Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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as activating the ‘world as jungle’ mentality of high SDO individuals, together with 
their motivating goals of power and dominance. 
Duckitt and Fisher indicate that this distinction between RWA and SDO squares 
with research findings: social conformity correlates with RWA but not SDO; tough-
mindedness correlates with SDO but not RWA. Hence the SDO construct provides 
us with an important sense in which there exists a threat-sensitive consciousness 
of hierarchy which is not directly related to an underlying predisposition towards 
social conformity. Instead, the high SDO individual will favour hierarchy-enhancing 
ideologies because these reinforce the social order in the specific sense that they 
support power relationships which subdue groups perceived to possess malign 
intent. 
To illustrate the usefulness of the distinction between RWA and SDO we might 
consider one particularly fascinating study by Henry et al. (2005). Taking stock of 
Sidanius and Pratto’s (1999) observation that when terrorism has been understood 
from the perspective of social dominance theory, it has mostly been regarded as a 
tool for maintaining intergroup hierarchies, they undertook an exploration of the 
perhaps more significant question of its role in resisting such hierarchies. Hence 
they administed the RWA and SDO scales to samples in the USA and Lebanon. 
They found, unsurprisingly, that US respondents high in RWA were more likely to 
favour intergroup violence towards the Middle East, and that Lebanese respondents 
high in RWA were likewise more supportive of intergroup violence towards the US. 
However, whereas US respondents high in SDO were also more likely to favour 
intergroup violence towards the Middle East, Lebanese respondents with low SDO 
scores were more likely to favour intergroup violence towards the US than were 
Lebanese respondents with high SDO. Henry et al. therefore concluded that Middle 
Eastern violence towards the west deserved further consideration in psychological 
terms as a project of counter-dominance. 
We must therefore be wary of assuming that SDO and RWA co-vary as distinct 
yet interacting sources of preferences for political violence under conditions of raised 
social threat. Whilst this seems true for RWA, for SDO we should instead consider 
the status of each participant group experiencing conflict. RWA certainly provides 
us with a powerful sense in which Pareto was right to link preferences for political 
violence to a conservative, conformist personality structure which intensifies under 
conditions of economic austerity. Yet SDO research warns us that preferences for 
political violence can have very different psychological sources. Where threat exists 
in the form of perceived intergroup oppression, it may not be the tough-minded 
high SDO individual, but rather the more tender-minded, communal, empathic and 
altruistic low SDO individual, who demands intergroup aggression.  
More fully, we might agree with Sidanius et al. (2004) that we should apply such 
constructs along with disparate theories covering psychological, sociostructural, 
ideological and institutional influences upon intergroup oppression, if we are to 
better represent such phenomena in all their complexity. It is, of course, a tall order 
to blend theoretical traditions towards this goal. Perhaps Pareto provides part of 
the solution by mapping out some of the more important landmarks which any 
such analysis should cover. For example, we might remind ourselves that Pareto 
provides an overarching framework theory involving interaction between social, 

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Pareto’s Psychology
97
political and economic processes which influence aspects of personality related to 
oppression, or that it simultaneously addresses the mechanics of elite spoliation, 
partly in terms of psychological difference between elite and non-elite. Indeed, 
these latter provisions concerning interaction between elites and non-elites might 
usefully be considered for their specific potential to enhance social dominance 
theory’s efforts to understand social conflict and discrimination involving 
intergroup hierarchy. Any such usages of Pareto’s sociology should perhaps focus 
on the ‘social personalities’ involved in intergroup hierarchy and conflict, taking 
account of the limitations and areas of sociological significance which the last 
chapter attributed to social personality.
We may now turn our attention to the class V residues. For Pareto these refer 
to ‘the integrity of the individual and his appurtenances’. Their tendency to rise 
and fall alongside the class I residues confirms their place within Pareto’s model 
of personality. If the class IV residues for the most part involve individual 
predispositions to integrate co-operatively, and sometimes sacrificially, within 
social hierarchies so that collectivities can function more efficiently, then the class 
V residues clearly involve conflicting predispositions for individuals to pursue self-
interested,  competitive  agendas within these collectivities. As S.E. Finer sums it 
up, these Class V residues ‘comprise the propensities relating to the individual’s 
determination to preserve his position and his interests against the rest of society’ 
(Pareto 1966, 40).
Partly at issue here is an ‘instinct to desire pleasurable things’ which seems, as 
Raymond Aron points out, to reflect a concern for individual integrity and status 
whose meaning is best expressed by the German term geltungsbedfürfnis  (Aron 
1968, 132–133, 173). The idea of social envy, or as Pareto calls it, ‘sentiments of 
equality in inferiors’ (Pareto 1935, §§1220–1228), also appears amongst the class V 
residues. Jon Elster’s (1989c, 253) argument that social envy is related primarily to 
self respect and only secondarily to redistributary ethics provides some grounds for 
accepting this categorisation. The notion that the class V residues are concerned with 
‘self respect’ similarly explains why sentiments of ‘vengeance’ or ‘getting even’ 
(Pareto 1935, §1312) should also be listed here rather than amongst the pro-social 
class IV residues. 
Knowing this about the class V residues, it begins to appear as though Pareto’s 
contrast between these and the class IV residues anticipated a distinction which 
has only very recently been developed by Anthony Stevens and John Price in their 
(1996) theory concerning two ‘archetypal’ human needs which should ideally be 
met within every social order. Their first archetypal need is a ‘need for emotional 
attachments’ which involves ‘care giving and receiving, affiliation (the desire for 
emotional and physical contact), and altruism’. Their second archetypal need is a 
‘need for status’ which involves ‘positioning on rank hierarchies, law and order, 
territories and possessions’. Pareto, it seems, was astute enough to anticipate these 
constructs around eighty years earlier, believing that individuals vary by tending to 
possess either of these fundamental ‘needs’ more than the other.
However, we need not focus entirely on the class V residues in order to get a feel 
for the individualism which Pareto incorporated within his psychological model. We 
are told in the ‘Treatise’ that:

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