In the target article, Hibbing et al. suggest that the multifarious, varied, and diverse differences between liberal and conservative socio-political ideologies can be traced to one organizing element: that, relative to liberals, conservatives register greater physiological responses and devote more psychological resources to features of the environment that are negative. This conception allows them to integrate findings from an impressively wide range of research domains. Although agreeing that this hypothesis is correct and substantiated by a great deal of evidence summarized thoroughly and comprehensively in the target article, I suggest that this phenomenon is secondary to an even more fundamental organizing element that is emotional in nature: that liberal socio-political ideology emerges from secure attachment, whereas conservative ideology reflects insecure attachment. Secure and insecure attachment in this example can be either a trait, as in general attachment orientation; or a state, as in attachment security in a given situation or with a given individual. This hypothesis allows the already comprehensive and widely applicable viewpoint of the target article to be applied to an even broader range of research and theory.
Where political views are concerned, some of the most relevant negative features of the environment are other people, and there is evidence that the responses of liberals and conservatives to other persons is quite different. As noted in the target article, the liberal-conservative contrast has long been noted in political theory. Bertrand Russell (Reference Russell1945) suggested that the basic foundations of modern conservatism and liberalism relate to the conceptions of the social contract used in Europe to support theories of political legitimacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as the theory of the divine right of kings was increasingly questioned. These conceptions were based largely on the nature of life in the “state of nature” prior to the social contract. In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) argued that all are motivated by instincts for self-preservation to dominate others while maintaining their own freedom (Hobbes Reference Hobbes and Macpherson1651/1982). The resulting universal war of all against all made life in the state of nature “nasty, brutish, and short,” and the social contract was established as a universal peace treaty to end this conflict. In contrast, John Locke (1632–1704) suggested that people in the state of nature lived together peacefully without leaders according to reason and natural law (Locke Reference Locke and Macpherson1689/1980). Conservatives have historically taken the more pessimistic, Hobbesian view of human nature as essentially selfish, requiring constraints by authority and tradition; whereas liberals tend to have an optimistic view of human perfectibility, preferring the greatest possible freedom of the individual.
This difference in the tendency to regard other persons as negative has implications for social emotions, particularly when the other is in a less powerful position relative to the responder. Among other things, the relatively greater security of liberals prompts them to regard the less fortunate with pity, whereas more anxiously attached conservatives tend to regard them with scorn. This is consistent with the analysis of Haidt (Reference Haidt, Davidson, Scherer and Goldsmith2003), who described “other condemning” social/moral emotions – anger, disgust, and contempt – and a conservative “disgust-based moral order,” which condemns people for what they are more than what they do, and tends to ostracize and excludes members of out-groups (based upon ethnicity, religion, social class, sexual orientation, etc.). The attachment-security argument also suggests a developmental origin of the liberal-conservative difference, consistent with Lakoff's (Reference Lakoff2002) suggestion that liberal thought centers around the Nurturing Parent model of the family as opposed to Strict Father model of morality underlying conservative thought.
The attachment-security argument also has specific implications regarding the likely effects of social threat and consequent widespread insecurity on liberal versus conservative tendencies in society. Specifically, there is evidence that social threats such as economic insecurity are associated with increases in conservative tendencies in society, whereas times of security tend to encourage liberal orientations. It is noteworthy that in the Adorno et al. (Reference Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson and Sanford1950) Authoritarian Personality work that produced the F (Fascism) scale, political–economic conservatism (PEC) was explicitly considered an ideology related to prejudice, along with ethnocentrism (E) and Anti-Semitism (AS). This work held that prejudice is based upon parents' status anxiety leading to harsh child discipline, consequent repression of aggressive and sexual feelings on the part of the child, and displacement of aggression toward weaker groups that was rationalized by projecting one's unacceptable sexual and aggressive impulses on those groups. That psychoanalytically based view of prejudice was questioned by those who noted that prejudice varied regionally according to local norms, rather than by personality (e.g., Pettigrew Reference Pettigrew1961); and that experimentally-induced failure increases both F scale scores and tendencies to reject out-groups (e.g., Sales & Friend Reference Sales and Friend1973). Sales (Reference Sales1972; Reference Sales1973) presented evidence that instances of social threat (e.g., economic upheavals) have historically been associated with increases in attendance at authoritarian churches and other evidence of authoritarianism (e.g., power-oriented comic book characters, loyalty oaths, suppression of erotica).
More recent studies have supported and extended this evidence. For example, Doty et al. (Reference Doty, Peterson and Winter1991) distinguished “dispositional authoritarians,” intrinsically inclined to accept and encourage authoritarian organizations and activities; and “situational authoritarians,” who adopt or reject authoritarian behaviors according to the “climate of threat” (p. 639). That view is also consistent with classic analyses of social movements made by sociologists and political scientists, including Brinton (Reference Brinton1938), Hoffer (Reference Hoffer1951), Kornhauser (Reference Kornhauser1959), and Lipset (Reference Lipset1960), who claimed that revolutionary social movements are based upon complex problems that threaten security and that a group cannot deal with. The complex problems go unrecognized, and the group in question instead focuses on pseudoproblems that are concrete, simple, and easy to deal with. The discontented group may feel that their irritation is caused by minority groups, particularly when a history of conflict is present (Allport Reference Allport1954).
The view that liberalism and conservatism differ in attachment security is consistent both with the classic literature and the new research summarized in the target article. It can allow theory and research on political orientation to be connected with the burgeoning research literature on attachment, with potentially beneficial implications for both areas of study.
In the target article, Hibbing et al. suggest that the multifarious, varied, and diverse differences between liberal and conservative socio-political ideologies can be traced to one organizing element: that, relative to liberals, conservatives register greater physiological responses and devote more psychological resources to features of the environment that are negative. This conception allows them to integrate findings from an impressively wide range of research domains. Although agreeing that this hypothesis is correct and substantiated by a great deal of evidence summarized thoroughly and comprehensively in the target article, I suggest that this phenomenon is secondary to an even more fundamental organizing element that is emotional in nature: that liberal socio-political ideology emerges from secure attachment, whereas conservative ideology reflects insecure attachment. Secure and insecure attachment in this example can be either a trait, as in general attachment orientation; or a state, as in attachment security in a given situation or with a given individual. This hypothesis allows the already comprehensive and widely applicable viewpoint of the target article to be applied to an even broader range of research and theory.
Where political views are concerned, some of the most relevant negative features of the environment are other people, and there is evidence that the responses of liberals and conservatives to other persons is quite different. As noted in the target article, the liberal-conservative contrast has long been noted in political theory. Bertrand Russell (Reference Russell1945) suggested that the basic foundations of modern conservatism and liberalism relate to the conceptions of the social contract used in Europe to support theories of political legitimacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as the theory of the divine right of kings was increasingly questioned. These conceptions were based largely on the nature of life in the “state of nature” prior to the social contract. In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) argued that all are motivated by instincts for self-preservation to dominate others while maintaining their own freedom (Hobbes Reference Hobbes and Macpherson1651/1982). The resulting universal war of all against all made life in the state of nature “nasty, brutish, and short,” and the social contract was established as a universal peace treaty to end this conflict. In contrast, John Locke (1632–1704) suggested that people in the state of nature lived together peacefully without leaders according to reason and natural law (Locke Reference Locke and Macpherson1689/1980). Conservatives have historically taken the more pessimistic, Hobbesian view of human nature as essentially selfish, requiring constraints by authority and tradition; whereas liberals tend to have an optimistic view of human perfectibility, preferring the greatest possible freedom of the individual.
This difference in the tendency to regard other persons as negative has implications for social emotions, particularly when the other is in a less powerful position relative to the responder. Among other things, the relatively greater security of liberals prompts them to regard the less fortunate with pity, whereas more anxiously attached conservatives tend to regard them with scorn. This is consistent with the analysis of Haidt (Reference Haidt, Davidson, Scherer and Goldsmith2003), who described “other condemning” social/moral emotions – anger, disgust, and contempt – and a conservative “disgust-based moral order,” which condemns people for what they are more than what they do, and tends to ostracize and excludes members of out-groups (based upon ethnicity, religion, social class, sexual orientation, etc.). The attachment-security argument also suggests a developmental origin of the liberal-conservative difference, consistent with Lakoff's (Reference Lakoff2002) suggestion that liberal thought centers around the Nurturing Parent model of the family as opposed to Strict Father model of morality underlying conservative thought.
The attachment-security argument also has specific implications regarding the likely effects of social threat and consequent widespread insecurity on liberal versus conservative tendencies in society. Specifically, there is evidence that social threats such as economic insecurity are associated with increases in conservative tendencies in society, whereas times of security tend to encourage liberal orientations. It is noteworthy that in the Adorno et al. (Reference Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson and Sanford1950) Authoritarian Personality work that produced the F (Fascism) scale, political–economic conservatism (PEC) was explicitly considered an ideology related to prejudice, along with ethnocentrism (E) and Anti-Semitism (AS). This work held that prejudice is based upon parents' status anxiety leading to harsh child discipline, consequent repression of aggressive and sexual feelings on the part of the child, and displacement of aggression toward weaker groups that was rationalized by projecting one's unacceptable sexual and aggressive impulses on those groups. That psychoanalytically based view of prejudice was questioned by those who noted that prejudice varied regionally according to local norms, rather than by personality (e.g., Pettigrew Reference Pettigrew1961); and that experimentally-induced failure increases both F scale scores and tendencies to reject out-groups (e.g., Sales & Friend Reference Sales and Friend1973). Sales (Reference Sales1972; Reference Sales1973) presented evidence that instances of social threat (e.g., economic upheavals) have historically been associated with increases in attendance at authoritarian churches and other evidence of authoritarianism (e.g., power-oriented comic book characters, loyalty oaths, suppression of erotica).
More recent studies have supported and extended this evidence. For example, Doty et al. (Reference Doty, Peterson and Winter1991) distinguished “dispositional authoritarians,” intrinsically inclined to accept and encourage authoritarian organizations and activities; and “situational authoritarians,” who adopt or reject authoritarian behaviors according to the “climate of threat” (p. 639). That view is also consistent with classic analyses of social movements made by sociologists and political scientists, including Brinton (Reference Brinton1938), Hoffer (Reference Hoffer1951), Kornhauser (Reference Kornhauser1959), and Lipset (Reference Lipset1960), who claimed that revolutionary social movements are based upon complex problems that threaten security and that a group cannot deal with. The complex problems go unrecognized, and the group in question instead focuses on pseudoproblems that are concrete, simple, and easy to deal with. The discontented group may feel that their irritation is caused by minority groups, particularly when a history of conflict is present (Allport Reference Allport1954).
The view that liberalism and conservatism differ in attachment security is consistent both with the classic literature and the new research summarized in the target article. It can allow theory and research on political orientation to be connected with the burgeoning research literature on attachment, with potentially beneficial implications for both areas of study.