Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
98
The predominant influence of instincts of combination (class I residues) and the weakening 
of sentiments of aggregate persistence (class II residues) have the effect of making the 
governing class more satisfied with the present and less inclined to take thought for the 
future. The individual comes markedly to prevail over the family, the community, the 
nation. Material interests and the interests of the present or the very near future come 
to prevail over the ideal interests of the community and nation and over the interests of 
the distant future. The impulse is to enjoy the present without too much thought for the 
morrow (Pareto 1935, §2178). 
This and many similar references to the class I residues highlight an individualism 
which combines material acquisitiveness with a hedonistic present-orientation, 
and which fits comfortably within Pareto’s conflation of liberal and Machiavellian 
personality. Section 4.6.2 will shortly affirm that this combination of traits is 
conspicuous within the ‘Machiavellian’ or ‘psychopathic’ personality pattern. 
In fact, much of the above passage from the ‘Treatise’ reads as though it could 
have been lifted from virtually any page of Alan Harrington’s (1974) controversial 
polemic concerning the rise of the psychopath within the counterculture and the 
elite of the US during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Hence it may 
well be that the individualism which Pareto incorporated within his psychological 
model is best understood with reference to what is now known about Machiavellians 
and psychopaths. Section 4.6.2 will show that right at the core of the Machiavellian 
syndrome – and this appears true for psychopaths as well – is a failure to empathise 
emotionally with others in face to face situations. This condition has been called 
‘encounter blindness’; it has been contrasted with the ‘encounter proneness’ of the 
non-Machiavellian. It is therefore interesting to hypothesise that this encounter 
blindness-proneness continuum might account for at least some individual variance 
along the individualism-collectivism continuum which this section has explored. 
This and other Machiavellian traits which can be linked to individualism, such as 
materialism and narcissism, are discussed more fully in section 4.6. 
To recap, then, we now have at least seven ways to understand the contrast between 
the class IV and class V residues. It seems that human sociality as Pareto described 
it can usefully be considered biogenically, both as a matter of evolutionary design 
and of archetypal need to belong, and psychogenically, as a phenomenon explicable 
psychoanalytically in terms of the dynamics of the compulsive personality, with 
reference to RWA-SDO research, with reference to Adler and that consciousness of 
hierarchy which we might equate with feelings of inferiority in the ‘low serotonin 
society’, and also with reference to certain Machiavellian-psychopathic traits which 
can be considered individualistic qualities.
Original research evidence presented in the final chapter will confirm a point 
which makes good sense in view of the existence of these very diverse perspectives: 
that the idea of a general individual difference between individualism and 
collectivism is highly problematic. However, we will see that the search for items 
designed to tap it can prove useful, by yielding items which can carry forward to help 
test Pareto’s psychological model. The final chapter will describe the administration 
of these items to UK MPs, in conjunction with items from C. Harry Hui’s widely 
used Individualism-Collectivism scale (Hui 1988, 17–37). Findings will permit 
further theorising on links between conservatism and collectivism, which will set us 

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Pareto’s Psychology
99
thinking of the possibility that there is a distinct ‘conservative individualism’ which 
is psychologically distinguishable from ‘liberal individualism’. Hence we will see 
that although Pareto may have been wrong to link conservatism to collectivism by 
suggesting a general co-variance between class II and class IV residues, the testing
of his psychological model can nonetheless produce useful conclusions.
 4.4  Creativity
That Pareto considered his foxes and speculators more creative than his lions and 
rentiers is clear from the fact that he repeatedly described the former as possessing 
the class I ‘instinct for combinations’ residues (Pareto 1935, §§ 889–990), whilst the 
latter were said to possess the class II ‘persistence of aggregates’ residues (Pareto 
1935, §§ 991–1088). The ‘instinct for making combinations’ is clearly something 
which Pareto equated with an inclination to think new thoughts, whilst the persistence 
of aggregate residues involve, as the term suggests, the very opposite inclination 
to cling to old thoughts. This section will now examine this individual difference, 
blending psychoanalytic and other theories of creativity with research evidence to 
demonstrate that it seems to integrate well within Pareto’s psychological model.
Pareto’s description of the class I residues as arising from an ‘instinct for 
combinations’ (Pareto 1935, §§ 889–990) seems to refer both to some kind of 
creative impulse or drive, and some kind of creative process. Unfortunately, however, 
Pareto said very little about these things. His description of the creative instinct 
mentions only that it comprises a ‘propensity for combinations’, a ‘search for the 
combinations that are deemed best’ and a ‘propensity to believe that they actually do 
what is expected of them’ (Pareto 1935, §889). Similarly, there is little detail to be 
found in his references to the process of ‘making combinations’. His listing of the 
various subcategories of class I residue merely provides us with a wide variety of 
different sorts of mental association (see Pareto 1935, §§ 892–936).
This leaves us with the impression that Pareto was thinking quite simplistically 
in terms of a process of mental association combined with a healthy curiosity which 
encourages us to explore and interact with the world (a trait which Marcus et al.
(1995) have recently termed the ‘need for cognition’). However, Pareto does provide 
a couple of further leads concerning the nature of creativity which can usefully be 
followed up here. The most important of these derives not from what he actually 
said about creativity, but rather from how he saw it clustering with other traits. 
Section 4.2 has already flagged up the idea that negativistic ambivalence might well 
provide a common element which helps us to understand several of the core traits 
– most obviously scepticism, ideological relativism and creativity – which Pareto 
attributed to the personality profile of his liberal, moderate ‘fox’ who possesses the 
class I residues. This section will therefore devote some more detailed attention to 
the possibility that Pareto’s distinction between his creative foxes and his uncreative 
lions could have some basis in reality when we think of his foxes as individuals 
whose creative thinking is spurred on by a kind of ‘divine discontent’ which arises 
from the intrapsychic conflicts of the negativist. This argument will simultaneously 
reveal that the lack of creativity found in Pareto’s lions makes good sense in view of 

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