By David Pinsof,* David O. Sears, and Martie G. Haselton
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, United States
*[email protected]
David Pinsof is a postdoctoral scholar who received his PhD in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2018. David’s research focuses on evolutionary psychology, political psychology, public opinion, and sexual behavior. His empirical work explores individual differences in mating psychology and their relation to political attitudes, mathematical models of alliance formation, and the origins of political belief systems.
David O. Sears is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Political Science, former Dean of Social Sciences, and former Director of the Institute for Social Science Research, all at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has published articles and book chapters on a wide variety of topics, including attitude change, public opinion, mass communications, ghetto riots, political socialization, voting behavior, and race and politics.
Martie G. Haselton is a Professor in the Departments of Communication, Psychology and The Institute for Society and Genetics. Haselton’s research focuses on evolution and human behavior, social psychology, interpersonal communication, and social endocrinology. Empirical work explores intimate relationships, sexuality, reproductive decision making, and the origins of sex and gender differences.
Strange bedfellows: the Alliance Theory of political belief systems
What explains the contents of political belief systems? A widespread view is that they derive from abstract values, like equality, tolerance, and authority. Here, we challenge this view, arguing instead that belief systems derive from political alliance structures that vary across nations and time periods. When partisans mobilize support for their political allies, they generate patchwork narratives that appeal to ad-hoc, and often incompatible, moral principles. In the first part of the paper, we explain how people choose their allies, and how they support their allies using propagandistic tactics. In the second part, we show how these choices and tactics give rise to political alliance structures, with their strange bedfellows, and the idiosyncratic contents of belief systems. If Alliance Theory is correct, then we need a radically different approach to political psychology—one in which belief systems arise not from deep-seated moral values, but from ever-shifting alliances and rivalries.
Keywords: political psychology; evolutionary psychology; social identity; group behavior; belief systems
Political belief systems in the United States can be confusing. According to public opinion polls, conservatives believe that we ought to have more respect for authority (but business owners should disobey regulations they believe are unfair), that people should be allowed to express their political opinions freely in the workplace (but athletes should not be allowed to kneel during the national anthem), that nobody deserves a free handout from the government (but the government should do more to help small, working class towns in America’s heartland), and that we ought to be more suspicious of foreigners (but we should trust Vladimir Putin when he said that he did not interfere in the 2016 election; Pulse of the Nation, 2018a, 2017a, 2018b, 2017b). On the other hand, liberals believe that it’s unfair for CEOs to make millions of dollars a year (but it’s fair for Hollywood movie stars to make millions of dollars a year), that we should stand in solidarity with labor unions (but not police unions), that we should not blame all Muslims for Islamist terrorist attacks (but we should blame all Trump voters for the 2017 killing in Charlottesville), and that it’s wrong to endorse negative stereotypes about a group of people based on their place of birth (but people from the south are racist; Pulse of the Nation, 2018c, 2017c, 2018d; Gallup, 2020).
What is the moral thread that ties all these beliefs together? We suggest a novel answer: there is none. Each moral standard in the above paragraph, together with its apparent violation, serves a strategic function, namely mobilizing support for a specific political ally, or mobilizing opposition to a specific political rival. The more heterogeneous one’s allies and rivals, the more heterogeneous one’s political beliefs will be. Whenever such a wide variety of groups and individuals form alliances, such inconsistencies are bound to arise (for additional inconsistencies, see table 1). These inconsistencies are some of the key predictions of our approach, which we call Alliance Theory.
Alliance Theory leverages decades of research in political science showing that, with the exception of political elites, most Americans lack consistent ideological beliefs (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1980; Achen & Bartels, 2016; Kinder & Kalmoe, 2017). However, we depart from these approaches by stressing that political elites are in many ways just as inconsistent as the masses; they are merely better attuned to (or more loyal to) the historically contingent alliances that arose in their society. These alliances are no more conducive to intellectual consistency than any other set of alliances, historical or contemporary (and there are many; Gunther & Diamond, 2003; Deegan-Krause, 2007; Karol, 2009). It is therefore misleading to characterize elite opinion as more “coherent,” “sophisticated,” “organized,” “deep,” or “thoughtful” than mass opinion (Kinder & Kalmoe, 2019, pp. 2-17). After all, the combination of libertarianism with Christian fundamentalism did not emerge from philosophical analysis. The only reason these philosophies go together in the United States is because of the strategic alliance between pro-life evangelicals and wealthy Republicans in the 1970s—an alliance that is uncommon in other countries (Karol, 2009, chapter 3; Malka, Lelkes, & Soto, 2017; Chen & Lind, 2007; see also Lewis & Lewis, 2022).
Indeed, we argue that political belief systems are not so much “philosophies” as collections of ad hoc justifications, rationalizations, moralizations, embellishments, and rhetorical tactics designed to advance the interests of complex political alliances in competition with their rivals. Moral principles are not so principled. Core values are not so core. Ideological worldviews are not designed to literally view the world but to serve strategic functions like signaling allegiance or mobilizing support (Williams, 2021).
Alliance Theory also leverages decades of research in social identity and intergroup relations (Hornsey, 2008). But we propose a reframing of this literature. Rather than using the terms “ingroup” and “outgroup,” we refer to “allies” and “rivals.” We use these terms to emphasize that forming an alliance with a group does not require being in that group. For example, one can feel allegiance to African Americans or police officers without being an African American or a police officer. Likewise, one can feel resentment toward white people or “poor people,” despite being a white person or a relatively poor person (Kuziemko, Buell, Reich, & Norton, 2014). These phenomena are easier to understand in terms of alliances and rivalries—which can occur both within and between groups—than in terms of identities.
To be sure, there may be broader ideological or partisan identities that encompass these phenomena. But to focus on these broader identities is to lose sight of the key explanatory factors of political belief systems. People do not simply cheer for ideologies or parties as monolithic entities: they advocate for, and rally opposition to, a variety of distinct ethnic, religious, economic, occupational, and cultural groups (in addition to specific individuals) situated in unique conflicts. It is these conflicts that explain political belief systems, defining—and continually redefining—what it means to be a liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat.
The Social Identity tradition has another flaw we seek to remedy: its lack of functional plausibility. Scholars in this tradition claim that the function of ingroup biases—e.g., viewing one’s ingroup in a positive light and one’s outgroup in a negative light—is to maintain a positive self-image (Hornsey, 2008). This intrapsychic function, disconnected from external outcomes that could affect fitness, is implausible on evolutionary grounds (see Kurzban & Aktipis, 2007). A more plausible function is to mobilize support for one’s allies—and opposition to one’s rivals—in social conflicts (Petersen, 2015; Tooby & Cosmides, 2010). We will therefore refer to “ingroup biases” as “propagandistic biases,” both to highlight their outward-facing function, and to emphasize that they are applied to specific allies—and not just one’s broader partisan or ideological ingroup.
Alliance Theory makes two assumptions: 1) humans possess cognitive mechanisms for forming and detecting alliances, and 2) humans use propagandistic tactics to support their allies and oppose their rivals in conflicts. We provide theoretical and empirical support for these two assumptions in the following section. Next, we use assumption 1) to explain the origins of alliance structures across nations and time periods, arguing that contemporary alliances in the United States reflect historical accidents. Then, we use assumption 2) to explain the idiosyncratic contents of political belief systems in the United States, mapping specific beliefs to specific propagandistic biases. Finally, we tease apart Alliance Theory from other approaches, arguing that the primary difference between liberals and conservatives is not what values they hold, but whom they view as their allies.
Cognitive systems for alliance formation
Alliances are a crucial feature of social life among a variety of social species including chimpanzees, baboons, macaques, dolphins, and hyenas (Harcourt & De Waal, 1992). Why has evolution selected for alliances in so many different species? The answer is that there is strength in numbers: two individuals are stronger than one, three are stronger than two, and so forth, leaving individuals without allies “nakedly at the mercy of everyone else” (Tooby, 2017). Alliances can occur between high-ranking individuals to maintain their rank (called conservative alliances), between low-ranking individuals to advance their rank (called revolutionary alliances), and between high and low-ranking individuals to achieve both of these ends (called bridging alliances; Chapais, 1995). These decisions give rise to an alliance structure, defined as the network of supportive or antagonistic relationships between members of a society (DeScioli & Kimbrough, 2019). Given the adaptive advantages of forming alliances, the crucial decision is not whether to form an alliance, but whom to choose as one’s allies (Tooby, 2017; DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009; Chapais, 1995).
Criteria for choosing allies
Similarity
All else equal, more similar individuals make better allies. Sharing the same beliefs, preferences, and expectations allows for more efficient and fluid coordination (Efferson, Lalive, & Fehr, 2008; McElreath, Boyd, & Richerson, 2003). People use “tags,” “markers,” or “identities” to assort with likeminded individuals (McElreath et al., 2003; Smaldino, 2019), and they alter their appearance to signal commitment to a particular group over alternative groups (Sosis, Kress, & Boster, 2007; Fessler & Quintelier, 2013; Kuran, 1998). Observable markers of similarity are also useful as coordination devices or “focal points,” creating common knowledge of existing alliances (Schelling, 1980, chapter 3). As a result, when people are split apart based on arbitrary labels, it creates a self-fulfilling expectation that possessors of each label will favor each other as allies, known as a “minimal groups” effect (Balliet, Wu, & De Dreu, 2014).
Transitivity
Individuals who exhibit transitivity—i.e. who share the same allies and rivals—make better allies as well. Transitivity mitigates two risks: 1) infighting, where one’s allies enter conflicts against one another, and 2) betrayal, where one’s allies side with one’s rivals (Nakamura, Tita, & Krackhardt, 2011; Hiler, 2017; Pietraszewski, 2016). Individuals therefore benefit from favoring transitive allies, and by adopting their allies’ social preferences—as in the saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” or “any friend of yours is a friend of mine” (Tooby & Cosmides, 2010, pp. 208-209; Pietraszewksi, 2016). Mathematical models have shown that transitivity gives rise to clusters of individuals with shared loyalty toward one another and shared rivalry toward other clusters—a natural definition of what “groups” are (Hiler, 2017; Pietraszewski, 2016; Gray et al., 2014). Alliances can also occur between groups, called “super-alliances,” and can vary in terms of their transitivity with other groups (Connor, Heithaus, & Barre, 2001; MacFarlan, Walker, Flinn, & Chagnon, 2014). Research indicates that transitivity plays an important role in both individual and intergroup alliances, including in adolescent friendships, gang rivalries, religious conflicts, and international relations (Heider, 1958; Rambaran, Dijkstra, Munniksma, & Cillessen, 2015; Huitsing, Snijders, Van Duijn, & Veenstra, 2014; Berger & Dijkstra, 2013; Nakamura et al., 2011; Hugh-Jones & Ron, 2019).
Interdependence
Individuals who are interdependent—i.e. who reliably provide benefits to one another—make better allies as well. For example, individuals might reliably share knowledge (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001), offer protection from aggressors (Snyder et al., 2001), or provide help in times of need (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). Consistent with evolutionary theories of interdependence (Aktipis et al., 2018), people feel allegiance to people who are instrumental to their goals (Orehek & Forest, 2016), and they feel enmity toward those who threaten their goals (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005). People also support political parties that advance their personal and group interests (Weeden & Kurzban, 2014), creating interdependence with co-partisans who share the same interests.
Stochasticity
All of the above cues for choosing allies (i.e. similarity, transitivity, and interdependence) are self-reinforcing and partly stochastic. Similar people favor one another as allies, but allies also imitate one another, increasing their similarity. People favor transitive allies, but allies also adjust their loyalties to accommodate new allies, increasing their transitivity. Interdependence gives rise to allegiance, but allies also provide benefits to one another, increasing their interdependence. Small variations in initial social conditions can feed on one and another snowball into seemingly arbitrary alliance structures (e.g., Macy, Deri, Ruch, & Tong, 2019).
Supporting allies in conflicts
After choosing one another, allies must support one another in conflicts—for instance, by defending their allies’ reputations, attacking their rivals’ reputations, and mobilizing support from third parties. We propose an array of biases—which we refer to as propagandistic biases—that may have evolved to serve these functions. We will later argue that these biases, when applied to the American political alliance structure, explain the contents of political belief systems.
Perpetrator biases
Perpetrators of wrongdoing commonly use propaganda to defend their interests. They downplay their personal responsibility for the transgression, emphasize the role of mitigating circumstances, embellish their good intentions, and minimize the severity and duration of the harm inflicted on their victims (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990; Stillwell & Baumeister, 1997; Kowalski, 2000; Kearns & Fincham, 2005; see also Schutz and Baumeister, 1999). Importantly, people also apply perpetrator biases to their allies, rationalizing their allies’ transgressions in precisely the same way—a finding which has been replicated across cultures (Bocian & Wojciszke, 2014; Schiller, Baumgartner, & Knoch, 2014; Gino & Galinsky, 2012; Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2007; Shamir & Shikaki, 2002; see also Bilali, Tropp, & Dasgupta, 2012; Doosje, Zebel, Scheermeijer, & Mathyi, 2007).
Victim biases
Victims exhibit the opposite set of biases as perpetrators. They emphasize the perpetrator’s personal responsibility for the transgression, deny the role of mitigating circumstances, attribute the perpetrator’s motives to irrational malevolence, and embellish the severity and duration of the harm inflicted on them (Stillwell & Baumeister, 1997; Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990; see also Baumeister 1999, chapter 3). Importantly, people also apply victim biases to their allies, embellishing their allies’ grievances in precisely the same way (Linke, 2012; Lieberman & Linke, 2007; Brown, Wohl, & Exline, 2008; Schiller et al., 2014; Noor, Shnabel, Halabi, & Nadler, 2012; Bilali et al., 2012; Andrighetto, Mari, Volpato, & Behluli, 2012). Across cultures, victim biases on both sides of a conflict can lead to “competitive victimhood,” wherein groups strive to “establish that their in-group was subjected to more injustice at the hands of the out-group than the other way around” (Noor et al., 2012; p. 7; Bilali et al., 2012; Andrighetto et al., 2012; Noor, Brown, & Prentice, 2008). We note that victim biases, which call attention to one’s critical disadvantages, are difficult to reconcile with the function of enhancing one’s self-image. They make better sense as tactics for mobilizing support.
Attributional biases
Well-off people also use propaganda to defend their interests. They assume their social and material advantages derive from internal dispositions (talent, hard work) rather than external causes (luck, circumstances). Worse-off people exhibit the opposite bias: they assume their disadvantages derive from external causes (misfortune, mistreatment) rather than internal dispositions (incompetence, low effort). This general pattern of results, observed within the same individuals, is known as the “self-serving attributional bias” (Bradley, 1978). People also apply this attributional bias to their allies, attributing their allies’ advantages to internal causes and their disadvantages to external causes (Rantilla, 2000; Sherman, Kinias, Major, Kim, & Prenovost, 2007; Hewstone, 1990; Klein & Kunda, 1992; Sherman & Kim, 2005; Pettigrew, 1979; Forsyth & Schlenker, 1977; Taylor & Doria, 1981; Lau & Russell, 1980). Similarly, the “linguistic attributional bias,” in which people alter their word choices to make attributions favorable to their allies, has been replicated across cultures (Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Semin, 1989; Von Hippel, Sekaquaptewa, & Vargas, 1997; Maass, Milesi, Zabbini, & Stahlberg, 1995; Maass, Ceccarelli, & Rudin, 1996; Hunter, Stringer, & Watson, 1991; Taylor & Jaggi, 1974).
Section summary
Humans, like other social animals, possess an alliance psychology. This psychology includes mechanisms for choosing allies (based on similarity, transitivity, and interdependence) and supporting allies in conflicts (by using victim, perpetrator, and attributional biases). We expect these mechanisms to be symmetrical across political lines—indeed across all humans—as they are part of our species’ basic cognitive toolkit. In the next two sections, we will demonstrate the explanatory power of these assumptions. We will first show how mechanisms for choosing allies can explain the contingent origins of the alliance structure of the United States. We will then show how mechanisms for supporting allies can explain the precise contents of political belief systems in the United States. We focus on the United States because it contains the highest quality data on existing alliance structures and political beliefs, enabling the most precise tests of Alliance Theory.
The contingent political alliance structure of the United States
Figures 1 and 2 represent a sketch of the American political alliance structure, taken from online samples and nationally representative datasets (Chambers, Schlenker, & Collison, 2013; Bartels, 2018). Whereas the American alliance structure used to be more cross-cutting in prior decades, two super-alliances have recently coalesced that combine partisan, ideological, religious, ethnic, regional, and cultural differences, leading to increased polarization (Mason, 2018; Abramowitz, 2018).
Importantly, there is striking agreement about who’s on which side of the divide, particularly among those who are politically engaged (Ahler & Good, 2018; Rothschild, Howat, Shafranek, & Busby, 2018). When asked to rate all the groups in figure 1 as either “liberal” or “conservative” the correlation between liberals’ and conservatives’ ratings was r = .97 (Chambers et al., 2013). These findings suggest that people are acutely sensitive to—and possess common knowledge of—the details of their alliance structure.
What is the underlying pattern to this alliance structure? One possible answer is social status, with high status groups being more conservative/Republican and low status groups being more liberal/Democratic. However, alliances need not form based on status (recall that “bridging alliances” are common; Chapais, 1995), and there are plenty of exceptions to this rule. Highly educated urbanites are perceived as liberal/Democratic (Rothschild et al., 2018), as well as journalists, scientists, Google, Hollywood movie stars, The United Nations, and college professors (see figure 2; Brandt, 2017). There are also the so-called “losers of globalization” that have more recently developed right-wing allegiances in America and Europe, which include agricultural workers, manual laborers, small town inhabitants, and people without a college degree (Teney, Lacewell, & De Wilde, 2014; see figure 2). Then there are the groups whose status is difficult to categorize, like Christian fundamentalists, radical students, Mormons, gun owners, southerners, and environmentalists (see figures 1 and 2; Ahler & Good, 2018). We might wonder, then: is social status an essential variable in predicting which groups partisans will like or dislike? According to several studies (total N = 2,093), the answer is no. Brandt (2017) compared statistical models predicting attitudes toward various social groups and found that the most parsimonious model, which simply included the political allegiances of the group and the participant, was more powerful than alternative models that included the group’s status as a factor.
Regardless, the more important point is that there does not need to be a deeper pattern here, any more than there needs to be a deeper pattern to the network of friendships, rivalries, and cliques at a local high school (see subsection on “Stochasticity”). Indeed, when we take a cross-cultural and historical perspective, we can see that there is nothing inevitable about the configuration of groups depicted in figures 1 and 2. The military is not always “conservative”: many radical left-wing movements in Latin America—e.g., Chavismo in Venezuela, Peronism in Argentina—were led by former military leaders and championed a kind of militaristic socialism (Corrales, 2014; Marchesi, 2017). College professors are not always “liberal”: during the early 20th century, many progressive scholars supported eugenics and opposed the migration of “inferior” races into the country (Leonard, 2017). Christian fundamentalists are not always “conservative”: in many European and Latin American countries with state religions, religious traditionalism (e.g., opposition to abortion) is associated with economic leftism (Chen & Lind, 2007; Huber & Stanig, 2011; Malka et al., 2017). Feminists and ethnic minorities are not always allies: during the women’s suffrage movement, many feminists excluded African Americans and did not consider their voting rights analogous to theirs (Staples, 2018). Environmentalists are not always “liberal”: during the 1980s and 1990s, Green Parties in Central and Eastern Europe arose in opposition to Soviet industrial policy, forming alliances with anticommunists and right-wing nationalists (Auers, 2012; Kwiotkowska, 2019). The dominant ethnic group is not always “conservative”: many political parties have fused economic leftism with ethnic nationalism, including Australia’s Labor Party (prior to the 1970s; James, Markey, & Markey, 2006, pp. 31-12), Slovakia’s Direction – Social Democracy (Mihálik & Jankoľa, 2016, p. 10), and Italy’s Five Star Movement (Emanuele, Maggini, & Paparo, 2020, p. 9). Given the diversity and dynamism of alliance structures across time and space, it is misleading to think of any particular alliance structure (including our own) as the “consistent” one.
To be sure, we are not denying the possibility of cross-cultural regularities. Whenever countries are culturally and economically similar, they tend to converge on similar alliance structures. For example, nations with similar levels of exposure to globalization have exhibited similar political backlashes among the “losers of globalization” (Teney et al., 2014). Nations with similar declines in religiosity have exhibited similar conflicts between secularists and religionists over changing sexual mores (Weeden & Kurzban, 2013). If the losers of globalization tend to be more religious, then anti-globalists and anti-secularists will tend to fall within the same political coalitions across nations. Ethnic minorities, insofar as they are less wealthy and more in need of social safety nets, will tend to favor economically left-wing parties (Teney, Jacobs, Rea, & Delwit, 2010, pp. 278-279), assuming they trust political elites to support them (Holland, 2018). Lower class members of the ethnic majority, however, are more likely to feel resentful of ethnic minorities (and their political allies), viewing them as competitors for status and resources (Kuziemko et al., 2014; Meuleman, Abts, Schmidt, Pettigrew, & Davidov, 2020). An alliance of lower class, religious, and anti-globalist members of the ethnic majority may therefore be more likely than alternative alliances. Alliance Theory can potentially accommodate the similarities, as well as the differences, in alliance structures across nations and time periods. Alternative approaches, by contrast, struggle to explain the differences.
Origins of the contemporary American alliance structure
At the beginning of the 20th century, the south was a Democratic stronghold, African Americans were loyal to the party of Lincoln, and devout Christians were evenly distributed between the two parties (though there were denominational differences; Achen & Bartels, 2016, chapter 9; Karol, 2009). But the latter half of the 20th century brought four major political realignments. First, the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, drawing racially conservative southerners into the Republican Party and accelerating the movement of African Americans into the Democratic Party (Abramowitz, 2018, Chapters 2-4; Karol, 2009, chapter 4). Second, the Republican Party took ownership of the pro-life, evangelical movement, causing Christian traditionalists to move into the Republican Party and secular feminists to move into the Democratic Party (Abramowitz, 2018, Chapter 3; Karol, 2009, chapter 3). Third, influxes of immigrants from Latin America—coupled with urbanization and the decline of manufacturing work—gave rise to a rural, white underclass who attributed their declining status to immigration and globalization (Abrajano & Hajnal, 2015; Teney et al., 2014). At the same time, expanding college enrollment produced a new upper class of highly educated “knowledge workers” (e.g., journalists, academics; Brint, 1984), while large corporations commanded an increasingly greater share of wealth and political power (Piketty, 2020). These trends resulted in competition and resentment between intellectual elites (e.g., highly educated professionals) and business elites (e.g., wealthy corporate executives; Brint, 1984; Turchin, 2012; pp. 3-5; Weeden & Kurzban, 2014, pp. 146-150; Bonica, 2014, figure 7; Bartels, 2016, tables 2 and 9; Magni-Berton & Rios, 2018; Piketty, 2020, chapter 15). In other words, the lower class split apart based on ethnic rivalries, while the upper class split apart based on status rivalries, thereby weakening the historical link between partisanship and class.
We propose that other groups—e.g., Muslims, police officers, the military—got ensnared in this alliance structure through perceptions of similarity and transitivity. Conflicts between African Americans and law enforcement may have caused the two parties to split apart in their allegiance to police officers. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have had a similar effect: that is, the rivals of Muslim extremists (i.e. Christian extremists) may have taken the side of the American military, while the rivals of Christian extremists (i.e. secular liberals) may have eventually, with the exception of the so-called “new atheists,” taken the side of Muslims (i.e. the enemy of their enemy is their friend). Partisanship, and cues from party leaders in support of particular wars, may have also played a role in shaping military attitudes (Zaller, 1992, chapter 6; Karol, 2009, chapter 5; Berinsky, 2007). Regardless of how the American alliance structure changed throughout the decades, we can see that it did change, with political elites rationalizing the changes every step of the way (Lewis & Lewis, 2022).
In the next section, we use figures 1 and 2 as a starting point and begin evaluating predictions entailed by Alliance Theory. We predict that partisans will apply propagandistic biases to their allies—including victim, perpetrator, and attributional biases—which will explain the contents of their political belief systems. We note that some of our predictions converge with existing theoretical approaches, whereas others do not. We will tease apart Alliance Theory from alternative approaches in the section after next.
Explaining political belief systems in the United States
Perpetrator biases in political belief systems
Republicans appear to feel greater allegiance toward white people than they do toward African Americans (see figures 1 and 2). Thus, Republicans are predicted to display perpetrator biases toward white people, which might include downplaying white people’s transgressions against African Americans, including those that have occurred throughout American history. Indeed, polling data reveal that Republicans, together with white people in general, are far less likely to believe that that discrimination against African Americans is currently a problem, that the legacy of slavery contributes to racial disparities in wealth, and that African Americans are entitled to reparations (Moore, 2014). An alternative interpretation of these results is that Republicans are more likely to downplay intergroup oppression in general. However, the same poll revealed bipartisan support of reparations for Holocaust survivors in Germany (Moore, 2014), suggesting that perpetrator biases are specific to one’s local political allies.
Conservatives appear to feel allegiance toward members of the American military (see figures 1 and 2); thus, Alliance Theory predicts that conservatives will be inclined to rationalize military transgressions. Indeed, research indicates that conservatives are less likely to hold the military responsible for unintended civilian casualties, but they are not less likely to hold Iraqis responsible for unintended civilian casualties (Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum, & Ditto, 2009; Ditto, Pizarro, & Tannenbaum, 2009; Tannenbaum, Pizarro, & Ditto, 2007). Other data indicate that conservatives are more likely to condone torture perpetrated by the American military; however, they are not more likely to condone torture perpetrated by Iraqis (Norris, Larsen, & Stastny, 2010; see also Crawford, 2012).
One alternative interpretation of these findings is that the military symbolizes “authority” or “security,” which explains conservatives’ allegiance to the military. This entails the prediction that conservatives will be generally supportive of the FBI, which is also symbolizes these values. Yet soon after the FBI began investigating Donald Trump, Republicans became less likely to support the FBI than Democrats, reversing a longstanding partisan divide (Pew Research Center, 2018). Moreover, support for the military at the beginning of the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War was nearly identical between parties until political leaders began to take opposing stances, causing only politically engaged partisans to follow suit (Zaller, 1992, chapter 6; Berinsky, 2007; see also Karol, 2009, chapter 5). The World Health Organization (WHO) also symbolizes authority and security, yet most Republicans distrusted it during the COVID-19 pandemic (Yougov, 2020). These results suggest that attitudes toward institutions are powerfully shaped by partisan allegiance and perceptions of transitivity, and only secondarily (if at all) by the values they symbolize.
Liberals (and Democrats) also exhibit perpetrator biases. When liberals evaluate harms inflicted upon their political rivals (e.g., pro-life supporters, Christian fundamentalists), they are more likely to agree that defacing these groups’ property is “justified,” and that any harassment they suffer is “deserved” (Wetherell, Brandt, & Reyna, 2013). Many strongly identified Democrats justify “mistreatment” of their political opponents, “breaking a few rules” to oppose them, and even using violence as a political tactic (Kalmoe & Mason, 2019). In hypothetical “trolley dilemmas,” liberals are more likely to offer ad hoc moral justifications for killing a white person to save a group of African Americans, but not for killing an African American to save a group of white people (Uhlmann et al., 2009). Liberals (and Democrats) appear to judge a variety of corrupt or dishonest behaviors as less morally wrong when they are committed by Democratic politicians, compared to similar transgressions committed by Republican politicians or corporate CEOs (Coleman, 2013; Solomon, Hackathorn, & Crittendon, 2019; Eriksson, Simpson, & Strimling, 2019; Jasinenko, Christandl, & Meynhardt, 2020). Perpetrator biases are also consistent with examples of liberal intellectuals downplaying, overlooking, or justifying atrocities committed by socialist and communist regimes (Applebaum, 2007, Introduction; Hollander, 2016, p. 58; Hollander, 2017; Stephens, 2017).
Victim biases in political belief systems
Liberals appear to feel allegiance toward a variety of disadvantaged groups (e.g., African Americans, women, gay people, Hispanics; see figures 1 and 2). Thus, Alliance Theory predicts that liberals will apply victim biases to these groups. This idea is consistent with the gradual “concept creep” that has occurred for the definition of “prejudice,” which has expanded to encompass increasingly subtle, indirect, and unintentional behaviors, and has coincided with increasing political polarization (Haslam, 2015; see also Haidt, 2015; Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018). At the same time, liberal college students have become increasingly likely to report microaggressions (i.e. subtle affronts) against the groups with which they identify, which may be due to increasing support from their allies (Campbell & Manning, 2014; see also Lilienfeld, 2017; Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018).
Victim biases may occur among conservatives as well, albeit toward different groups. Since conservatives appear to feel greater allegiance to men, working class white people, Christians, and police officers (see figures 1 and 2), Alliance Theory predicts that conservatives will apply victim biases to these groups, perhaps even engaging in competitive victimhood with liberals. Consistent with this prediction, conservatives are far more likely to believe that discrimination against Christians is a serious societal problem (Jones, Cox, Dionne, Galston, Lienesch, 2016, pp. 16-17), that sexism against men is more prevalent than sexism against women (Bosson, Vandello, Michniewicz, & Lenes, 2012), that most black people are racist against white people (Rasmussen Reports, 2013), and that politicians’ criticism of police officers threatens their safety (Rasmussen Reports, 2015a). Other polling data indicate that 65% of Republicans agree that “people are too easily offended,” despite also agreeing that Black Lives Matter is offensive (Pulse of the Nation, 2017d).
Attributional biases in political belief systems
Since liberals and conservatives appear to exhibit different feelings of allegiance toward “wealthy people” and “poor people” (as well as specific groups associated with them; see figures 1 and 2), Alliance Theory predicts corresponding attributional biases about the causes of wealth and poverty. Indeed, conservatives are more likely to attribute wealth and poverty to internal dispositions (i.e. hard work, lack of effort) than external factors (i.e. circumstances beyond one’s control; Pew Research Center, 2014; Weiner, Osborne, & Rudolph, 2011; Chambers, Swan, & Heesacker, 2015). Echoing these findings, poor people are more likely to attribute their financial problems to external circumstances, while wealthy people are more likely to attribute their financial success to internal dispositions (Pew Research Center, 2014), suggestive of a self-serving attributional bias.
One alternative interpretation of these results is that liberals are generally less likely to make internal attributions to a target. However, a large body of research refutes this hypothesis, showing instead that liberals strategically alter their attributions depending on their allegiance to the target. For example, liberals are more likely than conservatives to make internal attributions to a group of marines who inadvertently killed Iraqi civilians in response to an attack, as well as a police officer who shot an escaped cougar from the zoo (Morgan, Mullen, & Skitka, 2010). Similarly, Democrats are more likely to make internal attributions to a Republican politician (but not a Democratic politician) who committed bribery, as well as a Democratic politician (but not a Republican politician) who made a large donation to charity (Coleman, 2013; see also Malhotra & Kuo, 2008; Sirin & Villalobos, 2011). Democrats are also more likely to blame their Republican president, but not their Democratic governor, for unemployment increases in their state (Brown, 2010). Many liberal Democrats even report that climate change deniers “get what they deserve” when natural disasters strike their homes, suggesting an internal attribution for their misfortune (Webster & Motta, 2019). Crucially, when individuals make attributions about the behavior of politically neutral individuals—i.e. those not widely associated with either political party—researchers find no ideological differences in their attributions (Morgan et al., 2010).
There is also suggestive evidence that external attributions are made by working class white people, who have recently become an important voting bloc within the Republican Party (Pew Research Center, 2016a). That is, rather than attributing their low status to internal causes (e.g., lack of effort or skill), they attribute it to external causes (e.g., immigration, globalization, reverse discrimination). Consistent with this idea, working class white people are more likely to believe that international trade hurts their family’s finances (Pew Research Center, 2016b), that immigrants take jobs away from Americans (Rasmussen Reports, 2015b; Jones et al., 2016), and that white people are disadvantaged by reverse discrimination (Jones et al., 2016, pp. 15-17). These beliefs are also more likely to be endorsed by Republicans more broadly.
Summarizing political belief systems
Political belief systems in the United States include a wide variety of apparently puzzling contents. Conservatives appear to believe that poor people should take personal responsibility for their financial problems (but that working class white people should blame immigration, globalization, and affirmative action), that the infliction of torture and collateral damage is morally permissible (but that Iraqi’s infliction of torture and collateral damage is reprehensible), that we ought to respect the authority of the military (but not the FBI or the WHO), and that people should stop being so easily offended (except Christians, white people, men, and police officers). Liberals appear to believe that poor people are not personally responsible for their financial problems (but that climate change deniers are personally responsible for natural disasters that strike their home), that it is unacceptable to kill Iraqi civilians to save American lives (but that it is acceptable to kill a white person to save African American lives), that Democratic politicians’ corruption is overblown (but that corporate CEOs corruption is reprehensible), and that we ought to protect minority college students (but not police officers in dangerous communities) from feeling unsafe.
What can explain this bewildering variety of beliefs? Alliance Theory suggests a parsimonious answer: liberals and conservatives have different allies and rivals. When they use propagandistic biases to support their allies and oppose their rivals, they generate conflicting narratives that form the contents of political belief systems. In the following section, we compare Alliance Theory to alternative approaches, focusing on where they make diverging predictions. In particular, we compare Alliance Theory to approaches that 1) entail an asymmetry between liberals and conservatives in their moral values, and 2) use this asymmetry to directly explain the contents of political belief systems.
Comparing alliance theory to alternative theories
Intolerance Theory
The idea that conservatives are more prejudiced, ethnocentric, xenophobic, or intolerant of diversity is common in the political psychology literature and has taken a variety of forms. For instance, Haidt (2012) posited that conservatives rely more on the “loyalty/betrayal” foundation, an innate module that evolved to promote group cohesion and intergroup competition (see pp. 161-164). Moreover, Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, and Malle (1994) posited that conservatives are higher in “Social Dominance Orientation (SDO),” defined as “the extent to which one desires that one’s ingroup dominate and be superior to outgroups” (p. 742). Other researchers have argued that conservatives are more patriotic than liberals (Schatz, Staub, & Lavine, 1999; Bealey, 1999) and more intolerant of outgroups (Hodson & Busseri, 2012). All of these studies have found correlations between various measures of outgroup antipathy and political conservatism. The claim we will examine, therefore, is that ideological differences in intolerance of outgroups can explain political belief systems.
The above findings, however, are also consistent with Alliance Theory. Rather than disliking outgroups in general, conservatives may simply dislike their specific political rivals, including African Americans, the poor, atheists, and gay people (see figures 1 and 2). For instance, the SDO inventory refers to groups that are “inferior” or “at the bottom,” which may call to mind historically derogatory language applied to African Americans or the poor (see Schmitt, Branscombe, & Kappen, 2003). Measures of patriotism may be confounded with feelings of allegiance to white people, as opposed to a sense of loyalty to the country as a whole (Devos & Banaji, 2005; Peña & Sidanius, 2002). Some researchers’ measures of “outgroup prejudice” are simply measures of antipathy toward African Americans or gay people (e.g., Hodson & Busseri, 2012). Thus, the existing evidence that has been used to support Intolerance Theory, our umbrella term, is also consistent with Alliance Theory: that is, conservatives may simply dislike their political rivals.
One area where the two theories make contrasting predictions is political intolerance. If conservatives are generally more intolerant of outgroups than liberals, then they will show stronger negative attitudes toward their political outgroups than liberals. However, if both groups possess the same alliance psychology, then they will show equally negative attitudes toward their political rivals. Indeed, a wealth of evidence supports Alliance Theory: liberals exhibit equal levels of dislike, discrimination, and support for violence against conservatives as the other way around (Chambers et al., 2013; Wetherell et al., 2013; Brandt, 2017; Kalmoe & Mason, 2019; though see Ganzach & Schul, 2021). Likewise, Democrats are just as negatively biased against Republicans (both implicitly and explicitly) as the other way around, and both groups are equally likely to discriminate against one another in hypothetical job applications (Iyengar & Westwood, 2015; Westwood et al., 2018; see also Pew Research Center, 2016c).
Another area where the two theories make contrasting predictions is attitudes toward groups that are associated with one’s political outgroup. Here, Intolerance Theory predicts that conservatives will show more negative attitudes toward groups associated with liberals (e.g., atheists) than liberals will show toward groups associated with conservatives (e.g., Christian fundamentalists). However, recent evidence from several studies failed to support this prediction. When asked to rate a variety of groups that vary in their political associations—e.g., feminists, businesspeople, atheists, Christian fundamentalists—liberals expressed more negative attitudes toward the groups associated with conservatives, whereas conservatives expressed more negative attitudes toward the groups associated with liberals (Chambers et al., 2013; Wetherell et al., 2013; Brandt et al., 2014; Crawford et al., 2015; Brandt, 2017; see also figures 1 and 2). Crucially, the researchers found no ideological differences in negative attitudes toward outgroup-associated targets.
One might respond that liberals’ negative attitudes stem from a different source than conservatives’ negative attitudes. That is, conservatives are intolerant of outgroups, whereas liberals are merely intolerant of conservatives’ intolerance. However, one problem with this interpretation is that both liberals and conservatives perceive their ideological opponents as intolerant, while perceiving themselves as tolerant (Chambers & Melnyk, 2006; Moore-Berg, Ankori-Karlinsky, Hameiri, & Bruneau, 2020). Indeed, the tendency to view one’s rivals as aggressive, hateful, and unreasonable (i.e. intolerant), and one’s allies as peaceful, friendly, and reasonable (i.e. tolerant), is a common feature of social conflicts across cultures (Brewer & Campbell, 1976; Baumeister, 1999; Noor et al., 2012; Waytz, Young, & Ginges, 2014). Of course, we could say that, in this particular conflict, liberals happen to be correct, and conservatives happen to be incorrect. But then we would need an explanation for why conservatives alone are incorrect. Perhaps conservatives want to make liberals look evil and themselves look virtuous. However, that would imply that conservatives believe intolerance is evil and tolerance is virtuous, which contradicts Intolerance Theory. Alliance Theory avoids this confusion. Since each side has symmetrical propagandistic biases, each side is will naturally justify their own, and magnify the other’s, intolerance.
Another way to tease apart the two theories is by substituting different outgroups on otherwise identical policy issues. For example, if conservatives are generally more threatened by foreigners (i.e. national outgroups), then it should not matter much whether the foreigners are Asian or Hispanic: there should be at least some intolerance of both. However, Hispanics are more likely to be categorized as liberal than Asian Americans (see figure 1), perhaps because Asian Americans are wealthier and/or less stereotypically associated with welfare (Abrajano & Hajnal, 2015, pp. 74-75). Alliance Theory therefore predicts that conservatives (and Republicans) will differentiate between Hispanic and Asian outgroups, exhibiting negative attitudes toward the former but not the latter. Indeed, data from nationally representative datasets indicate that Republicans, compared to Democrats, have more negative attitudes toward Hispanics but more positive attitudes toward Asian Americans (Abrajano & Hajnal, 2015, chapter 2). Other research indicates that negative attitudes toward immigrants crucially depends on the characteristics of the immigrants in question—not on foreignness per se. When immigrants are described as Christian, European, Asian, law-abiding, or highly skilled, a majority of Republicans support immigration, with little or no partisan differences. It is only when immigrants are described as Muslim or Central American that clear partisan differences emerge, with Muslim immigrants eliciting the largest partisan divide (Hainmueller & Hopkins, 2015; Griffin, 2018; Jones et al., 2016, pp. 33-35). Attitudes toward Israelis, moreover, reflect the opposite pattern of ideological differences than would be predicted by intolerance of national outgroups, with conservatives being more likely to view Israel as an ally (YouGov/Economist, 2019).
We might also apply Intolerance Theory to attitudes about Vladimir Putin. Here, Intolerance Theory makes a clear prediction: conservatives will have more negative attitudes toward Vladimir Putin than liberals, because he is the leader of a longstanding foreign adversary of the United States. Yet Donald Trump repeatedly expressed positive attitudes toward Putin, which implies that Republicans, and Trump supporters in particular, may have considered Putin as an ally due to perceptions of transitivity (i.e. the ally of my ally is my friend). Consistent with this idea, Republicans’ support for Putin more than tripled between 2015 and 2017, the time during which Donald Trump rose to power and began praising Putin (Gallup, 2017; YouGov, 2017; see also Pulse of the Nation, 2017b). Similarly, other polling data indicated that Republicans were substantially less likely than Democrats to view Russia’s power and influence as a threat to the United States (Pew Research Center, 2017). Moreover, following the Trump impeachment hearings, Republicans were over four times less likely than Democrats to believe that requesting a foreign government to investigate one’s political opponents was “inappropriate” (YouGov/Economist, 2019). These data are difficult to reconcile with the idea that conservatives are generally more loyal to America or wary of foreigners.
One might respond that conservatism isn’t so much about national intolerance as it is about ethnic intolerance. That is, conservatives are more likely to be ethnocentric, evaluating their ethnic group more favorably than other ethnic groups. However, a large body of research challenges this hypothesis. Ethnocentrism is common across ethnic groups (Kinder & Kam, 2010, chapter 3), and it sometimes predicts more liberal policy preferences, depending on the ethnic group one belongs to. For instance, Among African Americans, ethnocentrism predicts support for affirmative action (Kinder & Kam, 2010, chapter 10), and among Hispanics, ethnocentrism predicts support for immigration (Kinder & Kam, 2010, chapter 6). For a variety of other political beliefs—e.g., abortion, environmentalism, women’s rights, size of government—ethnocentrism plays no role at all (Kinder & Kam, 2010, chapters 3 and 8). Crucially, data taken from a nationally representative sample (N = 4,945) indicate that ethnocentrism is only weakly related to conservatism and Republican identification (Rs = 0.07 and 0.06, respectively; Kinder & Kam, 2010, chapter 3).
Perhaps conservatism isn’t about ethnic intolerance, but about prejudice based on immutable traits. However, according to figure 1, liberal groups are scarcely more likely to possess immutable traits than conservative groups. Four of the 16 conservative groups have immutable traits (i.e. white people, men, Asian Americans, and elderly people), compared to five of the 19 liberal groups (i.e. gay people, women, Hispanics, young people, and African Americans). This is a difference between 25% and 26%. One might respond that liberals only dislike the former set of groups because of perceived political differences, not because of their immutable traits. However, this is an equally plausible explanation for why conservatives dislike the latter set of groups. Indeed, studies show that ideological differences in racial attitudes disappear when perceived political allegiances are held constant (Chambers et al., 2013, studies 2 and 3), and when it comes to particular African Americans (e.g., Tim Scott, Ben Carson) and particular women (e.g., Sarah Palin, Nikki Haley), the expected ideological differences reverse (e.g., YouGov, 2020). Several studies directly compared statistical models predicting dislike of various groups (total N = 2,093). Results indicated that the most parsimonious model, which simply included the political allegiance of the group and the participant, was more powerful than alternative models that included immutable traits as a factor (Brandt, 2017).
Taken together, the results challenge Intolerance Theory, but they offer strong support for Alliance Theory. Liberals and conservatives are equally hostile to their political rivals, and they are equally hostile to the allies of their political rivals. Conservatives are not generally threatened by foreigners, but in fact hold favorable attitudes toward a wide variety of foreigners, including Asian immigrants, European immigrants, Christian immigrants, Russia, Israel, and even Vladimir Putin. Conservatives do not appear to be particularly nationalistic, patriotic, ethnocentric, or prejudiced based on immutable traits. They simply have different allies and rivals than their liberal counterparts.
Authoritarianism Theory
The idea that conservatives are more authoritarian has long been prominent in political psychology. The idea originated in 1950 with the publication of The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950), and was revisited by Altemeyer (1981) who posited that conservatives are higher in “right-wing authoritarianism.” More recently, Graham, Haidt, and Nosek (2009) argue that conservatives rely more on the “authority/respect foundation,” a cognitive module that evolved for conferring social rank. The claim here is that political belief systems can be explained by differences in authoritarianism, or the disposition to obey or exercise authority.
However, rather than disagreeing about authority in the abstract, partisans may simply disagree about which groups’ authority should be respected. Many measures of authoritarianism are, in fact, confounded with group attitudes: for instance, the “authority/hierarchy” subscale of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire contains the statements “Men and women have different roles to play in society,” and “If I were a soldier and disagreed with my commanding officer’s orders, I would obey anyway because that is my duty” (Graham et al., 2009). Measures of “right-wing authoritarianism,” moreover, assess attitudes toward people who “criticize the church” or who strictly follow “God’s laws” (Zakrisson, 2005). Given that men, women, the military, Christians, and atheists elicit diverging allegiances from liberals and conservatives (see figures 1 and 2), ideological differences on these measures are also consistent with Alliance Theory. That is, conservatives may simply respect the authority of specific groups—namely their allies—more than liberals.
How might we tease apart the two theories? If Alliance Theory is correct, then respect for authority will depend on the authority figure in question: conservatives will respect the authority of their allies, whereas liberals will respect the authority of their allies. Moreover, when it comes to groups that are politically neutral (not widely associated with either party or ideology), there will be little or no ideological differences in respect for authority. Authoritarianism Theory, by contrast, predicts that conservatives will show greater respect for a wide range of authority figures, including authority figures that are politically neutral.
Several studies have tested these predictions, and the results strongly support Alliance Theory. Whereas conservatives show more respect for the authority of their political allies (e.g., military personnel, religious leaders) liberals show more respect for the authority of their political allies (e.g., civil rights activists, environmentalists). When it comes to ideologically neutral authority figures (e.g., judges, office managers) there are no ideological differences in respect for authority (Frimer, Gaucher, & Schaefer, 2014). Other research indicates that liberals are more likely to respect the authority of the president, but only when the president in question is Barack Obama (Crawford, Kay, & Duke, 2015). Likewise, Republicans show less respect for authority figures that are plausibly associated with liberals, including the Internal Revenue Service, the national news media, colleges and universities, regulatory agencies, climate scientists, and the Environmental Protection Agency (Pew Research Center, 2015, pp. 61 and 126; Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, & Braman, 2011; Pulse of the Nation, 2018a). As we have seen, Republicans show less support for the FBI than Democrats, likely due to the FBI’s investigations of Donald Trump (Pew Research Center, 2018), and more recently, Republicans showed relatively low respect for scientific and institutional authorities throughout the COVID-19 pandemic (YouGov, 2020).
Perhaps Authoritarianism Theory is less about generally respecting authority figures and more about the desire to exercise authority over others—for instance, by restricting their speech. This version of the theory predicts that conservatives will be more motivated to restrict the speech of their political rivals than liberals. However, many studies have failed to confirm this prediction. Whereas conservatives are more likely to favor restricting the speech of liberal activists, liberals are more likely to favor restricting the speech of conservative activists, and both liberals and conservatives are equally likely to favor restricting the speech of their political opponents (Crawford, 2014; Crawford & Pilanski, 2014; Sullivan, Pieron, & Marcus, 1982; Wetherell et al., 2013; Kahan, Hoffman, Braman, & Evans, 2012; van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2016). Moreover, it is difficult to see how a preference for laissez faire capitalism, laxer gun control laws, fewer precautions during COVID-19, and environmental deregulation—all more prevalent among conservatives—can be reconciled with a general desire to restrict others’ behavior (e.g., Pew Research Center, 2016b; YouGov, 2020).
One might respond that authoritarianism is not a motivation to exercise authority or obey authority per se, but rather an array of psychological dispositions like strict adherence to norms, preference for strong leaders, and/or black-and-white thinking (Zakrisson, 2005; Manson, 2020). Whereas some of these dispositions are important predictors of political extremism (van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2016), they are not unique to conservatives. Recent research indicates that measures of “left-wing authoritarianism” are associated with “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived rivals, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism” (Costello, Bowes, Stevens, Waldman, & Lilienfeld, 2021, p. 39; see also Manson, 2020). Other research indicates that, across thirteen European countries, authoritarian beliefs such as that children should be “obedient” and that “strong leaders” should not have to “bother with elections” is just as often associated with left-wing identification as right-wing identification (De Regt, Mortelmans, & Smits, 2011; see also Moore-Berg et al., 2020). Research in comparative politics indicates that, across nations, preference for authoritarian vs. democratic governance does not consistently align with either left-wing or right-wing identification (Deegan-Krause, 2007; Marchesi, 2017; De Leeuw, Rekker, Azrout, & van Spanje, 2020).
One might object that left-wing authoritarianism, even if it has similar psychological correlates as right-wing authoritarianism, is fundamentally different because it is anti-hierarchical. However, left-wing authoritarians do not seek to eliminate the social hierarchy; they seek to rearrange the hierarchy. One of the items on the left-wing authoritarianism scale reads “America would be much better off if all of the rich people were at the bottom of the social ladder,” and another reads “If I could remake society, I would put people who currently have the most privilege at the very bottom” (Costello et al., 2021). These statements illustrate that both left-wing and right-wing authoritarians want their allies at the top, and their rivals at the bottom, of the social hierarchy. Neither are opposed to hierarchy itself.
Egalitarianism Theory
Another prominent idea in political psychology is that liberals are more egalitarian than conservatives—that is, they prefer greater equality between groups. For instance, Graham et al. (2009) propose that liberals rely more on the “equality/fairness foundation,” Sidanius and Pratto (2001) argue that political conservatism is designed to “enhance or maintain the degree of social inequality” (p. 741), and Jost et al. (2003) argue that conservatives are more motivated to “justify inequality among groups and individuals” (p. 340). As one scholar put it, “One major criterion continually reappears in distinguishing left from right: attitudes toward equality” (Giddens, 1998, p. 40). The claim here is that political belief systems can be explained by a general support or opposition to equality.
However, when people think about “equality,” they are likely to call to mind specific political issues (e.g., feminism, gay marriage, affirmative action), as opposed to “equality” as an abstract concept (e.g., Bishop, 2004). When people voice their support for equality, they may not be promoting an abstract ideal so much as attempting to advance the interests of their political allies in specific conflicts. Egalitarian rhetoric is most often employed in political discourse to mobilize support for African Americans, feminists, gay people, liberals, and Democrats. Use of this rhetoric may therefore reflect allegiance to that particular set of groups, as opposed to an impartial moral preference that cuts across group identities. If this is the case, then many widely used measures of egalitarianism may be confounded with political and social allegiances. What might a more valid measure of egalitarianism look like? One possibility is to ask participants to evaluate a set of hypothetical societies that vary randomly in their level of equality, assessing what type of society participants would be most interested in joining.
In fact, in one study using a nationally representative sample (N = 5,522), just such a measure was devised. When Republican and Democratic voters chose between hypothetical societies with randomly determined distributions of wealth, the researchers found no partisan difference in their preference to live in an equal society (Norton & Ariely, 2011; see also Norton, Neal, Govan, Ariely, & Holland, 2014). However, when the task was reframed to be more specific—i.e. referring to preferred levels of equality in the United States—a small partisan gap emerged, with Democratic voters preferring more equal distributions of wealth than Republican voters (Norton & Ariely, 2011). Consistent with these results, other research indicates striking consensus among white Americans in their support for egalitarian principles and ideals (i.e. equal opportunity, equal treatment), but substantial disagreement over items that implicate specific groups—i.e. whether “we’ve gone too far” in “pushing” equal rights for women and African Americans (Sears, Henry, & Kosterman, 2000, pp. 91-95). These findings fit better with Alliance Theory, which posits that political attitudes derive more from group allegiances than from egalitarianism in the abstract.
Another way to tease apart Alliance Theory from Egalitarianism Theory is by determining the direction of causality between egalitarianism and group allegiances. Alliance Theory posits that group allegiances come first, with support for equality arising subsequently as a rhetorical tactic to mobilize support for one’s disadvantaged allies. Egalitarianism Theory, by contrast, posits that support for equality comes first, with group allegiances arising subsequently based on whether the group shares one’s mission to create a more equal society. Evidence from a four-year, nationally representative longitudinal study (N = 759) supports Alliance Theory: prior party identification predicts subsequent egalitarianism, whereas prior egalitarianism does not predict subsequent party identification (Goren, 2005). Moreover, longitudinal research indicates that sudden decreases in social status increase subsequent support for equality (Owens & Pedulla, 2013), and experimental research indicates that people rapidly switch from egalitarian to anti-egalitarian moral judgments—in a matter of minutes—depending on whether equality benefits the group they were assigned to (DeScioli, Massenkoff, Shaw, Petersen, & Kurzban, 2014). Taken together, the evidence suggests that egalitarianism is not a stable, pre-existing orientation, but is instead a flexible tactic designed to support oneself and one’s allies.
Another way to differentiate the two theories is by substituting different groups in otherwise identical scenarios. If liberals only support equality to defend their allies, then their support for equality will depend on whether their allies are at a disadvantage. Consistent with this prediction, when participants evaluated an insurance policy that resulted in larger premiums for a high-risk neighborhood (resulting in unequal pricing), participants’ opposition to the policy strongly depended on the demographics of the disadvantaged neighborhood. When the disadvantaged neighborhood was described as mostly African American, liberals expressed nearly twice as much opposition to the policy as conservatives. But when the disadvantaged neighborhood was described as mostly white, ideological differences were statistically insignificant (Tetlock, Kristel, Elson, Green, & Lerner, 2000, experiment 3). Similarly, when respondents of a public opinion poll were asked whether it was unfair for an advantaged group to be paid millions of dollars a year, respondents’ judgments strongly depended on the identity of the advantaged group. When the group was described as corporate CEOs, liberals were more likely than conservatives to say the amount of pay was unfair. But when the advantaged group was described as Hollywood movie stars, liberals were less likely than conservatives to say it was unfair (Pulse of the Nation, 2018c). Since Hollywood movie stars are commonly associated with liberals (Brandt, 2017), these results imply that support for equality depends on one’s allegiance to the advantaged group in question. Finally, other polling data indicate that when it comes to “small, working class towns in America’s heartland” a clear majority of Republicans (72%) agree that “the government should do more to help” them, suggesting that conservatives are perfectly willing to support disadvantaged groups, so long as they are perceived as their political allies (Pulse of the nation, 2018b).
One might respond that Egalitarianism Theory is less about unequal outcomes between groups and more about unequal treatment of groups. We might call this view the Discrimination Theory. According to the Discrimination Theory, liberals are generally more opposed to discrimination than conservatives, and more willing to trust the experiences of those who claim they’ve been discriminated against. Alliance Theory, by contrast, entails a different claim: liberals mainly oppose discrimination against their allies and trust their allies, whereas conservatives mainly oppose discrimination against their allies and trust their allies. Consistent with this latter claim, nationally representative polling data indicate that liberals express more concern than conservatives about discrimination against atheists, African Americans, and women, whereas conservatives express more concern than liberals about discrimination against Christians, men, and white people (Jones et al., 2016, pp. 15-17; Moore, 2014; Rasmussen Reports, 2013; Miller, 2017; Bosson et al., 2012; Pew Research Center, 2009 ; see also Norton & Sommers, 2011).
Of course, liberals may only care more about discrimination against the former set of groups, because those groups face more frequent and severe discrimination. However, this does not explain why conservatives care more about discrimination against the latter set of groups. If conservatives are generally less concerned about discrimination, then why are they more concerned about less frequent and severe forms of it? If liberals are generally more willing to trust the experiences of groups who claim they’ve been discriminated against, then why are they less likely than conservatives to trust the latter set of groups? Alliance Theory avoids this confusion. People engage in competitive victimhood to mobilize support their allies (Noor et al., 2012), while denying or downplaying mistreatment of their rivals. This is all we need to assume to explain the data.
One alternative possibility is that it is only conservatives that are downplaying discrimination faced by their rivals, whereas liberals are evaluating claims of discrimination impartially. However, the available evidence suggests that liberals are far from impartial. Indeed, some liberals are even willing to obstruct scientific research on discrimination faced by their rivals. When researchers randomly sent varying study proposals to human subjects committees—some examining “reverse discrimination” (i.e. against white men) and others examining conventional discrimination—the committees rejected the proposals on reverse discrimination more frequently, and many committee members explicitly stated that they rejected the proposals for political reasons (Ceci, Peters, & Plotkin, 1985). This lack of impartiality fits better with Alliance Theory than with a general opposition to unequal treatment.
One final possibility is that liberals are indeed more opposed to discrimination as a general principle—it is only that, due to the United States’ long history of racial and gender oppression, discrimination against women and ethnic minorities entails the added harm of perpetuating historical inequities. A better way to disentangle the two theories, therefore, would be to examine ideological differences in discrimination against groups that have not suffered from, or have not benefited from, historical inequities. For example, one might measure discrimination against contemporary partisan outgroups. In this case, the Discrimination Theory predicts that liberals will be less likely to discriminate against partisan outgroups than conservatives. However, Democrats are just as likely to discriminate against Republicans as the other way around (Iyengar & Westwood, 2015), and liberals are just as likely to discriminate against conservatives as the other way around (Wetherell et al., 2013). Liberals are also just as likely to discriminate against groups associated with the conservatives (e.g., Tea Party activists, pro-life people) as conservatives are to discriminate against groups associated with liberals (e.g., feminists, pro-choice people; Wetherell et al., 2013; Sullivan et al., 1982). Hitting closer to home, when social psychologists were asked how inclined they would be to discriminate against a conservative job applicant at their university, fully 82% of liberals admitted that they would be at least a little bit inclined to discriminate against the applicant (Duarte et al., 2015, p. 11; Honeycutt & Freberg, 2017).
In sum, liberals do not appear to be impartial defenders of egalitarianism as a general moral principle; rather, they support equality if, and only if, it benefits specific groups—namely women, atheists, African Americans, feminists, pro-choice people, Democrats, or liberals. When it comes to other groups—namely men, Christians, white people, Hollywood movie stars, Tea Party activists, pro-life people, Republicans, or conservatives—liberals’ support for equality disappears. Political allegiances appear to drive egalitarianism, but not the other way around. When egalitarianism is measured in the abstract—i.e. without reference to local intergroup conflicts—partisan differences disappear. Taken together, the body of evidence fits better with Alliance Theory than Egalitarianism Theory.
[Table 1 near here]
Implications and directions for future research
Alliance Theory is relatively modest in its assumptions. Contrary to other approaches, the theory does not assume—nor preclude—any psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. The theory only makes two assumptions: 1) humans possess cognitive mechanisms for forming and detecting alliances, and 2) humans use propagandistic tactics to support their allies and oppose their rivals in conflicts. These assumptions rest on strong theoretical and empirical foundations. Even more promising, these assumptions alone can explain the diverse contents of political belief systems, including their many inconsistencies and double standards.
Alternative approaches, which appeal to various partisan asymmetries and psychological constructs, face a unique set of problems. For instance, even if partisans validly differed on one or another construct, it would immediately raise the question of 1) where that difference itself came from, and 2) what the precise causal pathways are between this construct and the heterogeneous, contradictory contents of political belief systems (see e.g., table 1). Alliance Theory does not have these problems. Rather, it explains political belief systems by appeal to group allegiances, which have straightforward, causal connections to specific beliefs and policy preferences, namely those that advance the interests of the groups in question (e.g., Nelson & Kinder, 1996).
Our approach can therefore be readily applied to other cultures and time periods, first by mapping the alliance structure of the society in question (see e.g., figures 1 and 2), and then by applying the relevant propagandistic biases to each group within it (see section “supporting allies in conflicts”). Double standards can be discovered by identifying moral principles used to support one group and applying them to rival groups (see table 1). Of course, what qualifies as a group, transgression, grievance, advantage, or disadvantage will vary across cultures, and the nature of the political system may likewise affect how alliances form. But if we are correct, then variation in political beliefs will track variation in alliance structures—and therefore exhibit the same sorts of inconsistencies we see in the United States.
Individual differences and political alliances
One implication of Alliance Theory is that correlations between individual differences and political beliefs may not be as direct, causal, or wide-ranging as scholars have supposed. Instead, these correlations may be targeted to specific political beliefs and confounded with group allegiances. For example, allegiance to devout Christians may both increase support for traditional sexual morality (Weeden & Kurzban, 2013) and “need for certainty” in reference to one’s faith (Kossowska, & Sekerdej, 2015; Conway et al., 2016). Low socioeconomic status may both increase populist resentment of elites (Petersen, Osmundsen, & Bor, 2021) and sensitivity to threats (Kraus, Horberg, Goetz, & Keltner, 2011). Affiliation with urban, highly educated subcultures may both reduce populist resentment of elites (Petersen et al., 2021; Jacobs & Munis, 2022) and increase openness to experience (Smaldino, Lukaszewksi, von Rueden, & Gurven, 2019). Ideology itself may cause people to report having personality traits associated with their ideology—to signal similarity to their allies (Bakker, Lelkes, & Malka, 2021; Smaldino et al., 2019).
Another possibility is that group allegiances mediate the relationship between individual differences and political beliefs. For example, sexual restrictedness (i.e. discomfort with casual sex) may increase enmity toward stereotypically promiscuous groups (e.g., gay people, pro-choice people, recreational drug users), resulting in greater opposition to gay rights, abortion, and drug legalization (Kurzban, Dukes, & Weeden, 2010; Weeden & Kurzban 2014, chapter 4; Pinsof & Haselton, 2016). Male physical formidability may increase allegiance to the military and other dominant groups, thereby increasing support hawkish policy preferences (Sell et al., 2017). Greater conscientiousness might lead to greater career success (Duckworth, Weir, Tsukayama, & Kwok, 2012; Egan, Daly, Delaney, Boyce, & Wood, 2017), thereby reducing allegiance to poor or unemployed people—and decreasing support for redistribution (Koo, Piff, & Shariff, 2022). Regardless of whether group allegiances mediate or confound relationships between individual differences and political beliefs, Alliance Theory predicts that controlling for group allegiances will eliminate or substantially reduce these relationships.
Politics and morality
According to Alliance Theory, the contents of political belief systems derive primarily from group allegiances, with morality playing at best a secondary role. As we have seen, group allegiances determine apparent moral values more than the other way around (Goren, 2005), ethical philosophies are often confabulated to justify support for one’s allies (Uhlmann et al., 2009), and moral “principles” change flexibly depending on whether they benefit one’s allies or rivals (see table 1). But if abstract morality plays such a minor role in politics, then why do the most politically engaged partisans claim to be motivated by moral convictions (e.g., Skitka & Bauman, 2008) as opposed to group allegiances?
Such claims, we propose, serve the same function as the propagandistic biases discussed in previous sections, namely mobilizing support in conflicts. For example, creating common knowledge that one’s side of the conflict is moral—and the other side is immoral—may be an effective way to draw third parties to one’s side (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2013) and embolden allies to attack one’s rivals with impunity (Mooijman, Hoover, Lin, Ji, & Dehghani, 2018). Consistent with this functional account, partisans on both sides of the political spectrum claim to be motivated by moral virtues like altruism, impartiality, honesty, and love, while claiming that their political opponents are motivated by selfishness, intolerance, dishonesty, and hatred (Reeder, Pryor, Wohl, & Griswell, 2005; Steffens, Haslam, Jetten, & Mols, 2016; Waytz et al., 2014; Kennedy & Pronin, 2008; Cohen, 2003; Kalmoe & Mason, 2019; Chambers & Melnyk, 2006; Moore-Berg et al., 2020). Since these conflicting descriptions of each side’s motives cannot both be correct, then at least one of them must be incorrect. We propose that both accounts are equally distorted and function as propagandistic biases.
From the perspective of Alliance Theory, politics and morality are different domains, with the former often masquerading as the latter for strategic purposes. We do not deny that humans are fundamentally moral beings (Hamlin, 2013); rather, we claim that the widespread conflation of politics with morality hinders our understanding of both. Politics is about conflict and loyalty, whereas morality is about cooperation and impartiality (Baumard et al., 2013; DeScioli & Kurzban, 2013). Attending to these distinctions yields novel predictions, while ignoring them sows needless confusion. For instance, we predict that loyal partisans, compared to weaker or more moderate partisans, will be more willing to condone actions committed by their political allies that they would otherwise view as immoral (e.g., Solomon et al., 2019). Loyal partisans might also be relatively more likely to exhibit moral hypocrisy—that is, they may be more likely to flout their apparent moral principles when it serves the interests of their political allies (see table 1). However, these predictions make little sense if politics and morality are the same thing. Why would the most morally motivated individuals (i.e. loyal partisans) be the least morally principled? The predictions only make sense if we assume that politics is different from, and sometimes at odds with, morality.
The distinction between politics and morality also suggests that abstract, moral disagreement between partisans may be overstated. Rather than disagreeing about the general moral importance of tolerance, authority, or equality, partisans may merely disagree about who should be tolerated, whose authority is legitimate, and whose advantages are unfair. Rather than disagreeing about justice in the abstract, partisans may merely disagree about who deserves status (and how much), who deserves condemnation (and how much), and who deserves sympathy (and how much). Indeed, much of political discourse plays out against a backdrop of tacit moral agreement. Disputants compete to frame their opponents as immoral—e.g., unfair, selfish, disrespectful—while relying on shared assumptions of what counts as moral.
Many of us are familiar with the “politics” of everyday life—office politics, academic politics, etc. Yet the politics of everyday life may be no different from the politics of a democratic citizenry. Political alliances may be analogous to friendships; political parties may be analogous to cliques; and ideological belief systems may be analogous to the ‘two sides of a story’ the emerge from interpersonal disputes. If you do not trust your friends’ side of the story, they may not consider you a true friend; likewise, if you do not trust your fellow partisans’ side of the story, they may not consider you a true ally. When seen in this light, motivated reasoning is not so much of a cognitive shortcoming as it is an honest signal of loyalty. If Alliance Theory is correct, then ideological beliefs may be as fundamental to the human condition as friends, rivals, and social life itself.
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