Elster and Adaptive Preference Formations

Elster provides a novel interpretation of the fable. His interest stems from his critique of utilitarianism and social choice theory. Utilitarians and social choice theorists argue that justice ought to be defined as satisfaction of desire. They assume, moreover, that all choices are made within a set of constraints, that is, not all desires can be satisfied. For example, an individual desires to go to medical school but cannot gain admission. Thus, his choice is constrained, and his desire will not be satisfied because medical school is not in his possibility set. According to Elster, this equation generally holds. However, in some circumstances, he thinks “that the preferences underlying a choice may be shaped by the constraints.”Footnote ⁷ The concept of sour grapes is meant to explain this phenomenon. For the utilitarian, sour grapes is not a problem because the fox suffers no loss in not obtaining the grapes, that is, he thinks them sour anyway. But, as Elster points out, “the cause of his holding them to be sour was his conviction that he would be excluded from consuming them.”Footnote ⁸ Utilitarian and social choice theorists thus overdraw the distinction between a choice and a constraint, falsely assuming the latter never has an effect on the former. As such, their cause and effect model is too simplistic and is in need of supplementation.

Elster fashions his own term for sour grapes: “adaptive preference formations.” An adaptive preference formation occurs when an individual cannot satisfy a desire, he or she becomes frustrated, and suffers from cognitive dissonance. To alleviate this psychological discomfort, he or she needs to reset his or her preferences and remove from consideration the frustrated desire. In his discussion, Elster draws out several features of this mental process. First, adaptive preference formations are not consciously undertaken. They are, rather, a “trick of the mind.”Footnote ⁹ Unlike Stoics or Buddhists, who intentionally and carefully reflect upon and choose paths of resignation and “accepting the inevitable,” sour grapes is done usually without a trace of self-awareness. Thus, Stoics may be said to freely choose while those acting out of adaptive preferences cannot. Second, adaptive preference formations are backward or “retroactive” thinking exercises, as individuals re-weigh their preferences after they cannot achieve some of them.Footnote ¹⁰ As a result, adaptive preferences often overshoot their mark and are poorly pitched to the reality of the situation. Third, they tend to be negative and “take the form of downgrading inaccessible options.”Footnote ¹¹ Fourth, adaptive preference formations are not to be confused with manipulations, rationalizations, or addictions. A tyrant who compels the people he oppresses to accept his rule is not inducing adaptive preference formations because sour grapes are something we do to ourselves. Likewise, while overlap exists, sour grapes are not rationalizations, either. Someone who loses out on a promotion and blames it on superiors who fear his abilities is not experiencing sour grapes. Though the phenomenon is similar and may arise from the same cause, the person still wants the job. His preferences remain the same, although his perception of his work environment has changed somewhat. Finally, Elster observes, drug addicts do not experience sour grapes because their preferences do not come from frustration but a biological source.

Elster's discussion of the fable is illuminating. He understands that sour grapes behavior is dependent upon a series of mental and cognitive processes, for example, self-deception, frustration, eventual resignation, and after-the-fact calculations designed to make unobtainable objects less desirable. Moreover, his distinctions between sour grapes and drug addiction, rationalizations, and so forth are also instructive. However, his analysis is unconvincing in two respects. First, he mischaracterizes the fox's reaction to his failure. He claims that the fox readjusts his attitude toward the grapes. More accurately, he is readjusting the chemical makeup of the grapes to fit his attitude. It is reality that changes, not his desires. The fox still wants grapes—that fact has not changed. If somehow the grapes were to be made available, Elster implies, presumably he would give up the fiction that they are sour and consume them. He can only reduce his desire for grapes by falsely attributing to them attributes they do not have, namely, that they are sour.Footnote ¹²

Second, his explanation as to why frustration leads to self-deception is not altogether satisfying. In Sour Grapes, he suggests, citing the social psychologist Leon Festinger, that it is a problem of cognitive dissonance, that is, the psychological discomfort one experiences when holding inconsistent beliefs.Footnote ¹³ Festinger contends that one way to minimize cognitive dissonance is to denigrate one of the beliefs responsible for the inconsistency.Footnote ¹⁴ His most helpful example is an individual who has the option of attending a concert or accepting a dinner invitation. While he finds both appealing, he chooses the latter and seeks to minimize his dissonance by attempting “to think of every bad thing he can about the concert.”Footnote ¹⁵ That is, he convinces himself that the concert is sour.

Additionally, Elster buttresses Festinger's insights with Paul Veyne's historical study of large-scale public gift-giving in antiquity, “euergetism,”Footnote ¹⁶ which he thinks helps explain the extreme reaction of the fox. Veyne incorporates Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory in his analysis of social-class relations in the ancient world. According to Veyne, to showcase their excellence, the superior men would engage in “gift giving” à la Marcel Mauss to the society at large, for instance, building a theater. For their part, “the Greek plebs eventually adjusted itself to the fate that its history had created for it, and the small advantages that this offered.”Footnote ¹⁷ In other words, the masses accepted their lowly status and the fact that superiority was out of reach in exchange for the benefits of euergetism. To make this choice more palatable, they denigrated social mobility in a manner similar to Festinger's dinner invitee with concerts. The plebs' adaptations, Veyne thinks, are essentially a form of resignation. Importantly, he adds to Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory through his own theory of “overadaption,” according to which people not only adapt to their social position but overadapt to it. That is, they overstate the direness of their predicament and too hastily resign themselves to their fate. Veyne's most persuasive example of this phenomenon comes from tyranny. Lacking a possible alternative, victims of an oppressive order will mystify the tyrant's power and come to believe that he is much stronger than he really is so that it is emotionally more appealing to accept their unfortunate circumstances. These exaggerations lead to overreactions akin to that of the fox rejecting the grapes as sour.

Both of these possible explanations for sour grapes are interesting, but neither fully captures its meaning. With regard to Festinger, sour grapes is not really about holding two inconsistent beliefs. The fox is not trying to diminish an attractive alternative (going to a concert). Rather, he has no alternative. The point is that there are no available options. If sour grapes is to be categorized as cognitive dissonance, then it is important to recognize that not all cases of cognitive dissonance are alike. In the case of sour grapes, internal tensions are caused by frustration and failure, which involve different cognitive and emotional processes than simply holding inconsistent desires.Footnote ¹⁸ Thus, Elster's analysis needs to be more precise. Veyne's theory of overadaptation appears closer to the mark, as it has the virtue of explaining the intensity of the fox's reaction. It is doubtful, however, that the fox is experiencing resignation. While the fox is overreacting, it is unclear that he is “overadapting” like Veyne's Roman victims of tyranny. Rather than resign himself to his fate and magnify his vulnerability, he rebels against it by imagining for himself a whole new reality in which he reaffirms his strengths. So, in a few ways, Elster misses the psychological adjustment that occurs in sour grapes. First, there is not a contraction of desire, but a distortion of the desired object. Second, these distortions inspire rebellion and self-affirmation, not resignation and an exaggerated sense of weakness.

Sartre: A Phenomenology of Emotions

The primary virtue of Sartre's theory of emotions, and subsequent treatment of the fox and the grapes, is that it does not make Elster's mistakes. He fully appreciates that the fox's distortion of reality results from frustration and understands it as an act of rebellion. Sartre explains this propensity to remake reality through an odd hybrid of Cartesian dualism and Heideggerian phenomenology. In the spirit of Descartes, Sartre assumes a dualism between the external world and individual consciousness. According to Sartre, the external world is deterministic, operating according to its own set of mechanical laws independent of humans. Consciousness, on the other hand, is distinct from this deterministic world and refers to the manner in which we apprehend or experience the world and involve ourselves in it. Sartre thinks that consciousness is the realm of freedom—it can both resist and manipulate the external world. There is a limit, however, to how much humans can influence events in the external world. It is a difficult place that is sometimes inhospitable to even the most well-thought out plans. At one time or another, humans will find themselves in situations in which their plans are completely frustrated and there is no path by which to realize them.

Emotions, for Sartre, are a byproduct of this dance between free consciousness and the deterministic external world. When a person's desires and plans are frustrated, and he or she has exhausted every means by which to manipulate the external world, he or she reaches a psychological impasse. The impossibility of realizing a plan or satisfying a desire, however, does not immediately annihilate it. It still exists in the planner's consciousness, even if it is doomed to failure. The situation is thus not fully resolved and some action is required. So, what does the planner do? This is where emotion comes in. According to Sartre, an emotion is “a transformation of the world.”Footnote ¹⁹ Obviously, emotions do not physically change the world. Rather, they change our orientation toward the world, the way we apprehend it. They allow us to see the world in a different light so we can transcend our frustration. Emotion, in short, “is a way of acting on ourselves when action in the pragmatic world is of no avail.”Footnote ²⁰ When instrumental or calculative rationality fails to deliver, an emotional sleight of hand, so to speak, produces another form of consciousness. Or, put another way, we interpret—perhaps deceive—our way out of our frustration. At times, Sartre speaks of emotions as “magical.” Through a simple act of imagination, emotion makes the mechanical, deterministic, and unaccommodating world disappear and replaces it with one more tolerable. Thus, for Sartre, emotions involve a creative cognitive process that gives birth to a new reality equipped with a new set of attitudes and beliefs about the nature of the world.Footnote ²¹

While Sartre provides several examples with which to clarify his theory, his most effective one is the fox and the grapes. Frustrated by an inability to procure the grapes, the fox becomes irritated. For Sartre, this irritation is a way of seeing the world and replaces the earlier consciousness of desiring and strategizing. The world is no longer an inviting place in which the fox can satisfy his preferences. Rather, he is now in tension with it and sees it as an unwelcoming foreign force that acts against him. The fox is thus caught in a frustration loop and needs to transform the world and apprehend it in a new way. He needs to move on. To that end, he decides the grapes have soured and no longer wants them. He has “magically transformed” the grapes into something undesirable. Unable to manipulate the external world, the fox manipulates the one thing in his control: himself. Speaking for the fox, Sartre asserts, “I confer the required quality upon the grapes magically.”Footnote ²² He fashions a new attitude toward them, namely, not wanting them, so that he can “resolve the conflict and put an end to the tension.” However, his attitude adjustment is dependent upon consciousness annihilating the situation, that is, denying the actual existence of the demeaning reality of the situation and creating a new one in which the grapes possess the “required” qualities for making them undesirable.

There are other important points of difference between Sartre's analysis of emotions and Elster's adaptive preference formations. Fundamentally, both theories begin with the assumption that intolerable frustrations give rise to a peculiar sort of self-deception. The two, however, emphasize different aspects of the cognitive processes involved in self-deception. Elster's focus is on how constraints shape preferences. As previously argued, he fails to capture the scope of the fox's self-deception—that he has created a whole new reality out of thin air. Sartre, it bears repeating, is far more attuned to the fox's attempt to remake reality. For him, the question of preference formation is reducible to it. The act of desiring is a state of mind, as is the reaction of failing to satisfy a given desire.

Second, like Elster, Sartre maintains that emotions are not necessarily or even usually consciously chosen. Accordingly, he assumes that humans are prereflective, meaning they “usually … are unreflectively engaged in grasping the world as a reality which is coloured by [their] emotions or intentions.”Footnote ²³ In short, humans typically are not aware their emotions are transforming the world and making a new reality. In the fable, the fox is unaware that his rejection of the grapes is really a frustration reaction. Sartre thinks that for emotions to transform the world, we have to fully believe in them: the fox has to really think the grapes are sour. Taking a step back and becoming aware of our “magical transformations” would be to let ourselves in on the joke we are playing on ourselves. If we did so, we would revert back to the old world and the unbearable situation of the impossibility of realizing our plans. To create a new reality, one must believe it is real. As a result, our emotional orientations toward the world can be quite durable. Presumably, emotions like resentment or hatred can structure one's consciousness for years, decades, or perhaps a full lifetime.Footnote ²⁴

Elster and Sartre, however, differ on the particulars. Elster argues that rational decision-making is the rule and sour grapes an occasional exception. By contrast, Sartre believes that humans usually are in a prereflective mode and only sometimes are able to become free, self-determining agents. While “emotional consciousness is at first non-reflective,”Footnote ²⁵ Sartre is adamant that humans have by nature “the possibility of self-detachment.”Footnote ²⁶ In this state of “self-detachment,” it is possible to become aware of one's ability to take responsibility for one's choices. This awareness, however, is as unpleasant as it is infrequent. Freedom for him is a burden that most find psychologically troubling. In rather dramatic language, Sartre famously describes the realization of our freedom as “anguish”Footnote ²⁷ and laments that “man is condemned to be free.” Most people avoid such feelings whenever possible, thereby avoiding their freedom. Even if they are more willing to accept responsibility, Sartre concedes that the mental state of anguish is exceptional and rarely called for in everyday life.Footnote ²⁸ Thus, while Sartre leaves open the possibility of freedom with regard to our emotions, he concedes that self-conscious moments in which we choose emotional states, like awareness of freedom, are exceptional.Footnote ²⁹

In believing that self-deceptive, prereflective behavior to be the norm, Sartre commits himself to a much more ambitious view of sour grapes than Elster. His use of the fable is not designed to shed light on some idiosyncratic behavior or to supplement social choice theory but serve as a general theory of emotions. And, as a general theory, Sartre's theory can hardly be labeled a success. Scholars have had little trouble identifying its many flaws. Murdoch, for example, complains that the theory is too narrow and cannot account for a wide range of moods. Some moods are too indeterminate to have any purpose and others, such as aesthetic or religious emotions, simply are not coping mechanisms.Footnote ³⁰ Furthermore, contemporary psychology holds that many basic emotions involve social bonding, sexuality, and fighting, which have little to do with frustration. Additionally, Solomon contends that Sartre's theory leaves no room for positive emotions that compel humans to commit acts of love, friendship, and kindness.Footnote ³¹ Second, Sartre's theory of nonreflective behavior is badly in need of elaboration, and at times appears to confuse reflection with self-consciousness, and at other times is too simplistic.Footnote ³² The essay, ultimately, is what it purports to be, an outline, and should not be considered a systematic theory.Footnote ³³ Nonetheless, it serves well as an explanation of sour grapes, and is more compelling in some respects than Elster's later analysis (and in others, it is less helpful).

Even with adjusted expectations, however, Sartre's theory is unsatisfying in one crucial respect. He never explains why frustrated desires require the mind to shift consciousness and annihilate its former orientation toward the world. In other words, Sartre never asks the question why the fox has to convince himself the grapes are undesirable. Why, to reiterate an earlier point, doesn't he concede the obvious reality of the situation, that the grapes are out of reach, and then calculate his way to satisfying his second-order preference, for instance, consuming a delicious box of fig newtons? Or, why can't he simply curse his predicament of unsatisfied hunger and be done with it? Sartre just assumes that frustration is traumatic and sets in motion a powerful emotional defense mechanism. If Elster provides an unconvincing answer via Festinger and Veyne, Sartre fails to address it at all. His theory of emotions accounts both for too much and for too little. It fails as a general theory and on the micro level makes no effort to examine the deeper psychological issues involved in sour grapes.

To more fully comprehend these deeper psychological issues that elude Sartre, both a psychological and a cultural analysis are necessary. On the psychological side of things, Sartre needs to explain why frustrated desire is so traumatic that it requires a person to alter his or her perception of reality. With regard to culture, it is important to recognize that sour grapes is triggered by events in the world—a world that is filled with all sorts of attitudes, beliefs, and practices that shape how we apprehend it. Sour grapes is not only a cognitive phenomenon. There is an interplay between psychology and culture that can shed light upon both the frequency and intensity of sour grapes.

Sour Grapes and Amour-Propre

Concerning psychology, recall from La Fontaine's version that the fox not only dismisses the grapes as “too green” but goes on to comment that they might be acceptable for those with less discriminating tastes. An important lesson may be inferred from this reaction. La Fontaine's fox is more concerned with his failure than his hunger. Again, he does not say, “I am not hungry anyways,” which would be another way to transform the world and emotionally move past his frustration. Rather, he immediately compares himself to other individuals who might have succeeded where he failed. Such comparisons are intolerable for him, so he disparages those people as having poor taste. In his slight alteration of the fable, La Fontaine manages to change the theme from frustrated desire to failure. He gets that it is about self-affirmation. In so doing, he introduces a new psychology that best explains the fox's apparent overreaction. The psychology he describes, in fact, seems to have much in common with amour-propre—a popular psychological concept in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European intellectual life.

Amour-propre is typically translated in English as vanity.Footnote ³⁴ As with sour grapes, however, it is difficult to come up with a short, adequate philosophical definition of the concept. Judging from the most famous secular versions of it, those of Mandeville and Rousseau, there are five cognitive and environmental components of amour-propre that are crucial for defining it.Footnote ³⁵ First, amour-propre touches upon questions of self-worth and the value of one's life. It asks, “Do I count for something?”Footnote ³⁶ It assumes that people have existential needs, namely, the need to know that their lives are meaningful and valuable.Footnote ³⁷ In a highly regarded essay, Frankfurt identifies a similar notion that he terms “second-order desires,” or as they are sometimes referred to, metapreferences. Second-order desires involve questions of selfhood and identity (what sort of person we want to be), which require reflection and spiritual evaluation. According to Frankfurt, these are distinct from first-order desires, “which are desires to do or not to do one thing or another.”Footnote ³⁸

Second, amour-propre is comparative. To learn about their self-worth and the meaning of their lives, individuals typically, though not necessarily, use their peers as a measuring stick of their intrinsic value.Footnote ³⁹ This often gives interpersonal comparisons a zero-sum quality; that is, amour-propre “feeds itself … constantly at the expense of [one's] neighbors.”Footnote ⁴⁰ While this can be overstated, the idea is that a person's worth is determined relative to one's neighbors, so I can only “win” if you “lose.”Footnote ⁴¹

Third, the process of determining one's self-worth is cumulative. People are constantly assessing their existential value, and build a narrative of their life based on their repeated comparisons with their peers. This narrative translates into a durable individual identity. In Emile, Rousseau calls this phenomenon the “sentiment of identity,” and links it to memory: “Memory extends the sentiment of identity to all the moments of his existence; he becomes truly one, the same.”Footnote ⁴² This is not to say that a person's identity is static. Indeed, there is always the threat of it changing with each new encounter. As Rousseau states, “as soon as amour-propre is developed, the relative I is constantly in play.”Footnote ⁴³ Still, once established, identities are difficult to alter.

Fourth, amour-propre is rarely acknowledged and people often convince themselves that they act from loftier motives. As Mandeville playfully notes, “pride and vanity have built more hospitals than all the virtues together.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Philanthropists, of course, rarely admit to this, and insist they are acting out of virtue. More generally, Rousseau claims that self-deception “is the natural game of amour-propre: one sees what one believes and not what one sees.”Footnote ⁴⁵

Finally, continuous interpersonal comparisons can lead to excessive self-consciousness. Always evaluating themselves, individuals may become obsessed with how others view them and how they stack up against their peers. As a result of this self-consciousness, it is not necessary to actually have someone present with whom to compare oneself. As Sartre notes in Being and Nothingness, once humans experience the “gaze of others,” they learn to think of themselves in the third person and judge themselves against abstract “others” even when no actual person is available for comparison.Footnote ⁴⁶ Put these all together, and amour-propre assumes that individuals care deeply about their individual identity and how it is valued by their peers. Life is thus viewed as a constant competition to outdo one's neighbors in order to earn public applause and hence a positive self-image.

To be sure, the brevity of the fable makes it impossible to make a full-fledged diagnosis of the fox's emotional state. However, his reaction to his failure is consistent with someone suffering from amour-propre. For one, as previously mentioned, the fox seems more disturbed by his failure than by his hunger, as evidenced by the fact that he feels the need to disparage the grapes themselves and anyone who succeeds at reaching them. His failure induces him to ask the fundamental question of amour-propre: What is my self-worth? Second, he is making interpersonal comparisons. Even though he is alone, he has already imagined how others might perceive his failure, and has come up with coping mechanism for any possible loss of social respect (individuals who can reach the grapes have inferior taste). He perceives his private failure in social terms. Third, he takes his failure in this one instance as indicative of his individual identity. The fact that he cares so much about one episode of failure suggests he is thinking about his identity over time. Fourth, he is prereflective, and shows no trace of awareness of his emotional states. And last, his parting shot at potential rivals who succeed in attaining the grapes is low-level evidence of his inflamed self-consciousness. He cares too much about such a trivial event.

In sum, if the moral of the fable is about the failure to get what we want rather than simply not getting what we want, that is, a failure reaction rather than a frustration reaction, it becomes easier to identify the various cognitive and mental processes assumed by Aesop and especially La Fontaine. As a result, it is possible to get a clearer picture as to why the fox has to malign the grapes and those who can reach them. While it is true that amour-propre is only a sufficient and not a necessary condition of sour grapes, it can be assumed that sour grapes can be triggered by any activity or event that touches on the value and meaning of one's personality—even if the activity or event appears trivial from a distance. Whatever other causes may induce sour grapes, it is arguably linked to the existential desire to think well of oneself. Both Sartre and Elster tell us much about the cognitive processes that underlie sour grapes. However, there is more going on with the anthropomorphized fox than backwards-thinking exercises, a reshuffling of desires, or a reinterpretation of the world. A profoundly “human” concern for dignity and self-worth operates beneath all these cognitive activities.

Amour-Propre and Democracy

Tocqueville's Democracy in America provides an ideal setting with which to examine the cultural factors that can contribute to sour grapes behavior, broadly understood to include amour-propre.Footnote ⁴⁷ His portrait of the American psyche is largely a deduction from America's belief in equality. It is probably fair to say that for Tocqueville, equality is a form of consciousness, that is, a way of apprehending the world that gives rise to particular reasoning patterns and a specific emotional disposition. There is, so to speak, “a sentiment of equality.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Additionally, it is easy to link this sentiment of equality to amour-propre.Footnote ⁴⁹ Arguably, equality is a solution to amour-propre, as its goal is leveling and homogeneity. Everyone is supposed to have the same value as everyone else. Throughout Democracy, Tocqueville clearly recognizes that it is a poor solution—that it paradoxically inflames amour-propre. While it seeks to minimize individual differences, the homogeneity it encourages magnifies the importance of individuality and ensures that questions of self-worth are “constantly in play.”Footnote ⁵⁰ It encourages people to look at and compare themselves to their neighbors.

According to Tocqueville, democrats believe in “complete equality,” meaning that in addition to holding common liberal beliefs in economic and political equality, they believe they are fundamentally as good as everyone else.Footnote ⁵¹ Equality is conceptualized primarily in terms of dignity and self-worth. Tocqueville was immediately impressed by this point. In his notebooks, he states, “at bottom, they [Americans] feel themselves to be, and they are, equal.”Footnote ⁵² Equality for democrats answers the question, “Do I count for something?” The answer is affirmative: I count as much as everyone else.

This simple question, however, leads to numerous problems. Tocqueville thinks democrats are bound to be frustrated because “complete equality” is almost impossible to sustain in real life. While democrats imagine themselves inferior to no one, the cold reality is that humans are naturally unequal in many respects. Some are more intelligent, physically attractive, and so forth than others. To quote Dr. Johnson, “no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire superiority over the other.”Footnote ⁵³ Around every corner and every encounter is some inequality waiting to reveal itself. When people actually compare themselves with one another, they will not see equality. Lamberti contends that people in democracies learn to forget or train themselves not to see inequality: “wherever equality of conditions prevails, a powerful collective image of equality can make people forget about de facto inequalities, even those of considerable magnitude.”Footnote ⁵⁴ While this is sometimes true, it is easy to identify limits to such forgetting.

The commitment to equality requires that social rewards and honors be distributed through competitions that make it nearly impossible to ignore inequality. For Tocqueville, equality and competition imply each other. Given that “complete equality” entails both economic and political equality, wealth and public honors can only be distributed along the lines of competition. Superiorities have to be earned, and are not distributed by last name or monarchical proclamation.Footnote ⁵⁵ On the other side of the coin, meaningful “competition can only be an interaction between equals.”Footnote ⁵⁶ The logic of competition, however, is to annihilate equality—competitions are designed to create winners and losers. This being so, equality will be frustrated and a person's public identity and self-worth will always be in play as individuals are free to rise and fall. Johnson's natural inequalities have ample opportunity to find expression. Once everyone is free to utilize their talents and has the opportunity to climb the social ladder, natural variability will be set in motion and be visible for all to see. This is one of Tocqueville's most seductive paradoxes. Democrats are socialized to think they are as good as everyone else and thus deserve the same political and economic rights. The exercise of those rights, however, both draws attention to and rewards existing natural inequalities that undermine any idea that everyone is equally good, deserving, and valuable. Tocqueville thus concludes that “democratic institutions awaken and flatter the passion for equality without ever being able to satisfy it entirely.”Footnote ⁵⁷ Not surprisingly, Tocqueville's Americans are suspicious of talent, wealth, or any other phenomenon that leads to inequality. They become resentful and bitter, and “are tired of the sight of any superiority, however legitimate.”Footnote ⁵⁸

This problem, in fact, is more complicated than might first appear and cannot be resolved through efforts to limit real-world inequality. When most have roughly the same social standing, even minor differences take on tremendous importance: “when each sees a million others around him all with the same or similar claims to be proud, pride becomes exacting and jealous.”Footnote ⁵⁹ The democratic consciousness has a heightened sensitivity to inequality, and can spot it with little effort. The more equal people are, the harder they look for inequality. Comparisons become more and more fine-tuned, and even the most mundane activities can touch upon powerful and frightening questions of a person's value, such as the inability to secure high-hanging fruit. Thus, Lamberti is too optimistic. Collective identities will be a weak palliative in individualistic societies dedicated to equality.

“Complete equality,” furthermore, cannot be satisfied by universalizing poverty and suffering (“I may be poor, but at least I am no worse off than anyone else”). Equality, Tocqueville argues, “rouses in all men a desire to be strong and respected.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Winning and losing aside, equality also threatens to undermine absolute levels of individual strength and stability. Why? The conditions of equality insist upon the division of estates, as democrats reject the idea of primogeniture. If everyone is equal, it is sensible to deduce that no one ought to be given special financial privileges based on the arbitrariness of birth order. As a consequence, it becomes difficult to accumulate wealth and ensure financial stability. Wealth built up in one generation is divided up among all the siblings, thus diluting its power. Most rich children, unless they make their own money, become middle-class adults. For Tocqueville, however, middle-class existence is precarious. The middle rank has the money neither to shield itself from unexpected misfortune nor to remain wholly independent. Thus, far from creating conditions that lead to economic strength, most democrats are in a position of insecurity and weakness. Tocqueville observes that democrats “can hardly do anything for themselves.”Footnote ⁶¹ Again, this leaves the average democrat in a tenuous position. Owing to his belief in equality, he thinks himself as good as everyone else and hence worthy of respect. However, the same belief in equality that gives him the expectation of strength—and hence respect—also places him in a socioeconomic situation that undermines those very desires. It is rare for someone to attain the economic security required for feelings of strength and respect. Democrats thus have a bruising relationship with equality. They love and celebrate it, but it often disappoints them and fails to live up to its promise. It is the source of dignity and indignity alike.

Thus, to reiterate, equality is a poor means with which to dampen amour-propre and put the relative “I” out of play. The identity of equality is too precarious and too unrealistic to reliably ensure self-worth. The fluidity of democratic life means that democrats always have to protect their public “favorability ratings,” and cannot seamlessly blend into a homogenous mass.

Magical Transformations in Tocqueville's Americans

As a consequence of their amour-propre, Tocqueville's democrats are wont to magically transform their world. Like Sartre's fox conferring upon the grapes chemical properties they do not have, democratic fears of inequality and failure beget new ways of “apprehending” the external world and reinterpreting threats to their equality.Footnote ⁶² When democrats witness any superiority, they immediately find reasons to downgrade it and deceive themselves into thinking that it is not a true superiority. The best example of this phenomenon from the text is the democratic unwillingness to vote for “men of merit” to political office. According to Tocqueville, average citizens refuse to vote for men of merit in part because talented men remind them of natural superiorities that offend their notion of complete equality.Footnote ⁶³ Democrats, to repeat, “are tired by the sight of inequality, however legitimate.” While he reports there is no strong hatred against the talented and upper classes, he also thinks democrats “have little taste for them” and are “careful to keep them from power.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Moreover, a talented, politically successful individual is almost sure to be accused of corruption. Interestingly, such charges, while often true, are inspired as much by vanity as by ethical outrage: “to attribute his rise to talents or his virtues is inconvenient, for it means admitting they are less virtuous or capable than he.”Footnote ⁶⁵ The coping strategy here is twofold: to declare the talented sour (i.e., corrupt), and to ignore their social value. Presumably, the democratic consciousness has created a world in which ordinary abilities are sufficient to handle great matters of public trust.

Additionally, as with Sartre and Elster, much of this behavior is nonreflective and hovers below the level of consciousness.Footnote ⁶⁶ Tocqueville calls this tendency to vote for mediocrity a “secret instinct.”Footnote ⁶⁷ His democrats are not consciously aware of their attitude toward talent and how it affects their political participation. Lastly, like Sartre, Tocqueville accepts that there is a limit to vanity, such that American democrats occasionally drift into a more classically rational consciousness. In times of crisis, they put aside their existential concerns and vote for the best candidate.Footnote ⁶⁸

Tocqueville is plainly not impressed with this democratic tendency. Democrats let their vanity get the best of them and it works against their own interest. However, given Tocqueville's psychological portrait, the behavior is not irrational either. In fact, there is a discernible logic to it. Dignity and self-worth are at the center of emotional life, and it makes perfect sense that they receive primary consideration during political participation. When material or physical concerns are of little consequence during an election (e.g., when there is no looming threat, or politicians cannot convince the population that it can resolve its financial problems), people cannot be expected to vote only on the basis of their economic interests. Depending on how candidates frame the election, citizens may vote symbolically for people who affirm their sense of self and self-worth. They will vote, in short, to safeguard their notion of equality. In Rousseauan terms, amour-propre will trump amour de soi. Tocqueville admirably demonstrates the tremendous impact that sour grapes and amour-propre have on political life. He knows that citizens bring with them into the voting booth not just their desires but their resentments, frustrations, fears, self-deceptions, and conceptions of their self-worth. Equality blurs the line between the political and the personal.

Tocqueville's psychological analysis, therefore, is superior to Elster's and Sartre's. He persuasively demonstrates how underlying ideological commitments and structures encourage certain forms of consciousness. Democracy is not simply a set of institutions and practices—it is a way of seeing the world. Elster, to be sure, is aware that amour-propre shows up in political life. For example, he contends that in the Assemblée Constituante in Paris in 1789–91, “arguments from pride and vanity, amour-propre, played a considerable role.”Footnote ⁶⁹ Yet his analysis is too narrow. Amour-propre is not simply a motive to act—it is a culturally conditioned manner of feeling that people reason from. His laserlike focus on individuals and causal mechanisms gives him a truncated view of human consciousness. Sartre fares worse, as he has almost nothing to say about culture. His phenomenology is too abstract.

Other Magical Transformations: Failure Anticipations

To be fair, several of the equality-inspired political attitudes in Democracy cannot be technically categorized as sour grapes. While they rely on almost entirely the same set of cognitive and social processes, they are not failure reactions. Rather than reacting to an actual failure, some of these attitudes develop in anticipation of threats to “complete equality,” that is, potential failures. We might term these attitudes “failure anticipations,” or in Elster's lexicon, “precommitment.” According to Elster, precommitment involves “the deliberate shaping of the feasible set for the purpose of excluding certain possible choices.”Footnote ⁷⁰ Although Elster is eager to distinguish precommitment from sour grapes, in this context, the former differs from the latter only in temporal terms.Footnote ⁷¹ It is a forward- rather than backwards-thinking exercise; a sort of preemptive sour grapes. The other cognitive processes that contribute to sour grapes—comparisons, concern for self-worth, lack of self-awareness, and so forth—are all still present. Elster puts too much emphasis on the temporal aspect of sour grapes and thus misses the primary cognitive processes that define it. These other cognitive processes show up time and time again in Democracy.

Tocqueville's view of American epistemology is a good example of a “failure anticipation” or precommitment. According to Tocqueville, Americans are unwitting Cartesians in that they rely on their own common sense as the only legitimate source of knowledge. All other avenues of knowledge—philosophical systems, tradition, experts, class prejudices, and even family maxims—are viewed with suspicion. Despite the limited educational levels of most Americans, at least in the 1830s, they have full confidence in their ability to understand almost any problem, no matter how complicated. They are contemptuous of intellectuals and immediately dismiss any claim or argument beyond their comprehension as silly. For Tocqueville, this is “the theory of equality applied to brains,”Footnote ⁷² which he thinks is an absurdity and has little basis in reality.Footnote ⁷³ However, Tocqueville would argue—and Sartre would agree—that the validity of the American attitude is beside the point. The commitment to common sense results not from abstract contemplation of the nature of knowledge but from the emotional need to protect their belief in “complete equality.”Footnote ⁷⁴ Americans do not think up reasons why experts and intellectuals are unnecessary or dangerous. Rather, they simply ignore all evidence in either direction and nonreflectively but tenaciously convince themselves that everyone is equally smart. American Cartesianism, briefly put, is a way of apprehending the world inspired by the desire for equality. Indirectly, Tocqueville's Americans assume other epistemologies are too green because they do not leave enough room for equality.

Tocqueville conceives of “self-interest properly understood” in similar terms. According to this democratic doctrine, virtue cannot be distinguished from self-interest. In aristocratic societies, virtue is pursued for its own sake. Moralists in such times waxed poetically about “the beauties of virtue” and would never publicly discuss any personal benefits accruing from self-sacrificing acts. In America, conversely, virtuous acts are defended exclusively in terms of their utility. Self-sacrificing behaviors, American moralists boast, are “as necessary for the man who makes it as for the beneficiaries.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Tocqueville, however, thinks Americans are just “fetishizing” self-interest and does not take their claims of utility at face value. He assures his reader that true altruism, a natural impulse in humans, is alive and well in America. Americans themselves, however, prefer to interpret their motives differently; “they prefer to give the credit to their philosophy rather than to themselves.”Footnote ⁷⁶

Again, temporal issues aside, self-interest properly understood is an amour-propre-induced magical transformation. It results from a felt need to believe in the power of individual rationality, which can be traced to the desire for “complete equality” and to be strong and respected. Virtue must be conceptualized in such a way that the average American can participate in it—that no one will fail to be virtuous. Since most democrats are too weak to do things because they are beautiful or simply correct, they choose, before the fact, to define virtue down so it is within the grasp of all; that is, they make it low-hanging fruit. Thus, frustrated equality and questions of self-worth are still lurking in the shadows. Self-interest properly understood is a construction based upon them.

Finally, American patriotism can also be said to share some of the same ingredients as sour grapes. Tocqueville views it is an irritating patriotism that is intolerant of any criticism, no matter how trivial, and hungers after even the slightest praise.Footnote ⁷⁷ In Democracy, he reports that homegrown moralists and philosophers address their fellow Americans not as honest critics but as sycophants akin to courtiers currying favor from Louis XIV. Tocqueville identifies vanity as the cause of this abhorrent behavior: “Their vanity,” he complains, “makes endless demands and gives nothing.”Footnote ⁷⁸ Again, this insecure patriotism can be deconstructed as a response to the unrealistic democratic conception of equality. Rather than confront potential weaknesses in their character, Americans construct or “magically transform” themselves into the most enviable creatures on the planet. They dispose themselves to interpret away any experience that might suggest the opposite—even trivial ones.

Adaptive Preference Formations in Tocqueville

Elster has also applied the concept of sour grapes to Tocqueville's Democracy in America: “the adjustment of opportunities to desires is … a constant theme in Democracy.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Consistent with his theory of sour grapes, Elster interprets Tocqueville's Americans primarily as creatures of resignation. He is aware that his view is unconventional—that scholars typically interpret Tocqueville's portrait of Americans as restless, agitated, frustrated, ambitious, and envious.Footnote ⁸⁰ Elster smartly makes no effort to dispel this common view. He does, however, contend that Tocqueville provides two competing visions of Americans—one of resigned Americans in “foxlike” manner adapting to their opportunities and the other of a busy competition of ambitious men trying to improve their social standing—that can be reconciled. While his attempt is admirable, it is ultimately less compelling.

Elster provides a healthy amount of evidence for adaptive preference formations from the text, albeit some with slightly different causal patterns.Footnote ⁸¹ First, in his discussion of primogeniture, Tocqueville argues that the wealthy lost the desire to retain their estates as soon as the inheritance law made it difficult to do so. Second, he cites Tocqueville's argument that slavery eliminates the desire of white Southerners to become wealthy. Slavery, the argument runs, decreases the need for labor, which in turn reduces opportunity to get wealthy through labor. With no opportunities for wealth, the desire for it disappears. Third, Elster contends that wealthy and talented Americans have no desire to gain political office because of poor election prospects: democratic commoners are too envious to elect exceptionally talented or wealthy candidates. Fourth, he cites Tocqueville's claim that American women resign themselves to marriage. Although American women receive the same education as men and are every bit as rational, they in time adjust themselves to their limited opportunities by embracing marriage and a life lived entirely in the private sphere. And lastly, American soldiers are more desirous of promotion than aristocratic ones owing to greater opportunities. Admittedly, this example is sour grapes in reverse: American soldiers develop the desire for promotion because of the opportunities for it.

Elster also makes a reasonable case for reconciling Tocqueville's seemingly contradictory portrayal of Americans as ceasing to desire what they cannot obtain and restless and anxious to gain wealth and equal social status. Democrats, he claims, are most ambitious at the time of their revolutionary founding. As democracy stabilizes, however, people's desires become more and more limited and less and less grandiose. In addition, democratic societies change so frequently that it is exceedingly difficult for people to adapt their desires to their opportunities, resulting in frustration. Thus, the sour grapes mechanism designed to bring desires and the ability to satisfy those desires into equilibrium is short-circuited by constant change. Elster writes: “democratic citizens tend to be frustrated because the process of adaptation is slow compared to the rate of social mobility.”Footnote ⁸²

Elster's theorizing is impressive. His interpretations are creative, and he carefully mines the text for evidence. To repeat, however, he is not entirely persuasive. His reduction of sour grapes to unconsciously choosing to contract one's desires in the face of constraints only highlights the distance separating adaptive preference formations and a true theory of sour grapes. None of his examples show individuals denigrating their failures and magically remaking the world. They simply downsize their desires to match a lack of opportunity. (And with regard to women, Elster concedes that women are conscious choosers.)Footnote ⁸³ Strikingly, in all of these examples, nothing is being pronounced sour. Everyone quietly accepts reality. Elster contends there are two possible reactions to a gap between desires and opportunities: resignation and rebellion. The former occurs when one accepts one's situation while the latter is “aimed at expanding opportunities.”Footnote ⁸⁴ Sour grapes, to repeat an earlier point, is resignation coupled with Veyne's notion of “overadaption”—people tend to inflate the direness of their situation. The fox, he assumes, is experiencing resignation because he is not trying to expand his opportunities. But this misses the nature of the fox's rebellion. He refuses to accept his failure and interprets it away. He does not exaggerate the direness of his own situation but magically makes it disappear. His is the ultimate rebellion—reality is shown the door! In any event, Tocqueville's American slave owners, women, wealthy would-be politicians, and so forth, as described by Elster, do not engage in this level of self-deception. Finally, it is notable that Elster's most effective examples occur in relatively hierarchical settings, namely, gender and the military. While these institutions have been modified by equality, they still are fundamentally undemocratic. Thus, Elster's flawed notion of sour grapes is probably more pitched to aristocracies with solidified social structures than democracies with fluid ones. It is telling that he so admires Veyne's work on antiquity, which draws exclusively from oligarchic and authoritarian regimes.