Social Personality
51
to reduce dissonance through processes of belief modification which restore overall
consistency, either by inventing or otherwise obtaining new cognitions, or by
downplaying existing ones. One application of this theory to the study of political
socialisation was that of Charles Osgood, who concluded in his (1978) ‘Conservative
Words and Radical Sentences in the Semantics of International Politics’ that public
figures ‘gradually and unconsciously change their values and beliefs towards
consistency with what they feel they must say and do’.
Jon Elster (1998, 1–18) reinforces Osgood’s view by explaining why such
dissonant feelings should frequently arise to challenge private belief within the
context of deliberative interaction between politicans and those affected by their
decisions. Elster argues that there is a ‘civilizing force of hypocrisy’ whereby
political decision-makers seek approval by explaining their preferences in terms
acceptable
to their audiences, even though they would choose different terms
for the purposes of their own understanding. We might find this civilizing force
operating in many situations, but there are grounds for regarding it as integral to
leader-follower interaction in particular. This is because leaders who call upon the
‘silent understandings’ or ‘central traditions’ of their insitutions stand to gain respect
or even veneration from followers. Hence the motive to gain or maintain power
and prestige will often impel leaders to reaffirm their institution’s social personality,
perhaps by reinterpreting it in the light of current events, or by stressing certain
memetic components which are likely to strike a chord with
followers for a particular
reason. The final chapter will provide exemplification. We will see that ‘conservative
individualism’ can be viewed both as an attribute of individual personality and as as
a theme embedded within the Conservative Party’s central tradition. Conservative
leaders have amplified it at different points in that party’s history, in efforts to justify
policy and win popularity.
3.3 Cognitive
Indeterminacy
The last section looked at why the social personalities of political elites should endure,
despite ongoing erosion of their economic constituencies. We also considered the
replicatory powers of memes, not in relation to the quality of heuristic guidance they
provide, but rather in terms of how well they satisfy psychological utilities which
may sometimes permit them to evolve in ways quite unrelated to the quality of their
guidance. This section will now begin to explore the nature
and quality of heuristic
guidance provided by memes contained within social personality. We will look not
so much at why social personalities replicate over time, but rather at why they are
likely to exist at all. The argument will be that they have a vital
function: to help
political elites respond consistently and cohesively to decision-making scenarios
characterised by cognitive indeterminacy.
It is useful, in the first instance, to consider cognitive indeterminacy with specific
reference to what Weber (1968) famously called the ‘zweckrational’ form of social
action. Taking this approach, cognitive indeterminacy
can refer to confusion over
both ‘means’ and ‘ends’ in decision-making. In the former case, indeterminacy arises
where insufficient knowledge exists to allow decision-makers to calculate which of
Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
52
a range of possible policies or procedures is most likely to succeed in securing a
desired objective. Pareto had been particularly keen to reveal the prevalence of this
kind of indeterminacy, labelling political behaviours under these conditions ‘non-
logical’.
1
Secondly, cognitive indeterminacy can be said to exist where decision-
makers have no basis for determining which of various achievable outcomes is most
desirable. For Elster this is the problem of establishing criteria to set up a ‘ranking of
preferences’. Pareto, similarly, was fond of affirming that
human reason is unable to
tell policy-makers what ends they should seek.
2
Of course, as Elster’s discussion of
disanalogies between individual and group preference indicates, collective decisions
may frequently reveal confused aims because they emerge from competition between
diverse interests and views.
A question arising here is whether decisions made under either or both forms
of indeterminacy should be considered ‘irrational’. Elster has pointed out that this
question reflects the western world’s unique concern with the standard of instrumental
rationality. It also fails to recognise that such theories have long been surpassed by
‘practical’ conceptions of rationality. A distinguishing feature of theories of ‘practical
rationality’ is that they refer to the use of heuristic guides to decision-making under
conditions of indeterminacy involving either means or ends. Norms are perhaps most
often mentioned as guides within this context. Yet aspects
of individual personality
also feature to varying degrees. For example, Elster (1989c: chapter 3) lists social
norms, moral norms, legal norms, convention equilibria, private norms, habits and
compulsive neuroses, and traditions as all constituting potential sources of ‘non-
rational motivation’ which cannot be reduced to self interest, and which may take
hold in the absence of clear rational criteria for behaviour.
Many writers use psychological theory to explain these
non-rational motivations
which guide us through uncertainty. George Marcus (2003) has established an
important new direction for political psychology research by counting our emotions
amongst these. To fully appreciate his argument, we must however challenge the
conditioning influence of centuries of western thought which have represented the
human condition as a timeless struggle between reason and passion. One prominent
early illustration of this is Plato’s image of the reasoning soul as a charioteer struggling
to command two winged horses, one (representing passion) brutish and resistant to
the charioteer’s desire to steer towards human perfection, the other (representing
spirit) noble and obedient. We similarly find reason
opposed to passion within
Freud’s tripartite theory of personality structure, where this time it is the reasoning
ego which struggles, and Plato’s horses give way to the conflicting demands of id
and superego. This conflict is easy to locate within Pareto too. Although we should
bear in mind Pareto’s derision of both ‘the cult of reason’ and ‘the goddess science’,
there is nonetheless a cold, detached, ‘view from Mars’ within his sociology. More
specifically, his scientistic mapping out of sociologically significant aspects of
our inner, emotional lives, simultaneously labelling these ‘non-logical’, seems to
1 Pareto defined a ‘non-logical act’ as one where ‘means
are logically conjoined to
ends’, both subjectively and objectively (Pareto 1935, §150).
2 Pareto returns repeatedly in his ‘Treatise’ to the inevitable ‘vagueness of the notion of
utility’ (e.g. Pareto 1935, §2143).