Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
104
Liam Hudson has famously referred to intelligent people who are good at 
free-associating and recalling their dreams as ‘divergers’. Such individuals will 
tend to be attracted to the arts, while comparably intelligent people who are less 
proficient at these things (‘convergers’) will tend to be attracted to science and 
technology (Gregory (ed.) 1987, 172). Anthony Storr mentions that the former type 
will tend (exactly like Pareto’s foxes) to adopt unconventional attitudes towards 
authority (Storr 1988, 89). He adds that the diverger-converger distinction will tend 
to overlap with Howard Gardner’s (1985) distinction between children who may 
be categorised either as ‘dramatists’ or as ‘patterners’. Dramatists, as Storr puts it, 
will typically have been children who have devoted more attention to the social as 
opposed to the physical world. As a consequence they grow up (as we might well 
regard Pareto’s foxes) more proficient in the ‘people oriented’ as opposed to the 
‘task oriented’ skills. 
Much more significantly though, a distinction between ‘divergent’ and 
‘convergent’ thinking has also provided Hans Eysenck with his understanding 
of creativity as a measurable trait (Eysenck in Sternberg and Ruzgis 1994, 17). 
Eysenck’s comments on divergent creativity are particularly useful as they provide 
further vital clues concerning why Pareto might have been right to shape his 
psychological model as he did. Eysenck points to what he considers conclusive 
evidence of a significant, non-gender specific, positive correlation between creativity 
and his ‘psychoticism’ trait (Eysenck in Sternberg and Ruzgis (ed.) 1994, 17–19) 
This link has been replicated many times since (e.g. Satvridou and Furnham 1996; 
Merten and Fischer 1999). However, Burch et al. (2006) point out that findings have 
been mixed, depending upon what measures of psychoticism and creativity are used. 
Their study linked heightened creativity in visual artists to elevated scores on Mason 
et al.’s (1995) multidimensional measure of ‘schizotypal’ personality (schizotypy is 
Gordon Claridge’s alternative term for Eysenck’s psychoticism). In particular, Burch 
et al. found elevations on subscales for positive schizotypy (unusual experiences), 
disorganised schizotypy (cognitive disorganisation) and asocial schizotypy (impulsive 
non-conformity). Although we must proceed with caution when relating schizotypy 
to any pathological condition, we can at least say that these findings suggest some 
link between creativity and schizophrenia. Indeed, the key to understanding the 
relationship between creativity and psychoticism emerges quite starkly, Eysenck 
believed, from the thinking styles of creative, high ‘P’ scorers who have fallen prey, 
as they are prone, to schizophrenia:
It has often been suggested that schizophrenic thinking is characterised by a cognitive 
style that has been variously called overinclusive, allusive, loose, or characterised by the 
term “mental slippage”. Such overinclusiveness would seem to be similar in nature to the 
gentler slope of the associative gradient, or the broader associative horizon often suggested 
to be crucial in accounting for creativity (Eysenck in Sternberg and Ruzgis 1994, 20).
Anthony Storr mentions that one contemporary interpretation of schizophrenia:
… suggests that sufferers lack some aspect of selective discrimination. Overwhelmed by 
stimuli which they can neither order nor disregard, they are compelled to withdraw as far 
as possible from the impact of the world (Storr 1989, 170).

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Pareto’s Psychology
105
Taking these two observations together, it becomes reasonable to speculate that 
Eysenck’s high P individuals think creatively and are vulnerable to unpleasant 
mental overstimulation (leading in more extreme cases to schizophrenic withdrawal) 
because complex, decentralised and loosely interconnected neural organisation exists 
as a common underlying precipitant. Of course, this puts it rather crudely. Claridge’s 
(e.g. 1985) theory which explains psychoticism in terms of the dissociation of 
central nervous system activity (particularly involving a dysfunctional uncoupling 
of emotional arousal of the CNS from control over sensory inputs into the CNS) 
provides just one more technical explanation for this phenomenon.
These links between creativity and psychoticism bring us to the more general 
observation that core traits possessed by Pareto’s ‘foxes’ (especially creativity, 
cultural criticism and individualistic concern for self) overlap considerably with well 
known personality correlates of Eysenck’s ‘P’. Eysenck and Eysenck (1976, 202–
203) list these as including originality (particularly involving odd or unusual mental 
associations), a low boredom threshold, ‘non-acceptance of culture’, and feelings 
of hostility which are often unconstrained by empathy and expressed through 
impulsive discharges. They also stress that convention and authority will often serve 
as targets for the ill-feelings of high P individuals. The suggestion arises, therefore, 
that Pareto’s ‘fox’ type might best be understood as an impulsive, iconoclastic rule-
breaker in precisely this psychotic mould. Correlational studies cited by Eysenck and 
Eysenck (1976, 192–201) which show that P correlates negatively with measures of 
conservatism, authoritarianism and superego strength, affirm this view. 
More intriguingly, it is worth remembering that Pareto viewed the various traits 
of his foxes and speculators as tending to emerge when societies become richer, 
exhibiting higher levels of complexity and flux. One means to place this historical 
theory upon firmer ground may be to look for evidence indicating whether conditions 
of increasing social and epistemological complexity (and flux) have implications for 
the functioning of the central nervous systems of children and adolescents, such 
that they begin to develop more complex, decentralised and loosely interconnected 
forms of neural organisation, which in turn boosts levels of divergent creativity and 
other traits linked to psychoticism. It is particularly interesting to consider that traits 
favouring what might be termed liberal or democratic tolerance are likely to flourish 
within this changing psychological terrain. For this argument to be plausible, it is 
merely necessary to accept that loose, decentralised neural organisation can help 
guard against fixed and rigid ways of thinking about people and events. More 
pessimistically, however, this theory also entails the emergence of less desirable 
psychotic traits such as impulsive, anti-authority sentiment and even lack of empathy, 
under such circumstances. This can be theorised using the idea that complex social 
stimuli may prove hard for children and adolescents to process in consistent ways, 
and so they may fail to develop those fixed associations of thought and emotion 
upon which healthy social adjustment depends. They may therefore experience and 
display emotions in circumstances where they are inappropriate, or they may fail to 
experience and display emotions in situations where they are called for. This research 
suggestion will be left standing as an example of how Pareto’s theory can generate 
hypotheses. This thesis will not pursue it any further, largely because competent 
attention to it requires specialist knowledge of the CNS. However, it is important to 

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