Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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More specifically, we will see that the core features of Pareto’s conservative and 
extremist ‘lion’ match up well with what psychoanalysis terms the ‘compulsive’, 
‘obsessional’ or ‘anal’ personality pattern. Pareto’s liberal and moderate ‘fox’, on 
the other hand, will be seen to have much in common with the ‘negativistic’ or 
‘leisurely’ 
1
 personality. Furthermore, theories of ‘Machiavellian’ and ‘psychopathic’ 
personality, which integrate readily within this psychoanalytic framework, will prove 
useful in explaining some ‘fox’ traits.
Hence this chapter will commit itself to the idea that psychoanalytic theories 
of negativism and theories of Machiavellianism-Psychopathy can be blended 
to provide a better understanding of Pareto’s ‘fox’. It is admittedly dangerous to 
assume significant overlaps between negativistic and Machiavellian-Psychopathic 
personality patterns within general populations, and it would go beyond the scope 
of this book to address this problem through a detailed study of links between these 
constructs. However, key similarities between the negativist and the Machiavellian-
Psychopath will become apparent. Both seem to share low superego strength. Both 
are believed to experience very similar intrapsychic conflicts
2
 producing orientations 
towards authority which are simultaneously cynical, doubting, demanding, and fearful 
of neglect. Both are also reckoned to act out their conflicts, whereas compulsives 
repress theirs. Furthermore, both often have impulsivity, narcissism and anomic 
disenchantment attributed to them. 
In the final analysis, however, we need not conclude that the various features of 
the negativist and the Machiavellian-Psychopath tend to combine within individuals. 
Rather than follow Pareto exactly by treating his ‘fox’ as an individual entity, it 
will be regarded instead as a statistical entity representing tendencies for whole 
personality patterns to cluster together. In other words, it will be used as a descriptive 
term for social personality. Of course, such clusters require organising principles, 
and it will become clearer that low superego strength is the most likely candidate 
for supplying this principle. Pareto’s foxes will hopefully become more real, then, 
when viewed as standing for certain general personality correlates of low superego 
strength. The six sections which now follow will produce theory and evidence in 
support of this notion that a distinction between high superego strength (considered 
along with other attributes of the compulsive personality) and low superego 
strength (considered along with other attributes of negativistic and Machiavellian-
psychopathic personality) holds the key to Pareto’s general model of personality. 
In making this argument there is no intention to engage in a name-calling exercise 
by labeling conservatives ‘compulsive’ or ‘anal retentive’, or by labelling liberals 
‘Machiavellian’, ‘negativistic’, or, even worse, ‘psychopathic’. Rather, the point will 
be to suggest that general populations can be situated along a multi-trait person 
continuum running between compulsivity and Negativism-Machiavellianism-
1  The word ‘leisurely’ is often used to refer to mild, non-pathological negativism.
2  To qualify this slightly, although both negativism and Machiavellianism can be 
explained in terms of intrapsychic conflicts which persist throughout adulthood, this is only 
likely to hold true for the secondary psychopath, and not the primary psychopath for whom 
intrapsychic conflict is conspicuously absent. This distinction will be explained in section 
4.6.2.

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Pareto’s Psychology
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Psychopathy. It is hoped that the very idea of such a continuum, which Pareto’s 
crude and never fully articulated model of personality points us squarely towards, 
could contribute to the political psychology literature by providing a distinctive 
and thought-provoking means to understand conservative and liberal personality 
patterns.
4.2  Cultural Conservatism and Liberal Scepticism
The first individual difference to be described and then explained will concern 
contrasting conservative and liberal orientations towards social and moral norms. 
This can also be understood as involving psychological propensities to take sides 
in that conflict between culture and reason which the previous chapter touched 
upon. Pareto refers often within his ‘Treatise’ to conservative ‘faith’ and liberal 
‘scepticism’. He historicises conflict between these positions throughout many 
passages which depict European societies as having ‘oscillated’ between ‘periods of 
faith’ and ‘periods of scepticism’ since the days of ancient Greece (e.g. Pareto 1935, 
§605–06, 2353–66, 2367–84).
Pareto certainly viewed this conflict as corresponding to psychological difference. 
His periods of faith and scepticism follow the historical cycle’s movement through 
its ‘crystallised’ and ‘individualised’ phases. Periods of scepticism are times when 
the elites are replete with ‘foxes’, ‘speculators’, and ‘class I residues’; periods of 
faith are times when ‘lions’, ‘rentiers’, and ‘class II residues’ predominate. This 
distinction between conservative ‘faith’ and liberal ‘scepticism’ clearly owes much 
to Machiavelli’s much earlier contrast between the lion (which includes the idea of 
the farmer warrior as cultivator and culture bearer) and the fox (which refers to the 
light spirited, carnivalesque, confidence trickster who bears no such responsibility). 
Given this Machiavellian ancestry, it is immediately tempting to view this 
individual difference psychoanalytically as a person continuum running between 
‘superego dominated’ and ‘id dominated’ personalities. However, before taking 
this route it is useful to consider Pareto’s comments concerning how his two 
psychological types think differently about social and moral norms. It has previously 
been mentioned that Pareto’s error complex manifested itself within his view that 
different sorts of people make different sorts of misjudgment. The following passage 
contains his thoughts concerning misjudgments relating to norms:
At times, for individuals in whom class II residues have declined in vigour while the 
class I residues have intensified [and while experimental science has gained in prestige], 
conclusions deriving from class II residues seem more strikingly at odds with realities, 
and that circumstance gives rise to a feeling that such residues are “outworn prejudices” 
that had better be replaced with combination residues (i.e. class I residues). So, non-
logical actions are mercilessly condemned from the standpoint of experimental truth and 
individual or social utility, and the idea is to replace them with logical actions, which are 
professedly dictated by experimental science, but in reality are based on pseudo-science 
and are made up of [ideological constructions] of little or no validity. The situation is 
usually stated in terms of … “Faith and prejudice must give way to reason” … At other 
times, when an inverse trend is in progress and [class II] residues are gaining new strength 

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