Psychology and Ideology. How Could Anyone (Except the Rich) Vote for George Bush? By Peter Prontzos (4/6)

In this view, a person’s political and social norms derive to a large extent from the style of parenting which they experienced.  The “Strict Father” model is associated with a more rigid, individualistic, authoritarian, patriarchal, and conservative type of moral code.  The Strict Father model celebrates traditional family structures and authority, and the father has primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family, setting strict rules for children, and enforcing those rules.

The “Nurturant Parent” model, on the other hand, tends to produce children who are less rigid, more socially-minded, and who do not base morality on obedience.  This model, although it has some aims in common with the Strict Father approach (such as self-discipline), has a different style and different priorities.

Love, empathy, and nurturance are primary, and children become responsible, self-disciplined and self-reliant through being cared for, respected, and caring for others, both in their family and in their community…The obedience of children comes out of their love and respect for their parents…not out of fear of punishment (ibid).

The literature of developmental psychology shows that there is no contest between the two paradigms: childrearing according to the Strict Father model harms children; a Nurturant Parent model is far superior.  The Strict Father model “does not make for a harmonious society or for social progress” whereas Nurturant Parent morality encourages “the largest number of citizens can work together productively and cooperatively” (ibid).
“Parenting styles” refers not only to the ways in which caregivers treat children directly, but also to the social modeling that children observe (e.g. treating other people with respect - or not).  Lakoff writes in Moral Politics, that people tend to view their society, government, and political issues through the unconscious conceptual lens of metaphors.  The most potent of these metaphors is that of society as a family; hence, people’s attitudes to politics and “common sense” often reflect their own particular family experiences.  But he cautions that
Nothing is “just” common sense.  Common sense has a conceptual structure that is usually unconscious…not unconscious in the Freudian sense of being repressed, but unconscious simply in that we are not aware of it (Lakoff, 1996).

General support for this position comes from the research of Jost, et al, who did a meta-analysis of 88 samples from 12 countries, and established, inter alia:

• dogmatism correlates consistently with authoritarianism, political-economic conservatism, and the holding of right-wing opinions;
• a strong connection between intolerance of ambiguity…and political conservatism;
• in the United States and Australia, people who hold politically conservative attitudes are generally less open to new and stimulating experiences;
• conservatives are more susceptible to fear;
• right-wing parents are apparently less close to their children.

The study also quotes conservative U.S. pundit George F. Will who writes that: “Conservatives know the world is a dark and forbidding place, where most new knowledge is false, most improvements are for the worse” (op. cit.)  This attitude, which serves as an argument for the status quo, has been associated historically with conservatives, from the Pharisees to Edmund Burke to Mitt Romney.  It is an especially appealing to ruling elites, as its ideological hegemony (Gramsci) serves to support their continuing power.

For instance, in one study (cited above) which examined the connection between parenting styles and politics, Milburn found that  repression and denial correlate with childhood trauma; specifically, that the “higher level of punitiveness among political conservatives is very strongly associated with experiences, generally, of harsh punishment from childhood”.  More specifically, “High punishment males were also more conservative than low punishment males” (Milburn, 1995).

In other words, a child’s experiences “can be displaced onto adult political attitudes” (ibid).

This research builds on the insights of Wilhelm Reich (The Mass Psychology of Fascism), who was among the first to point out that repressed, unfulfilled, and angry people are more disposed to violence, authoritarianism, and even totalitarianism.  Eric Fromm, who, like Reich, escaped from Nazi Germany, viewed authoritarian childhoods as more likely to create adults who see obedience as the best way to win the approval of father figures in power.  This tendency is exacerbated by the authoritarian behaviour and ideology of national leaders:

Fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism have in common that they offered the atomized individual a new refuge and security.  These systems are the culmination of alienation.  The individual is made to feel powerless and insignificant, but taught to project all his human powers into the figure of the leader, the state, the fatherland, to whom he has to submit and whom he has to worship (Fromm, 1955).

Feelings of hurt, rage, fragmentation, and alienation provide a fertile soil for anti-social behaviour such as aggression and mindless obedience.  Indeed, both neglect as well as the harsh physical punishment of children are associated with increased levels of personal aggression (ScienceDaily, 7 April 2008; 14 Nov. 2005).

There have been many studies which have looked for consistent psychological differences between conservatives and liberals.  For instance, there is

consistent and converging evidence that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are robust, replicable, and behaviorally significant, especially with respect to social (vs. economic) dimensions of ideology (Carney, 2009).

Other researchers have concluded that:

In general, liberals are more open-minded, creative, curious, and novelty seeking, whereas conservatives are more orderly, conventional, and better organized (Carney, op. cit).

Conservatives are also less likely to accept new social, scientific or religious ideas than liberals are.  Studies on how the brain processes information found that “conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences.  These tendencies are not confined to ideology, but also “influence everyday decisions” (Gellene, 2007).

It appears, however, that both Democrats and Republicans are equally adept at ignoring “inconvenient truths” when making decisions (LiveScience, 2006), and that, in general, “Americans prefer to read political articles that agree with the opinions they already hold” (ScienceDaily, 29 May 2009).

In another study of children in nursery school:
future conservatives were described as easily victimized, indecisive, rigid, fearful and inhibited. The budding liberals were described as self-reliant, prone to developing close relationships, energetic and somewhat dominating (Seed, 2006).
Jack Block observed that such findings show that there is “an undeniable linkage between early childhood character structure and much later adult orientation toward political issues and political choices.”  Block argues that these characteristics tend, “to evolve into a worldview, a weltanschauung, on a wide variety of issues, many of them political” (ibid).  Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, these differences play out in a host of other aspects of life:
  Liberals are messier than conservatives, their rooms have more clutter and more color, and they tend to have more travel documents, maps of other countries, and flags from around the world. Conservatives are neater, and their rooms are cleaner, better organized, more brightly lit, and more conventional. Liberals have more books, and their books cover a greater variety of topics. And that's just a start. Multiple studies find that liberals are more optimistic. Conservatives are more likely to be religious. Liberals are more likely to like classical music and jazz, conservatives, country music. Liberals are more likely to enjoy abstract art. Conservative men are more likely than liberal men to prefer conventional forms of entertainment like TV and talk radio. Liberal men like romantic comedies more than conservative men. Liberal women are more likely than conservative women to enjoy books, poetry, writing in a diary, acting, and playing musical instruments (Dixit, 2007).