Introduction to Special Issue: Evolution and Politics

Introduction to Special Issue: Evolution and Politics

To Go Forward, We Must Look Back: The Importance of Evolutionary Psychology for Understanding Modern Politics

Abstract

As new waves of populism arise and cause disruption around the globe, there is both great interest in attempting to explain the origin of this dynamic as well as a need to ameliorate its potentially destructive impact. Perhaps the greatest signal of seismic change is the global dismantling of American institutional control of the postwar world following the election of Donald Trump in the United States. In the wake of such dramatic changes, it may seem odd to turn to evolutionary psychology which looks deeply into the past to try to understand current events, but, in fact, modern technology has dramatically changed the shape of political communication in just such a way as to make politics more personal once again, increasing the need to understand and interpret modern politics through an evolutionary lens. In fact, current modern political turmoils demonstrate how important evolutionary themes are and how critical they remain to understand how current forms of populism tap into older tribal sentiments and drives. Modern technology allows for a form of interpretative politics that no longer need to be mediated by political institutions or larger social structures, including enduring ones such as marriage. Indeed, in any ways, as we have technologically advanced, we have also regressed to more immediate, emotional, and personal forms of political communication. And it is only in understanding the nature of that personal political psychology that we can begin to grapple seriously with the challenges of today, including the consequences of global populism.

As new waves of populism arise and cause disruption around the globe, there is both great interest in attempting to explain the origin of this dynamic as well as a need to ameliorate its potentially destructive impact. Even entrenched and established modern Western democracies have not been immune to the forces of public opinion, causing havoc among the public and the elite. Examples of this phenomena abound, including leaders trying to deal with the consequences of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom; Marine Le Pen's strong showing and Emmanuel Macron's historic presidential victory in France, which swept aside a generation of leaders and sent French politics into upheaval; and the inability of Angela Merkel, who appeared unassailable just a few years ago, to form a government in Germany.

Perhaps the greatest signal of seismic change is the global dismantling of American institutional control of the postwar world following the election of Donald Trump in the United States. In the wake of such dramatic changes, it may seem odd to turn to evolutionary psychology which looks deeply into the past to try to understand current events, but, in fact, modern technology has dramatically changed the shape of political communication in just such a way as to make politics more personal once again, increasing the need to understand and interpret modern politics through an evolutionary lens. In fact, current modern political turmoils demonstrate how important evolutionary themes are and how critical they remain to understand how current forms of populism tap into older tribal sentiments and drives. Modern technology allows for a form of interpretative politics that no longer need to be mediated by political institutions or larger social structures, including enduring ones such as marriage. Indeed, in any ways, as we have technologically advanced, we have also regressed to more immediate, emotional, and personal forms of political communication. And it is only in understanding the nature of that personal political psychology that we can begin to grapple seriously with the challenges of today, including the consequences of global populism.

It should not be surprising to readers of this journal that the fundamental topics which lie at the intersection of evolution and politics are similar. These issues surround those enduring challenges which have confronted humans over long periods of time as they have sought to organize into collectives for the benefits of cooperation, the protection of collective welfare, and to provide the comfort of community, all while striving to avoid predation, exploitation, and starvation. These issues may appear with different manifestations across time and geography, so that the particular context will look different in a hunter-gather group than in nineteenth-century Britain, and different still in the modern American context, but topics of concern typically devolve to conflicts around resource allocation, in-group defense and out-group discrimination, and attempt to regulate sex and reproduction.

In the modern American context, clearly evident in the twenty sixteen presidential election, those underlying topics appeared manifest in arguments over benefits like access to health care, the status of transgender individuals and a woman's right to choose, how to view out-groups such as immigrants, and how we defend ourselves in the war against terrorism. Significantly, every one of these issues emerged as a contention around the nature, rights and restrictions involved in various aspects of social status (whether those involved race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or some other demographic characteristic), reproduction, security, or the allocation and provision of basic needs. Modern sociologists point to the way in which Trump was able to exploit the disaffection of often poor, largely rural White males in particular to produce his electoral victory, but the rise of tribal politics of course extends far beyond the United States and has effects much more widespread than the election of Trump. While it may be accurate to blame the exacerbation of identity politics on the Democratic party, and certainly Trump and the Republican elites have played on and exacerbated such divisions, the social and political fractures which underlie the rise of populism in the United States and Europe find their roots far beneath Trump. In reality, identity politics simply represents the overt political manifestation of underlying human needs for affiliation, belonging, and community. These needs are not restricted to any particular political party or ideology but rather emerge from the fundamentally social aspect of human nature. In this way, we are not at all distinct from other social animals who need each other to survive and thrive in a hostile world characterized by limited resources. Within the social psychological tradition, social identity theory by Tajfel pointed to the benefits in self-esteem and in-group cohesion as well as the costs in terms of out-group discrimination that followed in the wake of such identification with similar others. But of course, the motivational drive to affiliate with similar others does not result from the group itself but rather resides in intrinsic human psychological benefits which derive from a sense of belonging. And the origin and impetus of these psychological traits and mechanisms is precisely where evolutionary psychology is uniquely poised to inform our understanding of the nature of political divides and offer useful suggestions moving forward.

Indeed, research over the last decade or so across many disciplines has shown how evolutionary theory can prove critical to understanding how we arrived at this current state of political polarization and division and to offer insights into how we might move toward greater cooperation and less conflict. A deep and broad literature has focused on in-group and out-group dynamics and morality. Other work has shown that when people feel under threat, their political opinions move more to the right, and they become more authoritarian as an evolutionary ingrained reaction to protect oneself. More recently, some have focused on physical features of why some candidates appeal to our primordial needs of group belonging, while others have explored more social reasons which motivate group belonging. Hogg, Hohman, and Rivera delineate three of these. The first is sociometer theory which argues that people join groups for reasons of self-esteem; this model provides similar justification and benefits to that offered by older models of social identity theory. The second derives from terror management theory, which locates the motivation for group membership in individuals' desire to avoid thinking about their own death and thus try to manage their fear around this reality through group affiliation. From this perspective, groups validate individual worldviews, including, for example, religious beliefs, which people find comforting. Finally, uncertainty-identity models speak to people's need to reduce uncertainty through the security offered by groups which help define attitudes, norms, and roles. Group identity helps solve the functional epistemic problem of predicting what other people will do by provided established practices and preferences; they also provide the validation noted as significant by terror management theory.

Note, however, that this perspective focuses on more cognitive aspects of identity, while contestation of identity often occurs along other dimensions as well including social, relational, and constitutive. This remains significant because many of the current political divides occur along these other fractures. The rise of populism and populist discourse illustrates divisions along all these lines. This is where the growing and targeted research stream focusing on the role of evolutionary psychology and its related models becomes so directly relevant in seeking to understand the renewed rise in populism. Populism is a type of political movement highly dependent upon charismatic leaders who seek to mobilize mass constituencies through rhetoric that takes on an oppositional persona, in which the leader is simply one of the people, pitted against the system and the "elite." Populism can take on either left and right positions; populists are diverse in most all respects, with few shared characteristics with the exception of a deeply held and shared antiestablishment viewpoint.

From traditional academic perspectives of political analysis, understanding populism presents a challenge. Indeed, there is little consistent theoretical or categorical consensus around which to elucidate populism. This is perhaps where evolutionary theory can offer comparative advantage. For example, some have explicated the evolutionary foundation of dominance to explain the rise of populist leaders. McAdams suggests Trump's appeal lies in his ability and willingness to channel "primal dominance .... Like the alpha male of a chimpanzee colony, Trump leads (and inspires) through intimidation, bluster, and threat .... " This argument builds upon Wrangham and Peterson's and De Waal and Waal's groundbreaking works surrounding chimpanzee politics and the connections between apes and humans across various forms of human behavior including aggression. Human proclivity for social hierarchy, display behavior, and the psychological need for dominant leaders traces back millions of years through human evolution. Leader traits, including dominance, can be seen within the larger schema of charisma, which is believed to have "evolved as a credible signal of a person's ability to solve a coordination challenge requiring urgent collective action from group members." As noted in the work mentioned above, the urgency and importance of successfully accomplishing coordination tasks are increasingly relevant during times of uncertainty, whether economic or physical safety. Kakkar and Sivanathan, for example, find uncertainty leads to feelings of loss of personal control, which affects individuals' psychological desire to for dominant leaders.

In addition, recent models drawing on an evolutionary theory of leadership emergence suggest that dominance and prestige present dual routes to leadership. For example, recent work shows the ways in which leaders can emerge from particular constellations of pride and personality. Cheng, Tracy, and Henrich note that:

... hubristic and authentic pride, respectively, may be part of the affective-motivational suite of psychological adaptations underpinning the status-obtaining strategies of dominance and prestige .... Moreover, the two facets of pride are part of a larger suite of distinctive psychological traits uniquely associated with dominance or prestige. Specifically, dominance is positively associated with traits such as narcissism, aggression, and disagreeableness, whereas prestige is positively associated with traits such as genuine self-esteem, agreeableness, conscientiousness, achievement, advice-giving, and prosociality.

Other research has focused not so much on leader traits but more specifically on conditions that elicit states of uncertainty and threat. Perhaps one of the strongest human drives outside of mating and meeting basic survival goals is the need to be part of the group. Humans are highly responsive to pain, and group ostracism elicits the same mechanisms of pain and stress as physical pain. From an evolutionary perspective, being rejected from your social group translates into a loss of resources, status, access to mates, physical protection, and ultimately survival. The same risks exist today, though to a much lesser extent as they have been mitigated by laws and social protections, at least somewhat. Nevertheless, isolation can still produce all kinds of risk, including risks to one's health. In other words, the most basic physical and psychological processes require social support for optimal functioning.

Populist movements rely on inflammatory rhetoric to create a tribal "us versus them" condition-this type of environment instigates neural mechanisms from the evolutionary desire to be part of the group. When the public believes there is a threat to their group, there is a natural instinct to become more groupish and defend the group. Recent Populist leaders in Europe and the United States all focus on the potential threat posed by immigrants to elicit this defensive instinct and to draw support for often unrelated public policies. Perhaps no better example is Trump's presidential announcement on June sixteenth, twenty fifteen:

When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. They're not sending you, they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems .... They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists .. .

Such messages, despite being xenophobic and bigoted, trigger underlying drives for self-defense of one's community, further moving people toward populist leaders. For example, messages that counter the group's narrative often trigger a neural stress response. That is, individuals who might question group values, or take in information dissonant to their in-group, risk social exclusion. In an evolutionary sense, this would risk death, and although such attacks may no longer risk literal death, threats to one's group can feel existential in nature and trigger the same psychological mechanisms and defenses which have evolved to motivate people to seek out the protection of the group when such sanctuary often made a life or death difference. This is one reason why individuals' first and often lasting response is strongly negative when they perceive their values to be under attack, and why simply more education or the "right" information does little to change one's opinion.

Threat and fear trigger responses designed to protect the group; they provide a psychological cue which serve to engage self and group defense. As noted above in the discussion of terror management theory, a great deal of evidence shows that when mortality salience is triggered, the public will increasingly endorse the use of violence to protect themselves. The threats need not be real or immediate to evoke this response. And in today's world of advanced democracies, they rarely are. Symbols, images, and words now represent the greatest threats most peoples in democracies ever face, but as a result, these threats to worldviews and values have come to fully substitute for threats that were once much more severe, personal, and physical. Symbols become a surrogate for immortality and, as such, come to provide an element of psychological protection. As a result, if someone's idea is attacked, that person feels threatened. Simply being exposed to the image of person from a different political, religious, ethnic, sexual, or social group can thus trigger a threat response-as do their ideas. Populism simply provides an extension of identity politics, and in an evolutionary sense, all individuals want their group to be the one on top, whether they recognize or are willing to acknowledge that reality.

As can be seen, much work in this area has already been done, but there is much more to do. Here, we point to two specific areas where greater attention and research might help provide some productive avenues for understanding the deepening nature of the current political divide and working to achieve greater cooperation. These involve the role of technological innovation in facilitating communication, and the role of institutions in structuring and enforcing constraints on individual action.