Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Social Personality
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not just because circumstances will change frequently, thereby calling into question 
the continued effectiveness of existing paradigms. It is also because alternatives 
will emerge more frequently and on a global basis. Although Marshall Mcluhan 
famously speculated that the ‘global village’ set to emerge from the global spread of 
mass media may develop its own uniform and potentially sinister ‘tribal base’, the 
intervening decades have instead witnessed the rise of a general scepticism towards 
ideology and metanarrative which has allowed globalisation to add confusingly to the 
paradigms available to political decision-makers. Arguably, our exposure to multiple 
paradigms, and especially to successful movements through epistemological breaks, 
should help us appreciate that there are often credible liberal options available in 
relation to existing paradigms. Indeed, this knowledge might help us challenge those 
‘doxa’, to once more use Bourdieu’s term, which reinforce our default commitments 
to conservative positions. In conclusion, then, we should perhaps value our increased 
exposure to alternative paradigms which emerge from across the globe as these 
may raise our political awareness, not simply by encouraging us to accept liberal 
positions, but more fully by extending our conscious options to include choice
between conservative and liberal positions.
A good partial explanation for variance between these conservative and liberal 
positions is provided by variance in the ‘willingness to take risks’. According to 
Luhmann (1993, 112), empirical research has revealed that this depends upon ‘how 
firmly we believe ourselves capable of keeping precarious situations under control, 
of checking a tendency towards causing loss, of maintaining our coverage by means 
of help, insurances, and the like in the event of losses occurring’. The willingness to 
take risks can therefore be understood in three ways: sociologically (by considering 
those resources which decision-makers know they may call upon in the event of 
loss of control), psychologically (by considering the decision maker’s psychological 
constitution) and at both levels simultaneously (by considering how institutional 
arrangements either promote or inhibit risk-taking
5
).
To focus upon the psychological aspect, it is worth considering how theories 
relating to the general processes of human judgement help us understand conservative 
and liberal psychological orientations towards risk. This exercise will also help clarify 
that these orientations are closely bound up with orientations towards ‘the persistence 
of aggregates’ (i.e. the status quo versus change) and innovation. Following Henri 
Bergson and Alfred Schutz, who once understood the experience of decision making 
as rather like ‘running through one alternative then the other until the decision falls 
from the mind like a ripe fruit falls from a tree’ (Schutz in Emmet and MacIntyre 
1970, 103), Arie Kruglanski’s more recent theory of ‘lay epistemology’ holds that 
‘all knowledge formation and modification involves a two-phase sequence in which 
hypotheses are generated and then validated’ (Kruglanski in Bar-Tal and Kruglanski 
1988, 113). Kruglanski points out that the number of hypotheses which may be 
5  For example, Marquis (1962) mentions that some institutional structures are more 
likely to produce ‘risky shift’ effects, where groups make decisions riskier than those which 
individual members would have proposed on their own. Some commentators (e.g. Janis 
and Lester 1972, Elms 1976, 148–160) have also developed this idea in their discussions of 
‘groupthink’.

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Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
62
generated for any given judgement is potentially unlimited. The validation stage, 
which compares with Bergson’s ‘running through of alternatives’:
…has no unique point of termination. In principle, one might always come up with further 
alternative hypotheses compatible with the same body of evidence (Kruglanski in Bar-Tal 
and Kruglanski 1988, 114).
At some point, to follow Bergson’s metaphor, the fruit ripens and falls. In Kruglanski’s 
terms, it always becomes necessary to close the ‘epistemic sequence’ and make a 
‘definite’ judgement by a process of unconscious selection between the most likely 
alternative hypotheses which have been generated. This point of halting, Kruglanski 
argues, is imposed either sooner or later, in accordance with the workings of three 
kinds of conflicting psychic motivation or ‘epistemic need’. It is worth considering 
these in more detail, because this will help us understand the psychology involved 
in the decision-maker’s experience of Kuhn’s ‘essential tension’, and it will allow us 
to redefine Machiavelli’s ‘prudentia’ in psychological terms as the achievement of a 
fortuitous balance between conflicting needs.
Firstly, Kruglanski mentions a ‘need for nonspecific structure’. We sometimes 
need any answer to a problem, Kruglanski points out, simply to overcome feelings of 
anxiety provoked by confusion and ambiguity. Secondly, he adds a ‘need for specific 
structure’ which refers to our bias towards specific conclusions which, for various 
(e.g. ego-defensive) reasons, we would prefer to believe were true. As with the need 
for non-specific structure, these needs will tend to draw epistemic sequences towards 
early closure. They might well sometimes have the opposite effect, for example where 
they lead us to seek reinforcement for unsustainable ego-defensive positions. Yet we 
are arguably more likely to end searches than to delay them further, when we already 
have specific theories in mind whose status we wish to elevate to that of truth. Our 
standards of proof are likely to fall, not rise, on such occasions. Lastly, one epistemic 
need which will very clearly tend to prolong the epistemic sequence is the ‘need for 
ambiguity’. This refers to the feeling that indecision should be prolonged because 
further deliberation and information gathering may pay dividends (Kruglanski 1988, 
114–6). Notably, then, the first and second motivations can be understood as tending 
to compete in a zero sum game with the third. All three have implications for our 
orientations towards the status quo, risk and innovation; specifically, the first and 
second will lead us to seek certainties which will more often than not mean that we 
cling to existing social arrangements, whilst the third is likely to promote both risk-
taking and innovation, which will both undermine these arrangements and receive 
impetus from their erosion. 
Kruglanski’s theory thus permits the psychologies of conservatism and liberalism 
to be partially understood with reference to the idea that conservatives and liberals 
balance these epistemic needs in differing proportions, each failing in their own 
characteristic ways to attain that ideal balance which we can equate with Machiavelli’s 
prudentia. The following chapter will soon explore this idea in more detail by 
considering a wide variety of psychological theory and evidence which explains 
why conservatives have heightened needs for structure and liberals have heightened 
needs for ambiguity. Much of this evidence will be martialed to explain why liberals 

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