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           The Ghost World of Liberals and Conservatives


May 2008

Running to Stand Still

 

Cycles of Conservatism and Liberalism

 

The Ups and Downs of Conservatism
(Excerpted from Michael Alexander's American Political Cycles)

 

The theory that animal social behavior exhibits cyclical tendencies certainly follows, given annual cycles in reproductive activities, which follow seasonal changes associated with greater distances from the equator. On average, the higher the latitude of the animal population, the greater the seasonal variations in social behavior.

 

In most gregarious species, spacing increases during the warmer breeding season (Richard, 1990). Active reproductive behavior tends to induce the need for space, and breeding seasons increase the level of competitiveness among males and females. This pattern is found in many diverse species, from the grasshopper mouse (Frank, 1992), to the northern social spider (Jones, 2007), to the white-tailed deer (Sorenson, 1995).

 

Further, testosterone may be contributing more to the modulation of higher-latitude animal social behavior than it does with equatorial species. There is a tendency for tropical avian species to have lower levels of free-circulating testosterone (Adkins-Regan, 2005), and also evidence that testosterone elevations associated with territorial defense are less likely to occur in tropical birds (Moore, 2004).

 

We have previously proposed that latitude is a key factor in human political behavior (see September, 2005), via the solar modulation of the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, and their associated influence on the dopamine system. Elevated activity in the dopamine system is associated with religiosity and political conservatism (see God, Dopamine, and 3-dimensional Space).

 

We have also implicated the light-skinned Caucasian gene pool, more specifically, the descendants of the original migrants from Europe into the lower latitudes of the United States, Australia, and South Africa, as being especially susceptible to sunlight- (and perhaps temperature) induced conservatism. In other words, Caucasians, on average, run politically and religiously "hotter" in the sunlight-drenched regions of the planet.

 

Diurnal and Seasonal Cycles in Political and Religious Tendencies?

 

But a theory proposing that sunlight and temperature variations associated with differences in latitude would also imply that, at the same latitude, seasonal and diurnal changes should have a similar impact. The normal seasonal variations in human reproductive behavior (Roenneberg, 1990), that follow seasonal changes would lead us to suspect that conservatism and liberalism vary not only during seasonal cycles, but even diurnally.

 

New events with political overtones generate slightly different attitudes based on the time of day or the time of year they occur. Our proposal is based on the annual and diurnal cycles in the levels of certain hormones and neurotransmitters. Among males, plasma testosterone not only varies diurnally, peaking in the morning hours (Levi, 1987, Gupta, 2000), but also varies by season: lowest during late winter and early spring and highest during the summer months (Andersson, 2003).

 

Among females, a similar pattern emerges with estradiol, which varies by season, peaking in June, and lowest in late fall and early winter (Bjornerem, 2006). However, testosterone and estradiol are not the only neurochemicals exhibiting seasonal variations. Luteinizing hormone, dopamine, cortisol, melatonin, serotonin, noradrenaline, follicle stimulating hormone, etc., have all been implicated in seasonal cycles, and all have implications on reproduction.

 

The political impact of these cyclical neurochemical variations are small, hard to detect, and are likely constrained to "new" stimuli. Once a political disposition towards an issue has been formulated, it is not likely to change due to these annual or daily microvariations, especially among conservatives and liberals. We suspect that the moderates are more influenced by seasonal and diurnal cycles than any other political affiliation. The question remains: how do we detect these political microvariations?

 

Long-term Cycles in Political Tendencies

 

The periodicity of diurnal and seasonal changes are ultimately founded in the rotation of the earth and its revolution around the sun. However, these are relatively short-term cycles with small changes in political and religious disposition. Proposals for long-term cycles of conservatism and liberalism date back to the historian Arthur Schlesinger (1949), and were further elaborated by his son, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. The elder Schlesinger proposed that two political moods would oscillate in cycles of roughly 16 years, which Schlesinger Jr. would define as a period of "public activity", (i.e. liberalism), that would be countered by a period of "conservative retrenchment" or "private interest".

 

The Schlesinger argument for the 20th century United States was compelling: the liberalism of the Great Depression era of the 1930's was followed by the conservatism of post-World War II, which was followed by resurgent liberalism in the late 1950's, followed by the Reagan conservative movement starting in 1975, followed again by the resurgence of Clintonian liberalism in the early 1990's, followed by the conservative shift in the late 1990's.

 

If indeed these were long-term cycles of conservatism and liberalism, what was causing them? The junior Schlesinger (1986) offered up a theory of general disappointment in human nature: "disappointment is the universal modern malady. It is also a basic spring of political change". As we shall see, there is merit to Schlesinger's proposal that an electorate will eventually turn on its leadership over time, all other things being equal. This appears to be a Darwinian process, as we shall propose shortly.

 

Schlesinger continues: "as political eras, whether dominated by public interest [i.e., liberalism] or by private interest [i.e., conservatism] run their course, they infallibly generate the desire for something different. It always becomes after a while 'time for a change'....Class and interest politics subside; cultural politics --ethnicity, religion, social status, morality--come to the fore. These are also often times of consolidation, in which the innovations of the previous period are absorbed and legitimized".

 

"Epochs of private interest breed contradictions too. Such periods are characterized by undercurrents of dissatisfaction, criticism, ferment, protest. Segments of the population fall behind in the acquisitive race. Intellectuals are estranged....People grow bored with selfish motives....People begin to seek meaning in life beyond themselves. They ask not what their country can do for them but what they can do for their country. They are ready for a trumpet to sound. A detonating issue--some problem growing in magnitude and menace and beyond the capacity of the market's invisible hand to solve--at last leads to a breakthrough in into a new political epoch".

 

Viewing Schlesinger's cycles of alternating public and private interest from a perspective of evolutionary psychology requires a bit of imagination. But perhaps there is some precedent in the animal kingdom.

 

The Political Blunder of Aging

 

A large majority of gregarious species maintain some form of a dominance hierarchy, where the higher ranking males and females maintain advantages in both resource-control and reproductive success. Higher dominance levels are usually obtained by animals in their prime reproductive years, while the non-reproductive older and younger animals typically occupy the lower the lower levels of the dominance hierarchy. This tendency also occurs in humans.

 

Is John McCain running against his own age?

 

As such, social groups that apply physical strength, health, and intelligence as criteria for the achievement of dominance will undergo constant fluctuations as the population ages. Humans are indeed one of the most tolerant of species when it comes to aging and social dominance, due primarily to the fact that wealth accumulation neutralizes the ordinary dominance losses associated with aging.

 

But does the aging of a president contribute to Schlesinger's "undercurrents of dissatisfaction"? As a president ages, is there a natural tendency for the electorate to grow dissatisfied? There is a definite neurological foundation towards prejudice against the aged (Castelli, 2005), as confirmed by the administration of the Implicit Association test on elderly faces. Once an older person no longer provides reproductive support functions, they become a survival disadvantage for a social group. It is not surprising that neurology has evolved in such an age-antagonistic manner.

 

We found that tendency in our Election 2008 Survey, where 36% of our respondents indicated that John McCain's age had a negative impact on their probability of voting for him, while only 8% indicated that age had a positive impact. If age-bias is indeed an active component in the electability of a candidate, we should also expect it to be an active component in the growing dissatisfaction with an aging president.

 

However, while we believe aging to be a contributing factor, it is a close companion of a general tendency for humans to slowly grow dissatisfied with those in positions of high dominance, regardless of age.

 

The Ticking Clock of Life at the Top

 

Ascending to the top of a human dominance hierarchy is a dangerous thing, primarily due to the ability of the less dominant humans to communicate and coordinate their behavior. As such, relative to other species, human dominance behavior is highly restrained, and usually only safe in environments where it performs an economic function: business organizations and families.

 

Rapid cycles in dominance levels are found in a number of primates. For example, among rhesus macaques, dominant males last an average of four years (Bercovitch, 1997). Transitions in dominance levels are frequently associated with the burden of mate guarding. Guarding a small harem of females can run at quite a cost, and dominance levels change as a result of the inability of dominant males to maintain their strength while watching mates, fighting off challenges, and copulating. The once-dominant males retreat, regain their strength, and then challenge the new dominants for reproductive rights. The males "take turns" in this arrangement, and dominance cycles can last just a few weeks, depending on the species.

 

The emergence of adolescence in humans is highlighted by conflict with parents and adults in general. This conflict is reproductive in origin, as the young adults seek more space and higher social status. Many species have a sort of age-graded dominance hierarchy (see Wilson's discussion on this), and human social organization is replete with this tendency.

 

The question is, do the implications of the human reproduction impact the stability of political and business leadership? Let's take a look at some interesting data we've collected that might pertain to this issue. In the graph below, we see the average desired term limits (in years) broken down by gender and political affiliation from a survey of 1,696 people. By term limit, we mean the maximum time a politician should be able to hold an office.

 

Average Desired Term Limits (in years) by Political-Gender Cohort
(VL=Very liberal,L=Liberal,M=Moderate,C=Conservative,VC=Very conservative)

 

This result has some interesting characteristics. First, females desire shorter term limits across all political affiliations. Explaining this result from a perspective of the evolutionary psychology will not be easy. Extreme male dominance is the antithesis of female reproductive strategy. Dominant males tend to desire a lot of children, whereas females tend to prefer fewer "higher quality" offspring.

 

This fundamental Darwinian divergence may be spilling over into the simple question of how long a politician can hold an office, as females seem to be preferring shorter dominance cycles. We cannot discount an equivalent argument based on the fact that females may also prefer shorter dominance cycles to facilitate genetic diversity in offspring, as rapid dominance cycles among males translate directly into greater genetic diversity in the animal population. Among primates, female dominance hierarchies tend to be more stable than male hierarchies. Long-term male dominance can be more limiting on alternative mate choice among females.

 

Further, the more liberal a male is, the more likely they will tolerate longer term limits. Explaining this result is even trickier. From a perspective of reproductive strategy, liberal males have fewer offspring, and would not be as impacted by an aging dominance hierarchy as are conservative males. Liberal males also wait longer to reproduce, which may be spilling over into their greater tolerance for slower political turnover. However, liberals tend to view government as a more socially facilitative process, while conservatives tend to view government as an impediment to freedom, and reward-seeking in general.

 

Let's take a look at some other data we have collected. In a later survey (2008), we collected information as to why they supported term limits. The four options were: 1) reduces corruption and cronyism; 2) promotes new approaches and new ideas; 3) people shouldn't have power too long; 4) other. The results are displayed in the table below.

 

Reason	Liberal Female	Moderate Female	Conservative Female	Liberal  Male	Moderate Male	Conservative Male
Reduces Corruption	14.5%	34.6%	38.7%	21.4%	22.2%	27.4%
Promotes New Ideas	38.6%	26.9%	9.7%	23.9%	33.3%	19.5%
Shouldn’t Have Power Too Long	26.5%	15.4%	32.3%	28.2%	25.0%	27.4%

Why do you support term limits?

 

It is interesting to note that overall, the single most popular response was that people should not have power too long, even though more specific reasons were available. This is indeed a curious result. What is the evolutionary psychology behind the belief that people shouldn't have power too long? Is it somehow linked to the evolutionary psychology of reproductive strategies and sexual behavior in general?

 

The idea that people may be tiring of their political leaders in an analogous manner to their tiring of their reproductive partners is not so far-fetched. People grow weary of listening to the same songs, eating the same foods, working at the same jobs, or watching the same television shows. But do they grow weary of the same politicians? Perhaps there is some precedence for this in their relationships in general--particularly their reproductive relationships.

 

The duration of the average human pair-bond is actually shorter (see Sociosexuality) than the average desired term-limit, at least in our surveys. But among conservative males and females, these numbers are very close (11.6 years for average relationship, 11.8 years for average term limit). However, the less-reproductive liberals tolerate politicians longer than they do relationships (7.5 for the average relationship, and 12.4 years for the average term-limit).

 

The proposal that political novelty-seeking among the electorate will eventually reduce the chances of an incumbent politician being re-elected is certainly possible. But one thing is for sure: the desire for new ideas was a strong trend, at least in our survey.

 

Allostatic Load: the Psychology of Political Change

 

As seen in the above table, among both liberal and moderate males and females, "promotes new ideas" was a popular response. This is interesting from two perspectives: the tendency for social groups to change leadership in order to induce alternate adaptive strategies; and, among humans, the tendency for the political moderates to bear the burden of switching between conservatism and liberalism dependent on changes in the environment.

 

 

Political Change and Allostatic Load

 

Among many species, the dominant animals provide most of the group decision making with regards to movement between foraging and hunting sites, territoriality, and aggression towards outgroups. The survival of the subordinate members of the dominance hierarchy is deeply integrated with the decisions and behaviors of the dominants. The importance of survivally-effective dominance behavior cannot be understated, and there is a distinct tendency for high turnover of dominant animals of social groups that are unsuccessful in food acquisition and defense.

 

This is seen in the dynamics of social behavior during starvation. Food shortages impact animal dominance hierarchies in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways: reduction of intragroup aggression (Southwick, 1967); starvation and acquiescence in the lowest levels of the dominance hierarchy; increased agonism and expulsion of the lower-ranking males from the dominance hierarchy (Hemelrijk, 2002); changes in the relative positions within the dominance hierarchy (Rodriguez-Girones, 1996); and general depression and decreases in sexual behavior (A. Keys, 1950) and reproductive output.

 

The instability of dominance hierarchies seems to provide several adaptive functions: shifts in gene frequencies associated with the reproductive advantages of dominance; changes in the way a social group exploits the environment; modulation of reproductive output and intergroup conflict; and modulating the allostatic load.

 

The allostatic load is a composite of the physiologic damage created by elevated levels of cortisol and adrenaline during long periods of sustained stress or improper diet. The impact is severe: organ damage, type 2 diabetes, demineralization of bone mass, hypertension, neural atrophy, immune system disorders, and reproductive disorders.

 

The political implications of allostatic load are substantial, as evident in political swings associated with business cycles and warfare. The impact of economic cycles on voter behavior is well established (Lewis-Beck, 1988), and in humans, economic trends translate into the allostatic load via unemployment and declining real wages.

 

The impact of warfare on allostatic load is also substantial, especially for the active participants via post-traumatic stress disorder (see Birth Rates, Warfare, Stress Disorders, and the Conservative-Liberal Ratio). But it is also substantial for the bystanders observing it (The Stressed Electorate). Both warfare and economic stress are active in the United States as of this date, and we indeed have a noted elevation in the reported stress levels as seen in the graph below.

 

The Allostatic Load: percent indicating their stress level has increased in the last four years
(NP=Nonpolitical, L=Liberal, LB=Libertarian, M=Moderate, C=Conservative)

 

The 546 respondents to our Election 2008 survey indicated a distinct tendency for their stress levels to have increased over the last four years. It is interesting to note that the nonpolitical, or those that think very little about politics, reported the largest percentage increase in stress in both genders. It is also interesting to note that the libertarians, in both genders, were second. The liberals and moderates were not far behind. The female conservatives were the only group under 50%.

 

But what impact on political disposition does this have? This depends on the nature of the stress and the psychological predispositions of various political cohorts. For example, threats from outgroups are more stressful to conservatives than liberals, and are more likely to increase their stress levels (see Every Picture Tells a Story). Conversely, conflicts with outgroups create more stress among liberals than conservatives.

 

Stress and the Shift to Liberalism

 

The proposal that increasing stress levels induce political change is certainly supported by a lot of evidence. The question is: does increasing stress make a population more liberal or conservative? The answer to this key political question seems to be: it depends. Liberals, on average, report higher levels of stress than conservatives (see Stress and Liberalism). However, as stress increases, does liberalism increase across all political affiliations? Do the conservatives become more liberal too?

 

Based on the limited results from our Election 2008 survey, increasing stress, at least in the range experienced in the United States in the last four years, has varying impacts on the liberalistic tendencies of the respective political cohorts. It seems that the only political cohorts that are liberalized by stress are the moderates and the nonpolitical, as seen in the table below.

 

Political Cohort	No change in politics	Became more conservative	Became more liberal
Conservative: no increase in stress	55.6%	41.7%	2.8%
Conservative: increase in stress	45.7%	50.6%	3.7%
Liberal:           no increase in stress	55.6%	1.2%	43.2%
Liberal:           increase in stress	52.3%	3.9%	43.9%
Libertarian:     no increase in stress	40.0%	20.0%	40.0%
Libertarian:     increase in stress	43.9%	29.3%	26.8%
Moderate:      no increase in stress	60.7%	21.4%	17.9%
Moderate:      increase in stress	52.4%	14.3%	33.3%
Nonpolitical:   no increase in stress	83.3%	16.7%	0.0%
Nonpolitical:   increase in stress	65.4%	3.9%	30.8%

The polarizing impact of increases in stress, by political cohort

 

In the above table, we see several interesting trends. The conservatives indicating an increase in stress have become more polarized towards conservatism. The liberals and libertarians show no distinct trends, regardless of their recent experience with stress (the libertarian "no increase in stress" cohort is a very small sample).

 

But it is the moderates and nonpolitical that seem to be the most liberalized by increasing stress, at least by the kind of economic stress that has occurred recently in the United States. The nonpolitical are a very small sample in our survey, but across all of our surveys, they tend to resemble the moderates in a number of cognitive attributes, so we suspect that their trend towards stress-induced liberalism is a real one.

 

This liberalization of the moderates under stress, something we've noted before (see Half-Life), provides an interesting political cyclical force, responding to such major events as warfare and business cycles. It is arguable that the moderates act as a political thermostat, shifting towards conservatism in the onset of potential conflicts with outgroups, and gradually turning against those conflicts after a period of time. Further, it could also be argued that they seem to be following the business cycle, becoming more liberal in downturns, and more conservative in upturns.

 

Don't Look Back Into the Sun

 

What is going on behind the curtain of changes in political and religious direction? Are these cycles an endemic process, like John Maynard Smith's politically-inspired Hawk-Dove game? Is there an evolutionary process underlying these oscillations?

 

From a perspective of population growth and dispersal, cycles in conservatism and liberalism provide a rather interesting model. Dispersal is the primary method animal populations employ to relieve population stress. It is also the process that populated every continent on the planet with 6.5 billion humans.

 

Humans are remarkably effective at dispersal, and the space-hungry and reproductive conservatives are more likely to disperse to relieve population stress (see The Population Biology of Conservatives and Liberals). We suspect that cycles of conservatism and liberalism are indeed correlated with population growth and dispersal, and the ancient "conservatives" were at the heart of the human diaspora across the planet.

 

But an even more fundamental question remains: what is the genetic impact of conservative and liberal cycles? The proposal that gene frequencies change during business cycles and political cycles may have some merit. Conservative peaks seem to be correlated with greater income disparity, which might exert a subtle genetic influence.

 

Are genes gradually being eliminated during economic downturns? Do gene frequencies vary with the business cycle? This would seem to be the case, but the subtle relationship between economic cycles and genetics, to our knowledge, has not been investigated. Further, do the requirements of economic production, via the shift in the demand for certain occupations, induce changes in gene frequencies?

 

This is speculative, but given the distinctive occupational preferences of conservatives and liberals (see The Secret Symbiosis), there indeed seems to be evidence for a genetic basis to occupational preferences. Therefore, the genes associated with occupational preference become fodder for natural selection via economic competition.

 

The sun seems to be weighing a disproportionate influence on our political-religious orientation, via radiation, heat, and the natural diurnal and seasonal changes associated with the revolution and rotation of the earth. To date, we believe we have evidence for 15 diverse factors that either liberalize or conservatize populations.

 

Change is the rule when it comes to political-religious affiliation, and stability is the exception. We are currently experiencing a liberal revival in the United States, fueled by economic trends and extended warfare. From the perspective of population biology, this is a transitioning from the r-side of the r-K selection continuum, and towards the K-side. These transitions are anchored by conservatives and liberals, and executed by moderates.

 

 

Charles Brack, May 2008

 

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