The True Political Compass: A Hypothesis of the Underlying Psychology of Political Orientations

The True Political Compass: A Hypothesis of the Underlying Psychology of Political Orientations

It is commonly thought that worldviews originate purely from social influences and intellectual reflection. While the creation of ideology may involve these, many biologically based psychological traits heavily influence worldviews through various mechanisms, and the originators of ideologies likely have traits predisposing them towards certain ideas. The reason for this not being common knowledge is likely due to individuals wanting to believe that their worldview is objective and unbiased and purely intellectual, when it isn't, mixed with motivated gross scientific ignorance. In this post, I look into the psychology of political orientation, and form hypotheses that will be tested in a study.

Disgust Sensitivity

Disgust sensitivity is a trait that effects how much disgust you experience in response to various stimuli. Disgust sensitivity evolved to effect behavior in a way that encourages succesful reproduction and survival (e.g., don't eat poop, don't trust other tribes). Disgust sensitivity includes sensitivity to disgust to people in different demographic and social groups. Inducing disgust in individuals leads them to have higher dehumanizing biases towards outgroups (e.g., other races, animals) (Buckels & Trapnel 2013). The tendency to experience disgust towards outgroups correlates with higher sensitivity to disgust in general, fears of diseases, higher endorsement of authoritarian and conservative beliefs, and negative emotionality (Hodson et al. 2013). When posed with negative interactions with outgroup members, individuals with high disgust sensitivity translate percieved threat into negative attitudes towards the group, whereas those low in disgust sensitivity typically don't (Hodson et al. 2013). When smelling sweaty t shirts with a logo of ones own sports team, people are less disgusted than when its the logo of an opposing sports team, and are quicker to wash their hands and use more soap after smelling the shirt with the other teams logo (Reicher et al. 2016). Disgust sensitivity mediates moral attitudes, particularly ones that are not related to empathy for consequences, including sexual morality & sexual conservatism, purity related morality, group centered morality, and morality based on rules or social norm violations. Low sexual disgust directly relates with less negative attitudes toward casual sex and willingness to experience it (Hlay et al. 2022). In 2022 I conducted a study in which I designed a scale for sexual disgust, and conservative attitudes toward sexuality (the belief that porn is inherently damaging and harmful, the belief that kinks are pathological, the belief that minors are incapable of sexual desire) loaded highly on sexual disgust sensitivity - the principal component extracted from the items - showing how disgust sensitivity heavily influences worldviews and readily causes false beliefs. All forms of disgust sensitivity correlate highly with the purity scale of the moral foundations scales, above other moral foundations (Van Leeuwen et al. 2017)(Wagemans et al. 2018). Disgust sensitivity associates with higher prejudice towards sexual minorities, and disgust sensitivity is associated with higher tendency to blame individuals, including victims of crimes (Quinn et al. 2021). Disgust is usually studied in the context of hate associated with conservatism, and very little research has been done on disgust and attitudes associated with "progressives". Negative attitudes toward men have been found to correlate with moral foundations (not using the moral foundations scale, but similar scales measuring the same thing) of purity (disgust based) and low openness, as well as higher adherence to feminine gender roles, showing that disgust-based bias and hatred is a factor in driving worldviews regardless of the demographic holding the worldview and is not unique to beliefs associated with conservatism (Maltby & Day 2001). The underpinning of disgust behind non-empathy linked moral foundations is supported by studies showing that administering anti-nausea drugs cause people to make less harsh moral judgements, especially related to purity, norm violation, etc (Tracy et al. 2019). There is evidence that disgust may impair cognitive function (Cloudfindings 2024a) supporting the positive relationship between intelligence and liberalism (Cloudfindings 2024b) (in the psychological sense, liberalism refers more to the political ideas of social libertarianism and humanism). Higher disgust sensitivity is also directly associated with reduced perspective taking (cognitive empathy) (Imaizumi et al. 2016), possibly due to the mechanisms of disgust impairing theory of mind as well as intelligence - theory of mind and intelligence being negatively associated with disgust driven worldviews. This may occur through the 5-HT3 receptor (Cloudfindings 2024a). Theory of mind and intelligence both threaten disgust based worldviews, as they promote accurate empathizing with and humanization of members of outgroups and percieved "bad people", and intelligence associates with rational thinking and objectivity which would lead to overcoming cognitive biases and ignorance that support such worldviews (Erceg et al. 2022). Low intelligence is associated with both lower levels of racism, and lower levels of political correctness (Cloudfindings 2024b), supporting this hypothesis.

The Moralism Dimension

In 2020 I conducted a study (n=217) that included various items containing political statements that the person either agreed or disagreed with. Principal components analysis revealed that a conservative-authoritarian factor emerged, but the second factor that emerged had items from both left and right items loading on it, most strongly relating to moralistic ideas, such as the belief that peoples actions and beliefs are reflective of an inherent moral character, support for censorship, belief of moral superiority of political "side", negative attitudes toward homosexuality, support for identity politics, less acceptance that ones own beliefs might be wrong, less support for egalitarianism, support for planned economy, and other items. The moralism factor correlated strongly with mainstream progressive beliefs, strongly negatively with social libertarianism, and moderately positively with conservative authoritarianism. The most notable thing here, is that support for banning hate speech, and support for banning homosexuality loaded on the same factor, suggesting that authoritarianism, and disgust and social norm based morality are underpinned by a shared psychological trait, irrespective of typical left-right cultural and economic views. I argued in Cloudfindings (2023a) that moral absolutism, which conceptually is similar to the factor found in the political study, relates to lower theory of mind and less use of theory of mind, evidenced by strong negative relationships with dogmatism and cognitive empathy, as well as increased moral absolutism and disgust, rule, norm based morality in autism, OcPD, and OCD. Theory of mind/cognitive empathy can be though of as "intuitive psychology" - the cognitive ability to understand how minds work (Crespi 2008). Low use of cognitive empathy due to innate deficits, or cognitive dissonance related to disgust and ingroup bias likely leads to moral absolutism, and the "ideologies" associated with it (e.g., modern politically correct censorship and science denial, homophobia, right wing authoritarianism). 

Conservatism, Masculinity, and Dominance

In the study mentioned from 2020 in the previous section, the first principal component extracted from the responses on political questions accounted for a very large portion of the questions, and this component was called conservative authoritarianism. Items loading in the conservative direction included negative attitudes toward homosexuality, nationalism, support for banning abortion, and belief in discipline. Another item that loaded very highly in the conservative direction was the belief that men have it worse than women, and loading very negatively (in the direction of low conservatism) was the belief that women have it worse than men. The study also contained personality related items, that when analysed resulted in 3 main factors, as well as demographic information. The psychopathy-like factor that emerged correlated with the conservative authoritarian component over the other personality factors, and being male was also a predictor of conservative authoritarianism. Psychological masculinity is heterogeneous and includes multiple trait dimensions (Del Giudice 2019), however primary psychopathy is one of these dimensions that is linked to personality masculinization (Hamburger et al. 1996) and is male typical (Del Giudice 2019). Aspects of primary psychopathy include a "survival of the fittest" attitude, desires to dominate others ("I like to pick on losers"), desire for personal gain at the expense of others, and fearlessness (Benning et al. 2003)(Levenson et al. 1995). Social dominance orientation is a trait which relates to the degree to which a person believes "superior" groups should dominate others, and expectedly this trait is higher in men on average, and correlates with pursuing hierarchy enhancing goals, belief in meritocracy, racism, support for war, socially dominant behavior, sexism, sexual assault blame, low support for welfare and social programs, low support for environmental policies, and nationalism (Pratto et al. 1994). SDO very closely resembles the conservative authoritarianism factor found in my study, and like SDO also correlates with primary psychopathy (Roy et al. 2021). Importantly, principal components analysis extracts dimensions which are statistically independent, so conservative authoritarianism and moralism are separate dimensions (like x and y). Primary psychopathy most closely relates to agreeableness out of all personality traits (Cloudfindings 2023b), and a study comparing political correctness and alt-right attitudes showed that they were diametrically opposed in agreeableness, but were both associated with black and white thinking (Moss & O'Connor 2020), a major correlate of the moralism dimension (Cloudfindings 2023a). Social dominance orientation is heritable and its relationship with political beliefs is almost entirely genetic with no significant effect of environment (Kleppestø et al. 2019), however social dominance orientation can be modified pharmacologically, psychedelics being found to decrease social dominance orientation (Nour et al. 2017). 

Religious Extremism - Not Just For Conservatives

The moralism dimension from the 2020 study, included an item reflecting preference for the collective good over the individual, universal healthcare, and a planned economy, and when I first discovered this dimension, I called it "pseudo-religiosity" as it resembled aspects of religion, but separate from any specific religious orientation. Popular religions typically have conservative, male-favoring, dominant ideas, and religious extremists are typically obsessed with world dominance of their religion. So is there no religion for people high in moralism but low in social dominance? There is, but its not called that - Keletaar (2019) analysed various psychological and social aspects of political correctness, and found that political correctness functioned essentially as a "folk religion", with sacred beliefs, similar cognitive biases, and resulting psychological trauma similar to religious trauma. Conservative religions often invalidate and dehumanize certain groups and make unquestionable claims about them (e.g., that sexual orientation is chosen, that women who lose virginity before marriage are evil and possessed by the devil, etc), and science denial is used to maintain these ideas. Political correctness functions quite similarly - denial and extreme misrepresentation of evolutionary psychology, imprinted genes, neurochemistry, moral psychology, etc (Del Giudice 2023)(Clark et al. 2023)(Del Giudice 2021) in favor of moralistic, incoherent, circular, fallacious explanations for society and human behavior that invalidate and dehumanize groups that are targets of political correctness. Political correctness is shown to correlate with the desire to censor scientific studies if they show evidence against politically correct beliefs, and dogmatic assertions that well established scientific facts can not be true (Andary-Brophy 2015). Political correctness has actively tried to censor groundbreaking science that could lead to cures for schizophrenia, personality disorders, autism, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, cancer, autoimmune disease, and dementia (Badcock 2017) because the existence of and science behind biologically based sex differences are involved in the causes of such diseases (Crespi & Go 2015)(Badcock 2017). Surveys in academia have revealed that punishment and threats are common against individuals investigating certain research topics, that a large minority of academics support punishment people who investigate controversial subjects, that a majority of social psychologists believe politically incorrect findings should not be published even if true, and that in some universities up to 50% were not allowed to pose controversial ideas or argue against the belief of the majority, and a quarter were not allowed to research certain topics (Clark et al. 2023). Ironically, two academics accused the authors of Clark et al. 2023 of "blaming women and minorities" when the study did not mention minorities, and only mentioned that women are higher in harm-avoidance that may lead to increased support for censorship for concern of harm (Clark et al. 2024). The famous study that uneducated followers of political correctness love to reference (usually through news article headlines, and not the actual study) that "debunked male-female brains" did not actually do so, as it would be a false claim that could not pass review, instead they argued that the correlations between sex-typical brain features were not high enough to consider it as a linear dimension of overall brain variation (Joel et al. 2015), and also cherrypicked studies using unreliable methods that make it appear that sex differences were not as present (Del Giudice 2021). "Toxic masculinity", is an idea that attributes all sex differences and male-typical behaviors to an active choice of conformity (or "socialization"), denying any science that suggests otherwise - for example that men are more sociosexual because of "social pressure", are less oriented toward cleanliness and planning because of an expectation that women do things for them, are more aggressive due to an expectation to be, etc. Even "manspreading" (sitting with your legs apart in a public space) was accused of being an intentional collective behavior to display dominance over women, when in reality its because the shape of the pelvis is different in men and women, in such a way that in women their legs naturally point forward, and in men their legs point outward, the subpubic angle being 90° in women, and about 60° in men (Leong 2006). In many ways, like religious extremists, unquestionable causes and treatments for unacceptable behaviors and ways of being that are false and demonizing are a core aspect of political correctness. Like religion, questioning political correctness is a sign of evil or possession that needs to be hidden, destroyed, or cured. Political correctness is a result of someone with a low social dominance orientation, but a high level of moralism. The male-typicality of social dominance orientation explains why the politically correct typically target men and male-associated things, as women are the ingroup instead of men - as mentioned earlier, social dominance orientation was a very strong predictor of believing that men had it worse, and low social dominance orientation about equally predicted believing that women had it worse. 

Hypotheses

The hypotheses I present here will be tested in a study. These include:

a) Attitudes related to concern for harm, egalitarianism, versus hierarchy, fascist attitudes, and traditionalism will load on opposite ends of the extracted principal components, either rotated or unrotated, and masculinity-femininity will be at opposite ends, as well as primary psychopathy towards the male end, and affective empathy towards the female end

b) Moral absolutism, disgust, male and female in group bias, religious ingroup bias, racial and cultural ingroup bias, purity related morality, selective empathy, spirituality, conformity, will load on a dimension opposite of cognitive empathy, rationality, intelligence, and humanism.

c) Authoritarian, disgust related beliefs that are more feminine and "left wing" will load high on the egalitarian-feminine factor and the disgust/absolutism factor, and more masculine and "right wing" will load towards the masculine-hierarchical end, but also high on disgust/absolutism. Compassion related liberal ideas should load low on the disgust/absolutism factor, and high on the feminine/egalitarian factor, and libertarian-individualist ideas should load low on the disgust/absolutism factor, and towards the masculine-hierarchical side.

d) Autism, OCD, and OcPD will have generally opposing correlates to schizotypy, with autism and OCD in the direction of moral absolutism

1. Buckels & Trapnel (2013) Disgust facilitates outgroup dehumanization

2. Hodson et al. (2013) The role of intergroup disgust in predicting negative outgroup evaluations

3. Reicher et al. (2016) Core disgust is attenuated by ingroup relations

4. Hlay et al. (2022) Disgust sensitivity predicts sociosexuality across cultures

5. Van Leeuwen et al. (2017) Disgust sensitivity relates to moral foundations independent of political ideology.

6. Wagemans et al. (2018) Disgust sensitivity is primarily associated with purity-based moral judgments

7. Quinn et al. (2021) Affective disgust predicts blame for gay male homicide victims

8. Cloudfindings (2023a) Moral Absolutism as a Theory of Mind Deficit

9. Maltby & Day (2001) Psychological correlates of attitudes toward men

10. Tracy et al. (2019) The physiological basis of psychological disgust and moral judgments

11. Cloudfindings (2024a) Beyond Dopamine: Possible Neurochemical Bases of Openness To Experience and Intellect

12. Cloudfindings (2024b) Dimensions of Talent and Ability: A Critical Look at Multiple Intelligences, and How They Really Manifest

13. Imaizumi et al. (2016) Trypophobia is predicted by disgust sensitivity, empathic traits, and visual discomfort

14. Del Giudice (2019) Female nonheterosexuality is associated with both “fast” and “slow” male-typical strategies: Implications for evolutionary scenarios

15. Crespi (2008) Language unbound: genomic conflict and psychosis in the origin of modern humans

16. Hamburger et al. (1996) Psychopathy, gender, and gender roles: Implications for antisocial and histrionic personality disorders

17. Benning et al. (2003) Factor structure of the psychopathic personality inventory: validity and implications for clinical assessment

18. Levenson et al. (1995) Assessing psychopathic attributes in a noninstitutionalized population

19. Pratto et al. (1994) Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes

20. Roy et al. (2021) Psychopathic propensities contribute to social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism in predicting prejudicial attitudes in a large European sample

21. Moss & O'Connor (2020) Political correctness and the alt-right: The development of extreme political attitudes

22. Cloudfindings (2023b) General Psychopathology Masks the Associations Between Psychiatric Disorders and Personality Traits

23. Erceg et al. (2022) Normative responding on cognitive bias tasks: Some evidence for a weak rationality factor that is mostly explained by numeracy and actively open-minded thinking

24.  Kleppestø et al. (2019) Correlations between social dominance orientation and political attitudes reflect common genetic underpinnings

25. Nour et al. (2017) Psychedelics, personality and political perspectives

26. Ketelaar (2019) Political Correctness as Folk Religion: From sacred beliefs and cognitive dissonance to claims of psychological trauma

27. Del Giudice (2023) Ideological bias in the psychology of sex and gender

28. Clark et al. (2023) Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda

29. Del Giudice (2021) Binary Thinking About the Sex Binary: A Comment on Joel (2021)

30. Andary-Brophy (2015) Political correctness: Social-fiscal liberalism and left-wing authoritarianism

31. Badcock (2017) Male Risk of Autism: No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

32. Clark et al. (2024) Reply to Darlow and Gray: Censorship is exclusion

33. Joel et al. (2015) Sex beyond the genitalia: The human brain mosaic

34. Crespi & Go (2015) Diametrical diseases reflect evolutionary-genetic tradeoffs: evidence from psychiatry, neurology, rheumatology, oncology and immunology

35. Leong (2006) Sexual dimorphism of the pelvic architecture: A struggling response to destructive and parsimonious forces by natural & mate selection