Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Social Personality
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some positive evaluation, because it consists, in part at least, of effort made by a 
lay psychologist to expose our many biases so that we may sharpen our thoughts 
from positions of enlightened self-understanding.
Following Herbert Simon’s concept of ‘bounded rationality’, other writers 
concerned with conscious selection between different forms of heuristic guidance 
have promoted the concept of an ‘adaptive toolbox’. According to Gerd Gigerenzer 
(Gigerenzer and Selten (ed.) 2001), the adaptive toolbox comprises ‘heuristics 
made out of cognitive and emotional building blocks’. These heuristics supply us 
with ‘searching rules’ whereby we aquire choices and the means to evaluate these 
choices, ‘stopping rules’ whereby we acquire a sense of how much time and effort 
should be dedicated to these activities, and ‘decision rules’ whereby we finally 
make use of this information and choose between alternatives. Gigerenzer argues 
that the usefulness of our emotions in supplying us with these rules should not be 
underestimated. Simple heuristics, based upon emotion, may prove more robust than 
complex alternatives, and may be especially useful where ‘fast and frugal’ decisions 
are required. Hence our ability to adapt by delving within our toolboxes for more 
effective heuristics will depend to some extent upon our self awareness, particularly 
in relation to our emotional awareness systems, and it will depend more generally 
upon our abilities to scrutinise the adaptive fit between our circumstances and the 
sorts of people we are. 
Of course, when we scrutinise our heuristic guidance we do this not so much as 
isolated individuals who rummage in toolboxes, but rather as broader collectivities 
intent on solving common problems. We share heuristic guidance because it is 
inscribed within culture, and when we debate our culture we debate the effectiveness 
of this guidance. Cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas is clear on this point: heuristic 
guidance can be embedded within culture, such that culture becomes a ‘mnemonic 
system’. She argues that we must adopt this perspective as far as heuristic guidance 
on risk is concerned, because many of the risks which we focus upon are culturally 
defined for us, possessing symbolic significance over and above the objective threats 
they represent (Lupton 1999). More will be said in the following chapter concering 
how these cultural definitions harness our disgust systems and place them in the 
service of existing power structures. The crucial point here is that we may plausibly 
regard many of our heuristic orientations towards risk and other matters as perhaps 
arising on cultural rather than individual levels to serve functional ends which we as 
individuals do not understand or gain from. Hence we cannot neglect their cultural 
embededness if we are to assess their worth.
Ernest Gellner credits Descartes with originating this understanding of culture 
‘as a kind of systematic, communally induced error’ to be corrected through our 
capacity for reason (Gellner 1992, 3). He points to a long enduring tension between 
reason and culture which may be described in terms of the Weberian antithesis 
between instrumentally rational (zweckrational) action and ‘traditional’ or ‘habitual’ 
forms of action, or with reference to similar distinctions found in the works of 
Oakeshott (see Franco 1990), Schutz (see Emmet and MacIntyre 1970) and Neurath 
(see Cartwright, Cat, Fleck and Uebel 1996, 131–133). The idea of tension between 
the two has persisted within the history of ideas. Having once given enlightenment 
thinkers and classical sociologists much of their subject matter, it now pervades 

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Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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debate on secularisation, as well as counter-enlightenment trends such as the global 
rise of religious fundamentalisms. 
The idea that culture and reason clash in their efforts to gain control over our 
thought process raises too many issues than can be explored here, but suffice to say it 
deserves critical scrutiny as manifesting once more the clash of reason and passion. 
It is however interesting to consider one particular discipline placed upon culture by 
the modern world which highlights its capacity to adapt to hostile circumstances. 
Jon Elster (1989c) argues that the scope for unconscious norm-guidance is limited 
by the ‘incessant change’ which surrounds us. New practices, he says, often emerge 
and then disappear long before appropriate norms have had a chance to develop by 
trial-and-error experimentation. He therefore argues that as social change intensifies, 
norm-guidance becomes increasingly dislocated from specific contexts and is 
instead reconstituted in non-specific (i.e. general or vague) terms. Referring directly 
to norms governing risk, for example, Elster points out that under stable social 
conditions norms may emerge which allow individuals to negotiate specific kinds 
of risk. However, ‘when change is the rule, norms emerge that regulate people’s 
attitudes towards change itself’ (Elster 1989c, 286). 
Elster’s argument helps build the case for treating social personality as a 
worthwhile level of analysis because our general orientations towards risk, and indeed 
many other objects of our concern, need not be regarded solely in Elster’s terms as 
set within norms; rather, many of our general orientations are widely reckoned to 
exist as personality traits. Traits are universally defined as influencing behaviour 
across diverse situations, in contrast to ‘states’ which are situation-specific. They 
also tend to be grouped according to the breadth of their situational span. A prime 
example is Gordon Allport’s hierarchy of secondary traits, central traits and cardinal 
traits. Allport’s secondary traits influence behaviour within narrow situational 
confines whereas his cardinal traits govern a person’s whole life. Hence we may 
think of traits, especially those with wider situational reach, as effective suppliers 
of heuristic guidance because they provide us with stable orientations in the face of 
rapidly changing circumstances. 
This stability has numerous advantages. It makes us predictable. It allows us to 
possess cultural identity, which makes social interaction possible, and it allows us to 
possess psychological identity, which is the basis of self image, self-esteem, and all 
forms of self-driven cultivation or development such as humanistic self-actualisation, 
Jungian individuation, or that awareness and tolerance of neurosis which is the goal 
of psychoanalysis. Of course, these theoretical perspectives only begin to sketch 
out the reasons why we should value a stable self. And the volumes of sociological 
and psychological theory which can be called upon to suggest that we should value 
this stability, simultaneously provide us with a myriad of ways to theorise how our 
personalities may supply us with heuristic guidance under conditions of cognitive 
indeterminacy. It is far too simplistic to suggest that a personality trait will provide 
a default strategy under such conditions. Instead we must find generalisations which 
help us map a vast theoretical territory, if we are to explore this function of personality. 
It has already been argued that interaction between our emotional appraisal systems 
and our personalities may be particularly important here, yet there are many further 
possibilities. Drawing upon psychoanalysis, for example, we may say that when 

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