Washington Monthly

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March/April/May 2014 (https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchaprilmay-2014/)

The Origin of Ideology

Are le and right a feature (or bug) of evolution?

by Chris Mooney (https://washingtonmonthly.com/people/chris-mooney/)

MAGAZINE ()

If you want one experiment that perfectly captures what science is learning about the deep-seated differ-
ences between liberals and conservatives, you need go no further than BeanFest. It’s a simple learning
video game in which the player is presented with a variety of cartoon beans in different shapes and sizes,
with different numbers of dots on them. When each new type of bean is presented, the player must
choose whether or not to accept it—without knowing, in advance, what will happen. You see, some beans
give you points, while others take them away. But you can’t know until you try them.

In a recent experiment by psychologists Russell Fazio and Natalie Shook, a group of self-identi ed liber-
als and conservatives played BeanFest. And their strategies of play tended to be quite different. Liberals
tried out all sorts of beans. They racked up big point gains as a result, but also big point losses—and they
learned a lot about different kinds of beans and what they did. Conservatives, though, tended to play
more defensively. They tested out fewer beans. They were risk averse, losing less but also gathering less
information.

One reason this is a telling experiment is that it’s very hard to argue that playing BeanFest has anything
directly to do with politics. It’s dif cult to imagine, for example, that results like these are confounded or
contaminated by subtle cues or extraneous factors that push liberals and conservatives to play the game
differently. In the experiment, they simply sit down in front of a game—an incredibly simple game—and
play. So the ensuing differences in strategy very likely re ect differences in who’s playing.

The BeanFest experiment is just one of dozens summarized in two new additions to the growing science-
of-politics book genre: Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences, by
political scientists John R. Hibbing, Kevin B. Smith, and John R. Alford, and Our Political Nature, by evo-
 lutionary anthropologist Avi Tuschman. The
two books agree almost perfectly on what sci-
ence is now nding about the psychological,
biological, and even genetic differences be-
tween those who opt for the political le and
those who tilt toward the right. However, what
they’re willing to make of these differences,
and how far they are willing to run with it,
varies greatly.

Predisposed:
Liberals,
Conservatives,
and the Biology
of Political Differences
by John R. Hibbing, Kevin B. Smith, and John R. Alford
Routledge, 304 pp.

Hibbing, Smith, and Alford, a team of researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Rice Univer-
sity who have published some of the most penetrating research on le -right differences in recent years,
provide a lively and amusing tour of the landscape. But they mostly just walk up to and peer at the over-
riding question of why these apparently systematic le -right differences exist in the rst place. Their ex-
planation for the “origin of subspecies,” as they put it, is tentative at best. Tuschman, by contrast, has
written a vast and o en dif cult book that attempts nothing less than a broad evolutionary explanation of
the origins of le -right differences across countries and time—and does so by synthesizing such a huge
body of anthropological and biological evidence that it’ll almost bury you. Whether the account deserves
to be called merely thought-provoking or actually correct, though, will be up for other scholars to evalu-
ate—scholars like Hibbing, Smith, and Alford.

Let’s begin with the large body of shared ground. Surveying the evidence with a fair mind, it is hard to
deny that science is revealing a very inconvenient truth about le and right: long before they become
members of different parties, liberals and conservatives appear to start out as different people. “Bedrock
political orientations just naturally mesh with a broader set of orientations, tastes, and preferences be-
cause they are all part of the same biologically rooted inner self,” write Hibbing et al. The research
demonstrating this is so diverse, comes from so many elds, and shows so many points of overlap and
consistency that you either have to accept that there’s really something going on here or else start spin-
ning a conspiracy theory to explain it all away.

The most rock-solid nding, simply

because it has been shown so many
times in so many different studies,
is that liberals and conservatives
have different personalities. Again
and again, when they take the
widely accepted Big Five personali-
ty traits test, liberals tend to score
higher on one of the ve major di-
mensions—openness: the desire to
explore, to try new things, to meet
new people—and conservatives
Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us score higher on conscientiousness:
by Avi Tuschman the desire for order, structure, and
Prometheus Books, 500 pp. stability. Research samples in many
countries, not just the U.S., show as
much. And this nding is highly consequential, because as both Hibbing et al. and Tuschman note, peo-
ple tend to mate and have offspring with those who are similar to them on the openness measure—and
therefore, with those who share their deeply rooted political outlook. It’s a process called “assortative
mating,” and it will almost certainly exacerbate our current political divide.

But that’s just the beginning of the research on le -right differences. An interlocking and supporting
body of evidence can be found in moral psychology, genetics, cognitive neuroscience, and Hibbing’s and
Smith’s preferred realm, physiology and cognition. At their Political Physiology Lab at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, the researchers put liberals and conservatives in a variety of devices that measure re-
sponses like skin conductance (the moistening of the sweat glands) and eye gaze patterns when we’re ex-
posed to different types of images. In doing so, Hibbing and his colleagues have been able to detect invol-
untary physiological response differences between the two groups of political protagonists when they en-
counter a variety of stimuli. Once again, it’s hard to see how results like these could mean anything other
than what they mean: those on the le and right tend to be different people.
Indeed, here is where perhaps some of the most stunning science-of-politics results arise. Several re-
search groups have shown that compared with liberals, conservatives have a greater focus on negative
stimuli or a “negativity bias”: they pay more attention to the alarming, the threatening, and the disgust-
ing in life. In one experiment that captured this, Hibbing and his colleagues showed liberals and conserv-
atives a series of collages, each comprised of a mixture of positive images (cute bunnies, smiling chil-
dren) and negative ones (wounds, a person eating worms). Test subjects were tted with eye-tracker de-
vices that measured where they looked, and for how long. The results were stark: conservatives xed
their eyes on the negative images much more rapidly, and dwelled on them much longer, than did the
liberals.

Liberals and conservatives, conclude Hibbing et al., “experience and process different worlds.” No won-
der, then, that they o en cannot agree. These experiments suggest that conservatives actually do live in a
world that is more scary and threatening, at least as they perceive it. Trying to argue them out of it is
pointless and naive. It’s like trying to argue them out of their skin.

Perhaps the main reason that scientists don’t think these psychological and attentional differences sim-
ply re ect learned behaviors—or the in uence of cultural assumptions—is the genetic research. As Hib-
bing et al. explain, the evidence suggests that around 40 percent of the variation in political beliefs is ulti-
mately rooted in DNA. The studies that form the basis for this conclusion use a simple but powerful par-
adigm: they examine the differences between pairs of monozygotic (“identical”) twins and pairs of dizy-
gotic (“fraternal”) twins when it comes to political views. Again and again, the identical twins, who share
100 percent of their DNA, also share much more of their politics.

In other words, politics runs in families and is passed on to offspring. Hibbing and his coauthors suspect
that what is ultimately being inherited is a set of core dispositions about how societies should resolve re-
curring problems: how to distribute resources (should we be individualistic or collectivist?); how to deal
with outsiders and out-groups (are they threatening or enticing?); how to structure power relationships
(should we be hierarchical or egalitarian?); and so on. These are, of course, problems that all human so-
cieties have had to grapple with; they are ancient. And inheriting a core disposition on how to resolve
them would naturally predispose one to a variety of speci c issue stances in a given political context.

All of which brings us to the really big question. It is dif cult to believe that systematic psychological and
biological differences between those who opt for the le and the right in different countries—differences
that are likely re ected in the genetic code—arose purely by chance. And yet, providing an evolutionary
explanation for what we see is fraught with peril: to put it bluntly, we weren’t there. We didn’t see it
happen.
Moreover, in evolution, some things happen for an explicitly Darwinian “reason”—traits become more
prevalent or xed in populations because they advanced organisms’ chances of survival and reproduc-
tion in a particular environment—while others happen more accidentally. Some complex social traits
may emerge, for instance, because they are a fortuitous by-product of other, more fundamental traits laid
down by Darwinian evolution.

A good example of such a trait may be religion. It’s pretty clear that evolution laid down a series of attrib-
utes that predispose us toward religiosity, such as “agency detection,” which refers to the human tenden-
cy to detect minds and intentions everywhere around us in the environment, even when they aren’t nec-
essarily there. The evolutionary reason for such a trait seems obvious: a er all, better to be safe than sor-
ry when you’re out in the woods and hear a noise. But start thinking that there are intentions behind the
wind blowing, or the hunt failing, and you are well on your way to constructing gods. And indeed, reli-
gion seems to be a cross-cultural human universal. But does that mean that evolution selected for reli-
gion itself, or just for simpler precursors like agency detection?

You see the dif culty. In this context, Hibbing and his colleagues consider a variety of potential explana-
tions for the stubborn fact that there is large, politically relevant psychological and biological diversity
among members of the human species, and ultimately settle on a tentative combination of two ideas.
First, they assert, conservatism is probably more basic and fundamental, because it is more suited to a
world in which life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” Being defensive, risk aversive, hierarchical, and tribal
makes sense when the threats around you are very real and immediate. As many of these threats have re-
laxed in modern times, however, this may have unleashed more variability among the human species,
simply because now we can afford it. Under this scenario, liberals are the Johnny-come-latelys to the
politico-evolutionary pageant; the Enlightenment itself is less than 300 years old, less than an eyeblink in
evolutionary time. “Liberalism may thus be viewed as an evolutionary luxury afforded by negative stim-
uli becoming less prevalent and deadly,” write Hibbing et al.

However, Hibbing and his colleagues also consider a more controversial “group selection” scenario, in
which evolution built some measure of variability in our political typologies because sometimes, diversi-
ty is strength (for the group, anyway, if not for the individual). The trouble is, it is still fairly novel for evo-
lutionary explanations to focus on the reproductive tness of a group of individuals, rather than on the
tness of a single individual or even that individual’s DNA. Nonetheless, it’s easy to see why a group of
early humans comprised of both conservative and liberal psychologies might have fared better than a
more homogenous group. Such a society would have forces in it that want to hunker down and defend,
but also forces that push it to explore and change. This would surely make for better adaptation to more
diverse environments. It just might enhance the group’s chance of survival.
Yet it would be going much too far to suggest that Hibbing et al. have a strong or highly developed theory
for why biopolitical diversity exists among humans. Avi Tuschman does, though. “Political orientations
are natural dispositions that have been molded by evolutionary forces,” he asserts. If he’s right, a dramat-
ic new window opens on who we are and why we behave as we do.

One of the most stunning revelations of recent genetic anthropology is the nding that Homo sapiens,
our ancestors, occasionally bred with Homo neanderthalensis in Europe or the Middle East some 40,000
to 50,000 years ago. These encounters may have been quite rare: just one offspring produced every thirty
years, according to one estimate. But it was enough to shape who humans are today. Recent genetic
analyses suggest that some modern humans have a small but measurable percentage of Neanderthal
DNA in our genomes—particularly those of us living in Europe and Asia.

The more you think about it, the more mind-boggling it is that this cross-species mating actually oc-
curred. Imagine how strange it must have been, as a member of Homo sapiens, to encounter another be-
ing so closely related to us (much more closely than chimpanzees), and yet still so different. J. R. R.
Tolkien buffs can probably visualize it the best, because it would indeed have been something like hu-
mans encountering dwarves. Neanderthals were shorter and stronger, with outjutting brows. There is
some evidence suggesting that they had high-pitched voices and red hair.

Knowing how prevalent racism and xenophobia are today among members of the same human species,
we can assume that many of our ancestors would have behaved even worse toward Neanderthals. And
yet some Homo sapiens bred with them, produced offspring with them, and (presumably) cared for
those offspring. Which ones were the lovers, not the haters?

The answer, hints Tuschman in Our Political Nature, is that it may have been the liberals. For one core of
the apparently universal le -right difference, he argues, is that the two groups pursue different reproduc-
tive strategies, different ways of ensuring offspring and tness in the next generation.

And thus we enter the realm of full-blown, and inevitably highly controversial, evolutionary explana-
tions. Tuschman doesn’t hold back. Conservatives, he suggests in one of three interrelated evolutionary
accounts of the origins of politics, are a modern re ection of an evolutionary impulse that leads some of
us to seek to control sexual reproduction and keep it within a relatively homogenous group. This natural-
ly makes today’s conservatives more tribal and in-group oriented; if tribalism does anything, it makes it
clear who you are and aren’t supposed to mate with.
Tuschman’s liberals, in contrast, are a modern re ection of an evolutionary impulse to take risks, and
thereby pull in more genetic diversity through outbreeding. This naturally makes today’s liberals more
exploratory and cosmopolitan, just as the personality tests always suggest. Ultimately, Tuschman bluntly
writes, it all comes down to “different attitudes toward the transmission of DNA.” And if you want to set
these two groups at absolute war with one another, all you need is something like the 1960s.

According to Tuschman, these competing reproductive strategies arise from the fact that there are ad-
vantages to keeping mating close within the group, but also advantages to mixing in more genetic diversi-
ty. Moreover, there is a continuum from extreme inbreeding to extreme outbreeding, featuring many dif-
ferent reproductive strategies along the way. Thus, we see in other species, such as birds like the great tit,
a range in mating behavior, from a high level of breeding with more closely related birds to a high level
of outbreeding.

Outbreeding brings in diversity, which is vital. For instance, diversity in the genes that create the proteins
that ultimately come to comprise our immune systems has obvious bene ts. But outbreeding also has
risks—like encountering deadly new pathogens when you encounter new human groups—even as a mod-
erate degree of inbreeding appears to have its own advantages: perpetuating genetically based survival
strategies that are proven to work, increasing altruism that arises in kin relationships, and also, it ap-
pears, having more total offspring.

Extreme inbreeding, to be sure, is deleterious. But Tuschman presents evidence suggesting that there is
an optimum—at around third-cousin or fourth-cousin mating—for producing the largest number of
healthy offspring. He also shows related evidence in Danish women suggesting that a moderate degree of
geographic dispersal to nd a mate (measured by the distance between a woman’s birthplace and her
husband’s) is related to having a high number of children, but too much dispersal and too little are both
related to less overall fertility.

Returning to the present, Tuschman emphasizes that conservatives, and especially religious conserva-
tives, always want to seem to control and restrict reproduction (and other sexual activities) more than lib-
erals do. It’s understandably hard for an evolutionary biologist not to see behaviors that systematically
affect patterns of reproduction in a Darwinian light.

And it’s not just reproductive patterns: Tuschman also suggests that other aspects of the liberal-conserva-
tive divide re ect other evolutionary challenges and differential strategies of responding to them. He
traces different le -right views on hierarchy and equality to the structure of families (a move that cogni-
tive linguist George Lakoff has in effect already made) and the effect of birth order on the personalities
and political outlooks of siblings. And Tuschman traces more positive and negative (or, risk-aversive)
views of human nature on the le and the right to different types of evolutionarily based altruism: altru-
ism toward kin on the conservative side, and reciprocal altruism (which can be toward anyone) on the
liberal side.

But is all of this really … true? Tuschman’s book is dif cult to evaluate on this score. It says so much more
about evolution than Hibbing, Smith, and Alford do, and yet manages to do so without leaving the same
impression about the importance of caveats and nuances. Is Tuschman advancing a group selection theo-
ry, or not? It sometimes sounds like it, but it isn’t clear. And most importantly, is the variation among hu-
mans of politically relevant traits just part of the natural order of things, or does it itself re ect some-
thing about evolution? Again, it isn’t clear. This is not to suggest that Tuschman lacks a view on such
questions; it’s just that he synthesizes so much scienti c evidence that this kind of hand-holding seems
less of a priority.

In the end, Tuschman’s book attempts a feat that those of us monitoring the emerging science of politics
have long been waiting for—explaining the now well-documented psychological, biological, and genetic
differences between liberals and conservatives with reference to human evolution and the differential
strategies of mate choice and resource allocation that have been forced on us by the pressures of surviv-
ing and reproducing on a quite dangerous planet. It may or may not stand the test of time, but it certainly
forces the issue.

In the end, what’s so stunning about all of this is the tremendous gap between what scholars are learning
about politics and politics itself. We run around shutting down governments and occupying city centers—
behaviors that can only be driven by a combination of intense belief and equally intense emotion—with
almost zero perspective on why we can be so passionate one way, even as our opponents are passionate
in the other.

To see politics as Hibbing, Smith, Alford, and Tuschman see it, by contrast, is inevitably to want to stop
ghting so much and strive for some form of acceptance of political difference. That’s why, even though
not all of the answers are in place yet, we need their line of thinking to catch on. Ideological diversity is
clearly real, deeply rooted, and probably a core facet of human nature. Given this, we simply have no
choice but to come up with a much better way to live with it.

Buy these books from Amazon and support Washington Monthly: Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives,
and the Biology of Political DifferencesOur Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us
Chris Mooney (https://washingtonmonthly.com/people/chris-mooney/)
Chris Mooney is a reporter for Climate Desk (climatedesk.org) and cohost of the Inquiring Minds
podcast.

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