The 22=year-old secretary at the real estate firm begins her Monday wearing her new outfit, hoping for her boss’s approval, which she has never received in her seven weeks at the firm.
She gives him a big smile when he breezes in, but he says only a curt good morning to her, and she finds that her desire for her boss’s approval disappears, and she now yearns to share bad feeling about the boss with an assistant next door.
When she was getting her degree in African Studies, she didn’t think work would be this soul-crushing.
Just before break, her boss gives her his first compliment ever — telling her she did a good job on a report. She swells with pride. She now feels like she’ll do anything for the boss. She feels one with her firm. She resolves she’ll never speak ill of her employer. Beyond that, she’ll not socialize with her coworkers who do speak ill of the boss.
Later in the day, she spots the boss smiling and laughing with the assistant next door and she feels jealous. The boss has never smiled and laughed with her. “Forget this job,” she thinks. “This job is my misfortune. I’m going to find a job where I’m appreciated. I should have gone to grad school. I’m going to get together with others at work who share my unhappiness.”
After 5 pm, she goes to a bar with coworkers and finds that they all love their employer. She laughs and resolves this will be her last job ever. This job is her true home. She thinks about how much she admires her boss. He has an inspiring vision, he lifts people up, and he really cares about his employees. He provides benefits that are far better than average. She’s never seen him do anything unethical. She couldn’t say that about herself, her friends, her family.
None of these contradictory feelings are mysterious to me. As the benefits of bonding and loyalty wax and wane, our reactions to the group and to authority wax and wane depending on our genetics and life experiences.
Now picture a 52-year-old mother of three who’s been working for 21 years at an elite private school that depends on the star fundraising power of the 67-year-old principal, and she notices that he’s forgetting names for the first time and showing signs of Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t matter that she admires this man with whom she had a secret affair for five years, and that he once put her through rehab for coke addiction, and that he pays her well average, and that he provided free tuition for all of her children. She’s been as loyal to him as he has been to her but the times have changed. Everything he did for her in the past is now irrelevant to her. She sees that the school is headed for turmoil, and so she polishes her resume and applies for other jobs.
Now see in your mind a 38 year old Orthodox Jewish bachelor at a big Rosh Hashanah dinner. He sits down by himself and wishes he was home along doing his own thing. Then he tells himself to give the evening a chance, and he relaxes and thinks about meeting his future wife and he feels good. He takes that good feeling and thinks about his connection with God, his love of Torah, his reverence for his rebbe, and his gratitude for his shul. Then he notices that nobody is sitting next to him and he feels like nobody cares for him. Then he asks himself, “Do you care for anyone?”
He looks around and finds someone even less functional than himself, but a person who’s dangerously reactive, capable of screaming nasty things, that happened to him with this bloke about 15 years ago, but he takes a chance and he starts up a conversation with the poor bloke and he feels good that he’s bringing joy to a fellow Jew in need. Then he notices a pretty woman sitting near him who seems to be avoiding eye contact as she talks to a man who intrigues her. Our hero tries two opening bids with her and they both fall flat. Then another woman, not conventionally pretty but definitely his type, comes in late and because she’s objectively not as hot, he feels more confident that he’s in her league, and when he makes a bid for her attention, she reciprocates and the conversation turns intense and fascinating. He starts thinking about what it would be like to be married to her. Then he learns that she’s engaged and he tells himself he’ll never marry and that he should stop going to Jewish singles events. I’m happier alone, he decides.
As he walks out of the dinner, he strikes up a conversation with a stranger. They have a lot in common and resolve to meet for coffee. Our Jew is excited to make a new friend. When he follows up after the yom tov, however, his new friend tells him he’s busy. The next time they meet, they ignore each other.
Relationships are complicated because we are constantly changing and the situations we land in are constantly changing. Who we are varies depending upon the context. A new part of ourselves is revealed in each new relationship. One moment we are desperate to connect with the other and the next moment we yearn to separate. One day we’re pledging undying loyalty to our new best friend, and the next week we yearn for vengeance on the same person.
Now picture your average white Republican Christian man who loves the Constitution and believes in civic nationalism. He never judges people on race, but during Obama’s second term, he feels his fellow white Christian conservative men are getting the shaft and for the first time, he starts thinking about America in racial terms. He notices his friends are thinking similar things and even saying them on social media and as a result two of them get fired and they spiral into conspiracy theories about Jews as the source of all evil. He wants nothing to do with these losers. Donald Trump gets elected in 2016, and this Christian Republican adopts a quiet Christian nationalist approach, which feels much safer to him than racial nationalism. He’s now willing to side with Muslims against the gays to cleanse public schools of LGBTQ propaganda, and he’s willing to side with gays against Muslims to stop Islamic immigration and the building of mosques in his town. When he thinks about 9-11, he feels that Muslims are the biggest threat to America. When he thinks about Obergefell v. Hodges, he thinks gays are the biggest threat to America. When Donald Trump bombs Iran’s nuclear reactors in 2025, he thinks that Jews are the biggest threat to America. When he gets yelled at by a Karen, he thinks that white feminists are the biggest threat to America. When his life is thriving, he wants to get along with everybody. When Charlie Kirk is assassinated, he wants to build his in-group identity as an evangelical Christian and he yearns for America to become a Christian nation.
I’ve never once heard a social conversation yield a remotely insightful thought on politics, religion, books, ethics, or culture; outside of serious discourse among serious thinkers, people just recycle whatever platitudes they think they’re supposed to say.
ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory (Pinsof, Sears, & Haselton) proposes that political belief systems are not rooted in stable, abstract values (like equality or authority), but instead arise from shifting political alliances. People form alliances based on similarity, transitivity (“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”), and interdependence (mutual benefit). Once alliances form, people use propagandistic biases to defend their allies and attack their rivals—e.g., rationalizing allies’ transgressions (perpetrator bias), exaggerating their allies’ grievances (victim bias), or attributing allies’ successes to virtue and rivals’ failures to flaws (attributional bias).
This framework explains why political attitudes often look contradictory. For example, conservatives may valorize authority when it comes to the military but disparage the FBI, depending on partisan alignment. Liberals may condemn stereotyping but excuse harsh generalizations about southerners. These apparent inconsistencies reflect alliance commitments rather than coherent philosophies.
The theory challenges dominant models in political psychology—such as Intolerance Theory (conservatives as more prejudiced), Authoritarianism Theory (conservatives as more deferential to authority), and Egalitarianism Theory (liberals as more committed to equality)—arguing instead that both left and right display symmetrical biases, applied to different sets of allies and rivals.
Parsimony and explanatory breadth: Alliance Theory explains diverse, contradictory beliefs using just two assumptions: humans form alliances and deploy biases to support them. This simplicity allows it to account for phenomena that look incoherent under value-based models.
Symmetry across ideologies: By stressing that liberals and conservatives both exhibit bias, just toward different allies, it avoids moralizing accounts that depict one side as uniquely intolerant or authoritarian.
Evolutionary grounding: It links human political psychology to broader social-animal alliance behavior, which increases plausibility from a biological perspective.
Cross-cultural flexibility: The framework can account for why political coalitions vary across nations and history, rather than assuming fixed ideological structures.
Alliance Theory explicitly frames political psychology in evolutionary terms: political views are byproducts of alliance psychology, a set of cognitive mechanisms humans share with other social animals. Here’s how it maps onto biological origins:
1. Evolutionary Roots of Alliances
Comparative evidence: Primates, dolphins, hyenas, and other social species form coalitions to survive and reproduce. These alliances let weaker individuals band together to challenge stronger ones, or let dominant individuals maintain rank (conservative alliances, revolutionary alliances, and bridging alliances). Humans inherit this same strategic need for alliances.
Cognitive adaptations: Evolution favored mechanisms to detect potential allies (similarity, shared rivals, interdependence) and to track loyalty. These mechanisms function like specialized “alliance detectors.”
2. Propagandistic Biases as Evolved Tools
Alliance Theory reframes familiar biases as evolved strategies:
Perpetrator biases → Rationalizing allies’ transgressions helps preserve coalitions.
Victim biases → Amplifying allies’ grievances mobilizes third-party support.
Attributional biases → Interpreting allies’ success as deserved builds legitimacy, while framing rivals’ success as unfair undermines them.
From an evolutionary standpoint, these biases are not bugs but features—they spread because they improved the odds of one’s coalition surviving conflicts.
3. Political Belief Systems as Byproducts of Alliance Structures
Instead of seeing political views as abstract moral codes, Alliance Theory treats them as the modern output of ancient coalition-building machinery.
Political “values” are really signals of allegiance.
Contradictions in beliefs reflect the messy, contingent nature of coalitions—just like primate coalitions shift opportunistically, not consistently.
Cross-cultural variation in ideology (e.g., religious traditionalists sometimes aligning with left-wing parties, sometimes with right) reflects different historical accidents in alliance formation, not universal ideological logic.
4. Symmetry Across Left and Right
Alliance Theory’s evolutionary spin explains why both liberals and conservatives engage in motivated reasoning, selective empathy, and competitive victimhood. These aren’t ideological flaws; they’re species-typical adaptations. Each side is using the same inherited toolkit to defend its allies and attack rivals.
5. Implications for Biology of Politics
Innate values vs. adaptive flexibility: Instead of humans evolving specific “conservative” or “liberal” psychologies, evolution shaped flexible alliance mechanisms. Beliefs change with coalitional context.
Explains historical fluidity: Because alliances are contingent, groups can switch sides across time and geography without changing the underlying psychology.
Bridges social and biological levels: It connects macro-level political phenomena (polarization, coalition shifts) to micro-level evolved adaptations (coalition detection, bias deployment).
In short, Alliance Theory roots political views in the same biological machinery for coalition politics that governed our ancestors’ survival. What looks like ideology today is, in biological terms, just modern camouflage for ancient alliance behavior.
Ernest Becker’s idea of hero systems—the cultural worldviews and symbolic projects that give people a sense of significance and symbolic immortality in the face of mortality—has deep resonance with Alliance Theory, but the mapping is different in tone: Becker is existential, Alliance Theory is evolutionary-strategic. Here’s how they line up:
1. Hero Systems as Alliance Signals
Becker argued that people adopt hero systems (religions, ideologies, political projects) to transcend death symbolically. Alliance Theory would reinterpret this: many “hero systems” are coalition markers—shared narratives that bind allies together.
A hero system offers meaning and moral justification, but functionally, it signals: “I am with these people, not with those people.”
E.g., patriotic rituals, progressive causes, religious moral codes—all double as identity badges that sort allies from rivals.
2. Worldview Defense and Propagandistic Biases
Becker (and later Terror Management Theory) showed that when mortality is salient, people defend their worldview more vigorously. Alliance Theory reframes this:
Defending your worldview = defending your alliance structure.
The “propagandistic biases” (downplaying allies’ harms, amplifying their victimhood, etc.) are basically worldview defense in action. They don’t just soothe anxiety; they rally coalitional support.
3. Heroism and Coalition Loyalty
Becker: People crave to be a “hero” in their system—someone who exemplifies and protects its sacred values.
Alliance Theory: Heroism = coalitional service. You become a hero not by embodying eternal truths but by defending allies and harming rivals in a way that’s recognized by your group.
A soldier dying for the flag, an activist arrested at a protest, or a whistleblower “speaking truth to power” are all forms of coalitional heroism.
The values wrapped around these acts (“freedom,” “justice,” “faith”) may differ, but the coalitional function is the same.
4. Mortality vs. Vulnerability
Becker places death anxiety at the center: people cling to hero systems to buffer existential terror.
Alliance Theory is less psychological-depth and more functional: it doesn’t require conscious fear of death, only recognition that without allies you’re vulnerable. In evolutionary terms, being “nakedly at the mercy of everyone else” (as Tooby put it) was as fatal as death anxiety in Becker’s sense.
Where Becker says: “We need symbolic immortality.”
Alliance Theory says: “We need allies, and stories (hero systems) are tools to keep them.”
5. Inconsistencies Explained Differently
Becker/TMT: Inconsistencies in political values may arise from clashing hero systems or denial projects.
Alliance Theory: Inconsistencies are expected, because alliances are patchwork and contingent—hero systems are stitched together as propaganda to hold a coalition together, not because they form a coherent philosophy.
6. Synthesis: Hero Systems as Coalitional Myths
If you combine the two:
Becker explains why humans need worldviews at all (to stave off existential dread).
Alliance Theory explains what those worldviews look like and why they contradict each other (they’re tailored to coalitional needs, not truth).
Together, they suggest that political belief systems are both existential shields and coalitional weapons.
In other words, our beliefs are like our possessions.
Rony Guldmann
Critique: In The Star Chamber of Stanford and elsewhere, Guldmann argues that progressive academia is less about truth than about ritualized moralizing and coalition enforcement. For him, “critical theory” functions as a secular priesthood—hero-systems in Becker’s sense.
Mapping:
Becker: These rituals serve as hero systems, giving elites a sense of symbolic heroism (“I fight oppression, I matter”).
Alliance Theory: They are propagandistic biases and alliance markers, sustaining a coalition of progressive academics against rivals. The ideological content is secondary to its function in alliance-building.
Bridge: Guldmann’s emphasis on academia as a tribal theater of moral legitimation resonates almost perfectly with Alliance Theory’s picture of belief systems as ad hoc propaganda.
Darel E. Paul
Critique: In works like From Tolerance to Equality, Paul argues that “woke capital” and elite liberalism are not driven by abstract egalitarian values but by the class interests of professional-managerial elites.
Mapping:
Becker: Professional elites gain heroic significance by presenting themselves as champions of marginalized groups.
Alliance Theory: This is coalition politics: highly educated elites ally with minorities and cultural progressives against traditionalist and working-class rivals. Egalitarian rhetoric is the alliance glue, not the underlying driver.
Bridge: Paul’s emphasis on elite interest structures aligns with Alliance Theory’s focus on coalitional convenience rather than ideological coherence.
Stephen Turner
Critique: Turner (in Liberal Democracy 3.0 and essays on expertise) stresses that modern political authority rests less on shared values than on networks of experts and institutions who claim legitimacy. He also critiques political psychology for reifying abstractions like “values” or “foundations” instead of looking at how authority and belief actually function.
Mapping:
Becker: Experts and technocrats offer secular hero-systems—scientific rationality, managerial competence—that buffer existential anxiety.
Alliance Theory: Expertise is a coalitional weapon: “our experts” vs. “their experts.” Trust in science, media, or courts shifts depending on alliances (e.g., Republicans turning against the FBI or WHO once they were framed as rival-aligned.
Bridge: Turner’s skepticism toward “value-based” explanations tracks directly with Alliance Theory’s dismissal of “deep-seated moral values” as drivers of belief systems.
Overall Mapping
Becker: Explains why humans need ideologies/hero-systems (existential comfort).
Alliance Theory: Explains why those ideologies look contradictory and contingent (they are shaped by coalitional needs).
Guldmann, Paul, Turner: Provide case studies and critiques showing (a) ideology as ritualized coalition performance (Guldmann), (b) ideology as elite coalition strategy (Paul), and (c) ideology as misplaced abstraction hiding coalitional politics (Turner).
Together, these critiques reinforce Alliance Theory’s main thrust: what looks like principled ideology is usually coalitional myth-making, useful for binding allies and delegitimizing rivals.
LF: I notice that when people give a political opinion in a social setting, it is always adapted to their own best interests in that setting.
ChatGPT says: That what Alliance Theory predicts. In evolutionary and coalitional terms, political speech isn’t primarily about abstract truth or consistent principles; it’s about performing allegiance and managing risk in a local social setting.
Contextual self-interest: People instinctively adapt their stated views to align with whoever is present. At a dinner table of professionals, someone might emphasize equality rhetoric; at a family barbecue in a conservative town, they might stress patriotism or personal responsibility. The goal is not necessarily deception, but avoiding social costs and signaling solidarity.
Alliance logic: When you voice an opinion, you’re not just expressing yourself—you’re recruiting and retaining allies. If a comment would alienate others present, it’s costly. If it strengthens ties, it’s beneficial. That’s why opinions often look self-serving in context: they’re serving the self’s coalition.
Becker tie-in: From his perspective, tailoring political talk is also a way of shoring up your “hero system” in that micro-setting. You gain symbolic credit—seen as moral, enlightened, loyal—by echoing the group’s sacred story.
Critics’ angle (Guldmann, Paul, Turner): They’d say this adaptation to context shows that ideology is less about internalized values than about ritualized performance. You say what signals you belong and deserve trust, not what’s “coherent.”
So when you notice that people adjust their politics to the room, you’re seeing the primal function of political discourse—not to articulate consistent philosophy, but to navigate alliances in real time.
Everyday Settings (friends, family, coworkers)
Risk management: People adjust what they say to avoid conflict or rejection. Someone may downplay their liberalism at a family dinner in a conservative town, or soften conservative views at a workplace dominated by progressives.
Social capital: Opinions act as relationship signals. They show “I belong here,” “I share your concerns,” or at least “I won’t challenge the group too harshly.”
Micro-alliances: Even at the small scale, opinions become a way of forging short-term alliances—agreeing with your boss in a meeting, laughing along with your peers, or staying silent when your views could cost you.
Elite Settings (politicians, pundits, academics, CEOs)
Coalitional strategy: Elites adapt their rhetoric to larger, more consequential coalitions. Politicians tack right or left depending on their district. CEOs champion social justice when it appeals to customers and employees, but emphasize deregulation when talking to investors.
Hero systems: Elites are under constant pressure to embody the “hero” of their side’s story (Becker’s lens). A politician isn’t just giving an opinion—they’re demonstrating loyalty to allies and modeling what courage or virtue looks like for their coalition.
Institutional stakes: Because elites broadcast to mass audiences, their context-shifting is more visible—and criticized as “flip-flopping” or hypocrisy. But functionally, it’s the same thing as ordinary people tailoring opinions to the room, just at a higher scale.
Common Thread
At both levels, political expression is rarely a free-floating statement of belief. It’s adaptive signaling: you weigh who’s around, what they care about, and how your stance will help or hurt you socially. The difference is scale—small alliances vs. mass coalitions—but the psychology is the same.
The mix of fear, resentment, longing, and admiration is a normal response by a secretary to a boss who doesn’t give clear emotional signals. If praise is absent, you end up reading tea leaves—“does respect mean approval?” “is silence good or bad?” That uncertainty fuels the intensity of your feelings.
Some bosses simply don’t give out approval because they think competence is expected, or they don’t see praise as part of their role.
Many workers have a full inner soap opera running with their boss:
Approval-craving protagonist: “If he just said one nice thing, I’d float home.”
Rebel sidekick: “Screw him, I don’t need his validation.”
Terrified intern: “Oh God, he’s walking over here, don’t breathe wrong.”
Aspiring buddy: “Maybe we’ll bond over coffee and become allies!”
It’s the same person, but the stance shifts with context—kind of like she’s running a one-person focus group inside her head. One moment he’s her feared overlord, the next he’s the dad she never had, and then he’s just some guy she wants to impress.
What you’re noticing is the same alliance psychology we’ve been talking about in politics, just shrunk down to the workplace. Her brain is constantly recalculating: “Am I safer if I show loyalty, distance, admiration, or defiance right now?” No wonder it seems all over the place.
The Four Moods of The Secretary
The Worshiper
“He is a genius. His silence is depth. His lack of praise is actually praise. I am blessed to breathe the same air.”
The Rebel
“This guy’s a fraud. If he vanished tomorrow, the office would probably run smoother. One day I’ll expose him with a perfectly timed email.”
The Coward
“He’s coming. Fix your posture. Don’t smile too much. Don’t smile too little. Just…exist less.”
The Buddy
“Maybe today we’ll laugh about the copier jamming and become friends. Maybe he’ll invite me for lunch. Maybe I’ll finally get the nod of approval that heals my soul.”
Boss-Induced Alliance Disorder (BIAD)
Proposed for inclusion in DSM-6:
Diagnostic Criteria
A. Persistent, unstable emotional responses toward a supervisor, including at least three of the following:
Worshipful admiration (“My boss is a visionary whose silence contains worlds”).
Hostile resentment (“This clown is the reason civilization collapses”).
Abject fear (“If I breathe wrong, I’m fired”).
Compulsive rapport-seeking (“If we joke about the printer, we’ll bond forever”).
B. Symptoms fluctuate within minutes, depending on context (e.g., boss sends a curt email → hatred; boss nods in hallway → love).
C. Individual experiences workplace rumination, e.g., “Does respect equal approval?” or “Why won’t he praise me like a normal mammal?”
Subtypes
Silent God subtype: Boss never gives feedback, leading to quasi-religious interpretations of every micro-expression.
Tyrant Dad subtype: Boss instills chronic fear but also awakens deep yearning for approval.
Frenemy subtype: Boss occasionally shows warmth, creating dangerous cycles of hope.
Course and Prognosis
Chronic, unless boss retires, quits, or is abducted by aliens. Symptoms may remit spontaneously if employee finds a healthier source of validation (therapist, dog, hobby, new job).
Treatment
Cognitive Reframing: “Respect without praise is still respect.”
Strategic Feedback-Seeking: Ask for performance notes without begging for hugs.
Satirical Journaling: Write daily entries as if her boss is a moody Greek god whose thunderbolts are Outlook emails.
A few things are going on with our secretary:
1. Ambivalence is normal when power is asymmetric.
When someone has control over your workload, evaluation, or career, your feelings will swing. You want approval, you resent their authority, you fear their judgment, and you hope for connection. Those impulses don’t cancel each other—they pile up, and your mood shifts with circumstance.
2. Your brain is running alliance math.
The same coalition psychology that shapes politics is operating at the micro level. Each interaction, your mind recalculates: “Is this moment best served by loyalty, distance, admiration, or defiance?” That constant recalibration feels inconsistent inside, but it’s actually adaptive.
3. You’re sensitive to cues.
You’re compensating for the lack of clarity by generating multiple “what if” scripts.
4. It doesn’t mean you’re weak or unprofessional.
It means you’re deeply tuned into the social and emotional stakes of your environment. Lots of people feel these oscillations; you’re just noticing and naming them more clearly than most.
Your anxious protagonist might be all over the place in various social settings, perhaps alternately in a state of dignified silence, kindness, paranoia, and making bids to connect with others.
Your mind might be scanning the room, weighing different strategies, and trying out whichever feels safest or most rewarding in the moment. A few ways to think about it:
1. It’s adaptive, not broken.
Switching modes—silent observer, kind supporter, connector—is alliance psychology in real time. You’re reading the social landscape and experimenting with different ways of gaining standing. That “all over the place” quality is actually flexibility.
2. You’re running multiple scripts.
Dignified silence: “I’ll project strength and avoid missteps.”
Kindness/helpful: “I’ll earn goodwill by serving others.”
Connector mode: “If I can get a laugh or a bond, I’m valuable here.”
These aren’t contradictions—they’re different bids for social security.
3. The inner wobble comes from uncertainty.
If you’re not sure where you stand in the group, your brain will keep flipping strategies. The goal isn’t one stable persona—it’s to test and recalibrate until you feel safe.
4. This is deeply human.
Most people do this, they just don’t notice it. You’re catching the micro-shifts, which makes it seem chaotic. But think of it like a jazz improvisation: you’re riffing through different social notes until something harmonizes.