fitting animal model of the American conservative is probably that busy animal engineer, the beaver. See the photograph below.
Being industrious and orderly, successfully assertive in their environment, with consequently little time or energy to spare for gratuitous rancor or indiscriminate compassion, the average American conservative is polite, content, intent, and emotionally stable. Being normally predominantly focused on the always necessary business of making and maintaining a living, however, members of the American right wing very often do fail to give sufficient attention to what is going on outside of their everyday ‘pond’ and in the lives of their fellow citizens.
Give a Lash to the Stragglers
The political implications of the above information can be summarized pretty easily:
1. The American left wing is, compared the American right wing, more aware of new developments taking place in the broader outside world. Unfortunately, the left wing (like a horse) reflexively thinks the worst of such events, and is temperamentally unsuited to objectively assess, and then handle and manage, any real threats or problems created by these developments.
2. The American right wing is by nature more myopic and self-absorbed than the American left wing. Fortunately, once made cognizant of possible new problems, the right wing is temperamentally much more suited to assessing the real degree of threat posed by such new developments, and then, if need be, to carrying out the work of handling and managing any consequent problems.
What’s needed, then, is for American liberals to continue to concentrate on their strength of ‘being aware’ and continue to communicate their perceptions to their busy conservative brothers and sisters – but without making the naive mistake of confusing chronic feelings of anxiety and immediate alarm with the true, underlying nature of unfamiliar events. Similarly, the American left needs to learn and then remember that intense feelings of compassion and concern are not perfect substitutes for wisdom, competence, and skill.
American conservatives, on the other hand, need to learn to not impatiently or carelessly brush off the anxieties of the left and thereby disregard what may be happening out of sight of their conservative ‘ponds’, but also address these liberal worries and more distal matters with the stewardly attention and respect they are characteristically capable of.
Note that the origin of the heading for this portion of this post, “Give a lash to the stragglers”, comes from a pertinent passage said to be written by Chuang Tzu about 2500 years ago:
“Tian Kaizhi said, “In Lu there was Shan Bao—he lived among the cliffs, drank only water, and didn’t go after gain like other people. He went along like that for seventy years and still had the complexion of a little child. Unfortunately, he met a hungry tiger who killed him and ate him up. Then there was Zhang Yi—there wasn’t one of the great families and fancy mansions that he didn’t rush off to visit. He went along like that for forty years, and then he developed an internal fever, fell ill, and died. Shan Bao looked after what was on the inside and the tiger ate up his outside. Zhang Yi looked after what was on the outside and the sickness attacked him from the inside. Both these men failed to give a lash to the stragglers.”
Final Remarks: Dark Clouds Mounting on the Left
Despite the strongly contradicting and obvious facts of the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, Germany’s National Socialism (Nazism), the Bolshevik Revolution, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and Pol Pot’s Cambodian genocide, and recent local and federal level politically-inspired or politically-sanctioned actions in the US, authoritarianism is commonly and mistakenly believed to be a right wing ‘disease’ only.
Complementary academic work to the Xu et al. (ibid.) study regarding the personality traits of the American left and right was very recently published that shows, however, that fascist/authoritarian tendencies exist in the American population on both sides of the American political spectrum. Costello et al. (2022), having psychometrically determined that left wing authoritarianism undoubtedly exists within the United States, summarize the shared commonalities between left and right wing authoritarianism in America:
“We find they reflect a constellation of personality traits, cognitive features, and motivations that might be considered the “heart” of authoritarianism. These traits include a preference for social uniformity, prejudice toward different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity, aggression toward perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism.”
Moreover, according to the same authors, there are important, very foreboding qualities attached specifically to Americans exhibiting left wing authoritarian tendencies:
“Notable differences between left wing authoritarian [LWA] and right wing authoritarian [RWA] social dominance orientation [SDO] also emerged. For instance, left-wing authoritarians were lower in dogmatism and cognitive rigidity, higher in negative emotionality, and expressed stronger support for a political system with substantial centralized state control.
Our results also indicate that left wing authoritarianism powerfully predicts behavioral aggression and is strongly correlated with participation in political violence [emphasis added].”
Self-serving left wing political exaggeration aside regarding the “January 6th riots”, the strongly contrasting nature of recent left and right wing political protests indeed confirms that the American left is markedly more politically (and physically) violent than the American right.
“I have found from many observations that our liberals are incapable of allowing anyone to have his own convictions and immediately answer their opponent with abuse or something worse.”
—Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
See the relevant concept of SWOT analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis
It is helpful, for the sake of generally making sense of things human, to note that psychologists have also objectively identified the average behavioral and temperamental characteristics marking the end members of the sexual dyad. As might be expected, there are strong parallels between the personality traits of the male sex and members of the political right, and the personality traits of the female sex and the members of the political left. See https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00178/full for detail.
I tend to agree. I've found that those liberal Democrats with whom I have most closely identified culturally and with whom I've maintained decades long friendships have been the most inconsistent in living their proclaimed values and full of hate-speech, whereas the Republicans have at least been more tolerant and polite.
Why the Democrats can't get #MyBodyMyChoice should also apply to vaccines, as well as fluoridation, wireless technology and the pollution of foods with pervasive GMOs - all of which violate our bodily integrity with known adverse effects; that cajoling and coercive measures to effect vaccine mandates violate bioethics and human rights; and that they are inciting violence with their hate-speech that instead of "valuing diversity" has othered and demonized the unvaccinated as well as those who ask questions about the scientific data, many of whom are vaccinated scientists and doctors who have changed their minds based on the evidence is beyond my ken.
That said, neither party has any claim to being truthful at this point, let alone consistent or acting in the best interest of their constituents. Instead, both highly partisan parties are representative of an observation by salesman extraordinaire, Zig Ziglar that goes something like this: People make up their minds based on their emotions, then they find the data to justify that decision.