Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
96
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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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: