Food, Sex, and Death: The Evolutionary Origins of Contemporary Political Cognition

Eric Oliver Department of Political Science University of Chicago

Abstract:

Given the demands on cooperation and social coordination in evolutionary history, it is likely that numerous psychological traits are to, rather than mere predecessors of, human politics. Deducing that cooperation would have been most challenged by adjudicating the nutritional and reproductive economies and maintaining collective security, I suggest that political cognition might have evolved relative to three primary domains: egalitarianism, moralism, and ethnocentricism. If this theory holds, I hypothesize that political cognition (i.e., , reasoning, and information processing) should operate differently for issues that evoke these domains. This hypothesis is tested with an on-line survey experiment where subjects are shown a short video clip describing seven hypothetical elected officials and then, several minutes later, asked to correctly identify each one. The results show that respondents are far more likely to remember officials affiliated with these domains than controls, although the responses vary by both party affiliation and ideology.

Paper Presented to the Chicago Area Behavior Workshop, May 1, 2009 Northwestern University

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“Political psychology is, at the most general level, an application of what is known about human psychology to the study of politics.” „ Sears, Huddy, and Jervis (2003)

Political psychology is as old as the study of politics itself: political theorists since Plato have utilized rudimentary psychological precepts, often described as “human nature,” to explain political phenomena. But over the past half century, the application of psychology to the study of politics has become formally institutionalized. Drawing from a wide range of psychological studies, scholars have sought to explain systematically political dynamics through the lens of the human psyche. They have established organizations (the International Society of Political Psychology, the Political Psychology

Section of the American Political Science Association), fielded journals (Political

Psychology, Political Behavior), and, most importantly, produced a large body of informative research. Their efforts have yielded a trove of good explanations for the acquisition and expression of political attitudes and values (e.g., Feldman 1988, Zaller

1992), the dynamics of political cognition (e.g., Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1993), the contours of prejudice and inter-group bias (e.g., Kinder and Sanders 1996), and many other types of political phenomena.

Yet as a field of inquiry, political psychology remains largely unsettled. It lacks a unifying theory or set of theories, its practices are often unscientific, its research topics typically are episodic, and its explanations are sometimes post hoc or atheoretical (Winter

2006). Partly, these are a result of its initial orientation. Psychology itself is an extremely broad and diverse discipline that employs a disparate range of epistemologies and ontological perspectives. By basing itself on such a varied discipline, political 3 psychology inevitably manifests this intellectual fragmentation. For example, political psychologists explain the behaviors of political leaders with psychodynamic models (e.g.,

Post 2005), the behavior of voters with cognitive models (e.g., Lau and Redlausk 2006), and the behavior of group members with social psychological models (e.g., Bobo and

Klugel 1993), methods and orientations that have little in common and are limited to particular domains (i.e., psychodynamic models of leaders may have little utility for explaining the choices of voters).

At a more fundamental level, however, political psychology is hampered by its initial orientation. Using psychological concepts as the starting point for explaining political phenomena is tantamount to asserting that human psychology exists prior to politics. In other words, political psychology, as defined above, engenders the assumption that are political only after the psychological processes that underlie those behaviors are fully developed. Homo psychologicus precedes homo politicus-- humans are only political after they are psychological ones.

Recent developments in the study of social neuroscience and evolutionary theory call this assumption into question. As psychologists and biologists begin to open the

“black box” of the human mind and understand brain architecture relative to cognitive and affective processes, it is clear that many psychological phenomena arose in relationship to particular evolutionary demands. As early hominids began to walk upright, fashion tools, acquire , and deepen their intelligence, their adaptability to a variety of environments dramatically increased. With these increased aptitudes also came increased political pressure—as hominids became smarter and more versatile, they also became increasingly capable of (and dependent on) cooperation with each other. In 4 short, they became increasingly political. For example, homo erectus, a forerunner of homo sapiens, could migrate from Africa to Europe and Asia largely from their ability to sustain themselves off the mega-fauna residing on savannas and steppes (Johanson and

Edgar 2006); being highly gracile and weak, early hominid success depended on large-scale teamwork. Maintaining such cooperation required the development of long- term and sustainable agreements on the regulation of the nutritional and sexual economy and on the limitation of intra-group violence.

Over the past decades, scholars have begun to theorize about how such a cooperative equilibrium can be maintained. Working largely from deductive and game theoretic models (such as the prisoner’s dilemma, stag hunt, ultimatum, etc.) as well as laboratory experiments, this research has demonstrated that not only can “selfless” cooperation be successful over the long haul (Axelrod 1984) but that, in a variety of experimental settings, subjects typically exhibit highly cooperative behaviors, such as rewarding others and punishing defectors at significant costs to themselves (Camerer

2003, Orbell et al. 2004). Other scholars (Trivers 1971, Cosmides and Tooby 1992,

Gigerenzer and Hugg 1992) have extended this reasoning and argued that humans evolved specific cognitive and affective adaptations for processing social exchange information. As an example, they point out that human cognition is particularly sensitive to issues of reciprocity and the detection of cheaters. In other words, just as humans evolved eyebrows, opposable thumbs, or larynxes to help with specific functions, they also evolved numerous cognitive and affective processes (i.e., a specific psychology) to help sustain and enforce cooperation. 5

Although this line of inquiry is still in its infancy and already subject to heated debate (e.g., Fodor 2000, Buller 2005), its implications for the study of politics are profound. Despite the elaborate cultures and sophisticated political systems of contemporary life, the social psychological processes that evolved in the Pleistocene should continue to delimit the ways humans address political problems. In other words, the basic neurological mechanisms for processing political information, making political decisions, and acting in the social sphere originate in fundamental biological processes that were shaped over the millennia that humans and their hominid ancestors lived both in nomadic, hunter gatherer and, possibly, agricultural societies. Identifying these biological mechanisms could hold the potential for explaining a wide range of political behaviors, particularly those that defy expectations of strict rationality or appear universal across cultures.

In this paper, I explore the potential of such an approach to explaining human political behavior. Using the example of political ideology, I describe how evolutionary theory might help identify innate types of human values and the mechanisms of their cultural transmission. The viability of this endeavor, however, depends largely on the veracity of claims that humans evolved specific cognitive mechanisms to deal with issues of cooperation and the adjudication of social resources. Based on deductions about the central challenges to cooperation in early hominid development, I speculate about three central domains, what I call Food, Sex, and Death, around which some specific cognitive mechanisms might have arisen. I then describe the results of an on-line survey experiment that tests some hypotheses derived from this theory. The findings are 6 consistent with the hypotheses although questions still remain about the validity of the experiment and the veracity of the hypotheses.

Evolution and the Study of Political Behavior

For social scientists, evolutionary theory is both alluring and problematic. It is alluring because it offers the promise of a unified and more scientific account of human economic, political and social behavior. If humans share an essential nature, that nature is biological in origin and, to use Theodosius Dobzhansky’s oft-repeated phrase, “nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution.” Evolution also offers the advantage of being a simple, powerful, and parsimonious theory. From an evolutionary perspective, the mind is viewed as “a set of information-processing machines that were designed by to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors”

(Cosmides and Tooby 1997). In contrast to the “blank slate” model of human psychology (in which all of the mind’s contents are derived from environmental factors), postulates that the human mind is comprised of specific cognitive processes that were selected in the particular environment of evolutionary (EEA) and hold predetermined content and specialized ways of processing information.1 To whatever extent humans have an “essential” human nature, it is located

1 Many naïve critics assume that by postulating evolutionary influences on human behavior, EP dismisses “nurture” completely in favor of “nature.” The EP perspective doesn’t embody such false dichotomies or deny that the human mind is remarkably plastic and influenced by social factors; rather, EP supposes simply that “hardwired” cognitive structures and affective processing fundamentally constrain the ways social environments shape human psychology. Consider the analogy of a marathon runner: even though someone can train herself to run very fast, her top speed ultimately will be delimited by the simple skeletal and cardio-vascular design of the human body. Similarly, even though people from different cultures may exhibit seemingly disparate attitudes and behaviors, the cognitive and affective processes that underlie these actions should be very similar and constrain them in predictable ways.

7 within the mental architecture that was selected for over hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary history.

Evolutionary theory is problematic, however, because reconstructing the evolution of the human mind is exceedingly difficult. This is particularly the case in developing specific and testable hypotheses about psychological traits. For example, in an ideal world, scientists would be able to link specific genes or alleles to particular neurological processes and then measure the impact of these neurological processes on behavioral outcomes. We are, however, still far away from the technological point of achieving this goal—we are only beginning to decode the human genome and have a very incomplete understanding of the linkages between genes and their corresponding phenotypes. Moreover, despite the compelling findings from various neuro-scientific diagnostic techniques like positron emission tomography (PET) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), our knowledge of brain architecture and cognitive function is still crude. Nor do we have the capacity either to directly observe most psychological traits or the evolutionary forces that selected them (Andrews 2007). We can look across cultures and try to identify “universal” traits or practices (Brown 1991) but these will be subject to questions of interpretation and comparability; we can try to piece together inferences from genetic and archaeological records, but here the clues are inconclusive— in fact, we still do not have a definite genealogy of human origins. Consequently, any current assertions about the evolutionary forces that shaped the development of the human mind must be rooted more in logical assumption than empirical fact.

Moreover, even if we suspect that a psychological phenomenon is an evolved trait, it is difficult to know whether it is a direct adaptation to an environment, an 8 exaptation (an evolved trait that comes to serve a different function), a spandrel (a side effect accompanying another adaptive trait), a by-product of a distinct cultural process, or some combination of these. This distinction is especially important when discussing human psychology given the importance of cultures and social structures for shaping human development (Richerson and Boyd 2006). Indeed, recent genetic evidence suggests that the pace of evolution has actually increased since the advent of agriculture in the last 20,000 years (Biello 2007). Thus researchers trying to piece the evolutionary origins of the human political mind are faced with the dilemma of trying to determine which psychological traits are likely to be direct adaptations, when they evolved, and under what conditions they were selected, all with very limited tools for making direct inferences.

Given of all of these problems, does it even make sense to explain contemporary political behavior using an evolutionary model? The answer to this question partly depends on the type of political problem and relevant trait in question. For some types of political phenomena, an evolutionary explanation requires few stringent assumptions.

Take, for example, the propensity to engage in conspiratorial thinking. Throughout recorded history and across many contemporary societies, there is wide-spread belief that unseen, intentional, and malevolent forces, such as witches, Gods, or secret societies, are behind catastrophic events (Marcus 1999). In a recent poll I conducted, roughly a half of

1,000 American survey respondents believed a secret cabal of “powerful forces are behind most world events” and roughly one fifth thought the U.S. government had prior knowledge of the September 11th attacks or that we are in the “end times” as foretold by

Biblical prophesy. Much of this thinking can be traced to a very adaptive cognitive bias 9

– the presumption that an unseen noise is being generated by a predator would confer a tremendous adaptive advantage (Boyer 2001). It seems quite likely that the same cognitive mechanisms which trigger fear and imagination in us when we walk through a dark alley or woods would also underlie a propensity to embrace these types of conspiratorial narratives.2

But for many psychological traits that relate to politics, the assumptions about the

EEA must be more far reaching. Not only must the physical environment be taken into account (which itself had wide climatic swings during much of the Pleistocene), but the social environment must be considered as well. The evolutionary success of hominans

(i.e., modern humans and their extinct relatives), in spite of their gracility, is largely attributable to the development of their social attributes, particularly their capacity for cooperation.3 Cooperative and long-lasting relationships allowed hominans migrate out

of jungles and into open savannas (where a wider variety of game was available), be

highly altricial and sustain a high protein diet (both essential for disproportionate brain

growth in a bipedal ), and employ greater flexibility in response to changing

surroundings. The importance of cooperative relationship also meant that one of the

central environmental factors shaping human evolutionary development were other

humans. In short, hominids evolved in relationship to each other.

Making assumptions about the evolutionary impact of social environments,

however, is fraught with hazards. To begin with, there are few empirical facts upon

2 There is also the interesting question of whether humans are hardwired to think in narrative terms. And, of course, there is also the issue of whether these conspiracy theories are based in fact. After all, as the saying goes, even paranoids have enemies. 3 By cooperation I mean “individual behavior that incurs personal costs in order to engage in a joint activity that confers benefits exceeding these costs to other members of one’s group.” (Bowles and Gintis 2002) 10 which to make any claims. As noted earlier, the fossil record offers limited clues about hominid social organization. The social structure of other , while fascinating (de

Waal 2005), must be evaluated in light of the tremendous difference between humans and great apes in physicality, brain structure, and physical environments (e.g., , bonobos, and are not bipedal, less encephalized, and confine themselves largely to forests and jungles). Anthropological studies of the few remaining human hunter- gatherer societies are often circumscribed by the circumstances of the ethnographic research or the particular ecological conditions.

Given the dearth of concrete evidence about hominid life in the Pleistocene, many evolutionary theorists are now turning to more deductive methods, such as computer simulations or game theoretic models, to estimate the impact of social environments on the development of social cooperation. In such models, cooperation is typically characterized as a strategic game, such as a prisoner’s dilemma, in which two or more

“rational” players are given a choice of cooperating or defecting. The puzzle which such games try to solve is why cooperation occurs when the dominant strategy for any rational actor is to always defect and never cooperate, even when the collective outcome is not a

Pareto optimum (i.e., the most advantageous for all parties).

Over the past 40 years, a large body of literature has modeled numerous processes in which a cooperative equilibrium can be achieved among otherwise rational and self- interested actors. For example, in his famous simulation tournaments where various strategies for playing the prisoner’s dilemma are pitted against each other in repeated play, Robert Axelrod (1984) found that strategies like “Tit-for-Tat” or later what Alford and Hibbing (2004) call “wary cooperation” have greater long-term success than a 11

“rational” strategy of consistent defection. In other words, strategies that seek to cooperate but punish cheaters tend to outperform, over the long haul, strategies of narrow rationality.

More recent work has tried to expand these models by incorporating further realistic assumptions about human psychology. Rather than seeing cooperation develop as the consequence of rational calculation among self-interested actors, these models explore the impact of pro-social emotions, linguistic and physical capacities, and group- oriented cognitive processes as evolved mechanisms for sustaining cooperation. In his seminal analysis of reciprocal altruism, biologist Robert Trivers (1971) suggested that affective processes such as “friendship, dislike, moralistic aggression, gratitude, sympathy, trust, suspicion, trustworthiness, aspects of guilt, and some forms of dishonesty and hypocrisy” could be seen as specifically adaptive for human cooperation, what Orbell et al. (2004) call “rationality in design.” Bowles and Gintis (2003) elaborate on the adaptation of these pro-social traits by putting them in the context of group membership. According to their models, genetically transmitted individual behavior can symbiotically evolve with culturally transmitted group-level practices particularly to differentiate from proximate out-groups.

As an example, Table 1 lists a series of affective states and their possible functionality for sustaining cooperation. Individuals may face feelings of guilt or shame for cheating on cooperative commitments but be rewarded with feelings of pride or self- esteem for fulfilling them; feelings of indignation or rage may be directed toward specific individuals who violate cooperative norms while affection or love is directed to those who comply. These feelings may even work at the level of groups: feelings of prejudice 12 or animosity may be directed towards members of out-groups (simply for being part of another group and hence a competitor) while loyalty, trust, and allegiance may arise towards fellow group members. In other words, pro-social dispositions (such as shame, guilt, or trust) evolved not towards all other humans but specifically towards fellow in- group members, while more discriminatory traits evolved in relationship to out-group members.

Table 1: Human Emotions and Their Roles in Enforcing Cooperation

Emotions Directed Emotions Directed Emotions Directed Towards Self: Toward Others: Towards Group:

Punish Defection Guilt, Shame Indignation, Rage Prejudice, Loathing

Reward Cooperation Pride, Self-esteem Affection, Respect Loyalty, Trust

This work has been supplemented by research on brain activity during various

cooperation games, whose findings are consistent with predictions about pro-social

cognitive traits from formal models (Sanfey 2007). For example, Rilling et al (2003) find

consistent brain activation patterns among subjects playing a prisoner’s dilemma game

while under an fMRI scan. When making cooperative decisions, brain areas were activated that are also associated with reward processing such as the nucleus accumbens,

the caudate nucleus, ventromedial frontal/orbitofrontal cortex, and rostral anterior

cingulate cortex . Similarly, de Quervain et al (2004) found, using a positron emission

tomography (PET) camera that experimental subjects who punished defectors in

cooperation games also activated similar parts of the striatum that are associated with

pleasure centers. Bechara and Damasio (2005) find that patients with lesion damage to

ventromedial prefrontal cortex have significant reductions in their capacity in performing 13 allocation tasks. In common parlance, human brains (and some brains as well) appear “programmed” to activate pleasure sensations for both cooperating and for punishing non-cooperators.

Taken together, this research illustrates that much of human social cognition is biologically rooted and thus evolutionarily determined. Even with the caveats noted above, this suggests the potential of evolutionary theory for explaining human political behavior. Not only does it offer a deep yet parsimonious scientific theory of human action, it holds the potential for linking various disparate fields within social science.

Evolutionary studies of cooperation, for example, often unify insights from game theory with observational studies from anthropology, field experiments in social psychology and laboratory experiments in cognitive neuroscience (e.g. Gintis et al. 2005, Hammerstein

2003). In fact, evolutionary theory probably holds the greatest value in accounting for political behaviors not amenable to rational explanations (i.e., the formation of preferences and behaviors which incur substantial costs without tangible benefits to participants). These include: the origins of ideology, the dynamics of group identity, ethnic conflict, and discrimination, participation in elections and social movements, vote choice and candidate preference, and general distortions in political cognition. But to better appreciate the potential and limitations of an evolutionary theory, it may be useful to focus on a particular example. For this, let us turn our attention to the case of political ideology.

The Evolution of Political Ideology 14

Of the puzzles facing political scientists, perhaps none are more vexing than the origins of people’s political preferences. Not only do citizens typically fail to meet most basic expectations of rationality (such as having fixed, transitive preferences), it is often difficult to discern much coherence in their belief systems (Converse 1964). Most people exhibit highly unstable policy preferences and bear little resemblance to the informed and ideologically oriented voters assumed by classical models of democratic politics

(Campbell 1962). But whiles sometimes incoherent, people are not entirely random in their political behavior either. While they may be largely “innocent” of the ideology practiced by political elites, most people do show evidence of having some core values that constrain their thinking, guide their behavior, and orient them to the world (Feldman

1988). The difficulty for social scientists has been in identifying these fundamental values, understanding where and how they become manifest, and pinpointing their origins.

Here is where evolutionary theory may provide some valuable insights. Consider the question of where values come from. Social science offers surprisingly few clear answers to this seemingly fundamental query. From the dominant social science perspective, human values are typically described as social constructs learned from particular cultures—values putatively arise from the social structure, the means and relations of production, levels of economic development, family characteristics, age cohort, , childhood experience, or ethnicity (Hitlin and Piliavin 2004, Inglehart

1977). Yet such an exhaustive list says little about why these particular forces shape human values or why some values appear universal across cultures. In other words, each of these explanations may account for some variation in values or for a particular cultural 15 practice but they say little about where the psychological inclination for the value itself originates.

In fact, the social science literature has largely ignored some fundamental questions about the transmission of human values. It is generally assumed that humans have a general-purpose mental mechanism for learning such values and, hence, any value can be adopted by any person, but such an assumption introduces a host of questions: what are the cognitive mechanisms that allow values to become learned or adopted? Are these mechanisms innate or are these particular mechanisms of cultural transmission also learned? Can all values be learned equally or are some easier to adopt than others (and if so, why)? The social science literature has few answers to such questions, yet these queries underlie the very core of how human value systems operate.

If we examine values through the lens of evolutionary theory, we might actually derive some alternative insights into their origins. From the perspective of evolutionary theory, values are psychological mechanisms for processing information from the external world in order to prompt effective action by the organism. This proposition starts with the fact that all animals must manage large amounts of information about their surroundings and, based on this input, determine an optimal response. Values are a means of prioritizing this sensory information and instigating more advantageous behavior. As Jaak Panksepp (2007) notes, “the central question for the behavioral choices of humans and all other animals is the nature of the genetically provided value system that index major survival concerns.” For example, at a most basic level, all animals value self-preservation and reproduction. The value of self-preservation inhibits self-destructive acts like walking off cliffs and helps with avoiding predators or 16 poisonous foods; the value of reproductive fitness instigates peculiar mating rituals, fights for breeding prerogatives, and other sexual behaviors. While it is tempting to think of values as a solely cultural, and thus human, construct, from an evolutionary perspective, values are psychological phenomena shared by all animals.

The biological mechanisms that enact these values, especially for larger vertebrates, are primarily cognitive/affective. Most animals employ some rudimentary cognitive heuristics or sensory algorithms for guiding behavior (Gigerenzer 2000) and as animals become larger, more complicated cognitive systems evolved, particularly those that prioritized sensory inputs and primed the organism for immediate reaction. One example of this specialized cognitive/affective mechanism is fear. Arising from the neural networks throughout the brain, but particularly in the amygdala, anterior and medial hypothalamus, and certain areas of the mid-brain, the emotions of fear or anxiety are rooted deeply to prompt quick action, such as a rise in adrenaline or heart rate.

Although the exact nature of affective brain processing is still the object of much debate, the logic of affective systems for realizing preexisting values is clear: given the millions of pieces of sensory input processed by at any given moment and most deliberative forms of cognition are not only slow but highly taxing. Affective responses help delimit cognition and prompt adaptive behaviors in an efficient manner. Emotional systems of fear, rage, lust, and seeking are highly adaptive for promoting reproduction and self-preservation and are widely observable across all vertebrates (Panksepp 2007).

In contrast with insects and reptiles, mammals also evolved values that relate to their functional interdependence, such as nurturance, separation distress, and inter- subjectivity. And, as with their primordial values, mammals also evolved particular 17 affective processes to operationalize these values. Nurturance is facilitated through the emotion of caring, separation distress through sadness or panic, and social bonding and connection through playfulness. These physiological processes ensure bonding between parent and offspring and, in some species, the maintenance of group cohesion. Once again, these pro-social emotional systems are linked to particular brain areas (mammals evolved a limbic core that processes social information) and distinct bio-chemical processes to facilitate these neural processes. For example, feelings of caring and nurturance are rooted in opioid, oxytocinergic, vasotocinergic and prolactinergic neurochemical controls (Panksepp 1998). Other mammals that live in social groups also demonstrate evidence of affective systems around social dominance, such as aggression, status, and group coherence (Campbell 2006).

And, in contrast with other mammals, humans and other primates are even more distinctive for their even higher levels of sociability and patterns of cooperation among non-kin. As noted above, theories about the psychological determinants of human cooperation in the Pleistocene and Holocene are still largely speculative, but it is plausible that humans would have evolved a number of innate values related to cooperation with non-kin, values which are probably mediated by group life. These would include valuing reciprocity, cooperation or assistance from in-group members or other ways of reinforcing group ties, punishing non-cooperation among in-group members, denigrating out-groups, and placing concern on status and reputation within a group (Alford and Hibbing 2004). And, once again, these cooperative values, like other genetically provided values systems, are directly tied and reinforced through particular cognitive and affective mechanisms (as possibly sketched out in Table 1). 18

Thus, from this perspective, human values are biological systems aimed at promoting self-preservation, reproduction, kin success, and group cohesion. Rather than arising solely from abstract principles or conscious deliberation, many human values are, instead, intuitive and affective. The specific response of humans to most situations, including those that represent acting on “principles” or “abstract” values, often precede higher-order cognition (Greene 2007). Most choices are made before a person is even away of the choice they face. Although some may offer a rationale for a particular decision, this reason is the basis of this choice but, rather, a post hoc rationalization

(Haidt 2007). Because conscious deliberation about moral action is taxing and difficult, it typically only occurs under conditions of uncertainty, either from a lack of information or because values are in conflict (Tetlock 1983).

Yet even from an evolutionary perspective, the characterization above does not give a complete picture of human values. For in addition to being a social and cooperative species, humans are also a distinctively symbolic species who have adapted uniquely sophisticated mechanisms for language and higher order cognition. Other animals may communicate crudely, but none have the generative, recursive, and open- ended structure of human language (Hauser et al 2004). Language not only assists in the transmission and enforcement of values (with language one can more easily establish and communicate group norms), but can also lead to the creation of values themselves. For example, language allows humans to assign what philosopher John Searle (2007) calls

“status functions” to certain objects or even other people. These status functions serve as values for facilitating social exchange and delimiting individual behavior: a ten dollar bill may have an ontological reality of being a simple piece of paper, but also hold the 19 status function as a mechanism of exchange and thus trigger particular behaviors such as trading for a commodity. In fact, language enables deliberative cognition and the formulation of abstract principles, the capability of valuation that we mostly common ascribe to human ideology.

The impact of symbols and language are also important for the development of values because they enable a distinctive type of group life that, in turn, puts strong adaptive pressure on humans to adopt even stronger social bonds. Evolutionary biologists typically limit altruistic cooperation to either kin or small groups (Hamilton

1964). Many evolutionary psychologists, however, note that once humans are able to symbolically differentiate particular groups or tribes, they can radically expand their patterns of cooperation (through moralistic punishment, conformist biases, and impulse control) to other group members in a way that selects for pro-social behavior at the group level (Richerson and Boyd 1999, Wilson 2006). The values that help sustain cooperation in large, non-kin groups, and may often times come in conflict with more innate, individualistic values. For instance, groups may demand altruistic behavior on the part of members that conflict with narrow, self-interested concerns. Thus once language and culture allows for a strong level of group selection, it also creates a distinct type of evolutionary environment, one based largely on symbols and group values.

In other words, there is very strong evidence that humans developed biologically in relationship to the distinct cultures of their particular groups—genes and culture coevolved. One of the most blatant examples of this is lactose tolerance. Early hominans did not possess the gene that allowed for the production of the enzyme lactase. When

Neolithic humans began domesticating and herding animals, mutations that allowed for 20 lactase production suddenly became highly adaptive and a distinct genetic difference thus arose between herding and non-herding peoples. Evidence of this cultural legacy can now be found in patterns of lactose tolerance around the globe, with high levels of lactose intolerance in parts of east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, areas that lacked herding cultures (Richerson and Boyd 2002). It is possible that similar types of co-evolution also arose with respect to particular cultural practices, particularly those related to the restriction of aggression, sexual activity, or asocial behavior.

The complexity of human values becomes even more vexing if we suppose that one of the most important values that humans might have evolved was behavioral flexibility. Compared to most mammals, humans can easily adjust their behavior to a wide range of environmental and social constraints. Humans are particularly adept at adopting cultural and social cues, largely because they are so dependent upon this group information for their survival. Evolutionary theorists now emphasize how phenotypic plasticity was highly adaptive in humans, particularly in their ability to respond to parochial cultural information. Consequently, psychological traits, such as values, may arise not simply from innate propensities toward that value (such as self-preservation) but innate propensities towards learning particular types of values (such as group related norms). This latter point will be of particular importance when trying to ascertain the basis of human values that seem to vary so much across particular cultures.

The challenge, therefore, when discussing the evolutionary roots of political values comes in differentiating between those values that arise directly from biologically adaptations (and thus universal to all humans), values that arose from the co-evolution of genes and particular human cultures (and thus distinct to particular groups), values that 21 are universally latent but only expressive in certain cultural circumstances (and thus manifest only in some groups but possible in all), and values that are solely learned through cultural transmission. This distinction is particularly important when referencing political preferences. Whether it is voting, following rules, perceiving injustice, or forming opinions about policies or candidates, many of the central issues in the study of politics are about how human values operate within particular cultural contexts.

Although some political values clearly arise from individualistic psychological traits that evolved prior to homo sapiens, such as concerns with safety or security, most political values are situated around collective processes or outcomes and could have appeared at many points along the pathway of human evolutionary or cultural development.

How to Identify Innate Human Political Values

So how might we differentiate among political values that are innate, those that are easily learnable, and those that are acquired only through cultural transmission?

Previous work on similar topics in evolutionary psychology provides at least one plausible answer to this very difficult question: identify a differential cognitive capacity.

Rather than seeing the human cognitive system as a general-purpose information processing device, evolutionary theorists are beginning to characterize the mind as a hierarchical system of numerous, specialized adaptations selected for specific environmental problems (Gangestad and Simpson 2006). As noted above, animals did not evolve by simply developing solely a mental structure that generally processes information and learns, but possibly adapted numerous specific processes that administer, prioritize, and order information about particular sensory inputs and stimuli in 22 predetermined ways. Examples of such innate, specific mental mechanisms include avoidance of vertical drops (an innate propensity in human and animal infants), spatial orientation, facial recognition, language competency, social reasoning, and kin recognition (Sperber 2005). Although there is a lively debate on the exact nature and scope of mental specialization (Fodor 2000, Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby 1992,

Carruthers 2002), most evolutionary theorists embrace some minimal notion of particular specificity in cognitive functions, particularly in regards to the processing of social information (Geary 2005).

Consequently, if humans have innate political values, then there should be some identifiable evidence of the neural processes that enable them. For instance, if humans innately value reciprocity, there should be some specific cognitive mechanisms that become invoked when humans face allocating decisions—humans should process information about concerns of equity in a specialized and predetermined way. Indeed,

Cosmides and Tooby (1992) have found that experimental subjects are far more adept at applying Wason selection rules when couched in social terms rather than as mere abstractions. From these experiments, Cosmides and Tooby conclude that “content free, general purpose problem-solving mechanisms are extraordinarily weak—or even inert— compared to specialized ones” and that the structure of human mental life, particularly in relationship to social and political cognition and behavior, is rife with mental specificity.

The degree of this cognitive specialization, however, is far from clear, particularly in regards to its “content” specificity. The diversity of hominan environments and the emergence of novel cultural constructs late in human evolutionary development would have put enormous pressure on sustaining some flexibility in human cognition (Sperber 23

1994). More than most creatures, humans need a high degree of mental plasticity to allow for learning and adapting to a variety of physical and social environments, including patterns of social interaction. However, complete plasticity is not only inefficient but possibly calamitous, as the example of the Dodo bird illustrates.

So the next challenge to an evolutionary based political theory is to identify which neural processes are situated around a specific, pre-determined content and, in the absence of specificity, what might be the rules or other patterns that allow for learning or otherwise constrain cognitive plasticity. One way to deduce these is through a catastrophe rule: if learning about a specific stimuli would prove catastrophic, then it is likely that animals and humans would have adapted particular mental functions in regards to that stimuli. In hominid social environments, these specified contents might include kin-perception or recognition of emotions. Otherwise, it seems likely that animals and humans would use categories, heuristics, and other rules by which to process information about their environments. Similar to the rules of grammar and syntax that underlie the

“language instinct,” these mental rules would systematically affect the way that relevant political or social information is processed. Identifying these mental rules or heuristics may come from looking at specific patterns or biases in information processing, differential learning or memory capacities, and cross-cultural similarities in political attitudes.

As an example, consider how humans must deal with processing information about dangerous animals. Poisonous snakes share nearly all the global environments that humans do and would be a source of constant selection pressure. As all snakes share a similar body morphology, it is not surprising that humans have evolved an innate 24 apprehension to these creatures and are particularly sensitive to perceiving snake shapes.

Other dangerous animals, such as lions, bears, or water buffalo, are limited to specific ecosystems. Cognition in response to these animals would need to be more flexible and be based on particular morphological templates such as body shape, eye contact, or displays of teeth and claws (Barrett 2005). In this case, we would expect information processing to be situated around heuristics and categories. If a person sees an ambiguous stimulus, such as a water buffalo, it would need to be processed via quick heuristic categories (i.e., dangerous animal, non-predator) but also allow for a wider range of deliberative action. In other words, not all cognition is as reflexive as a massively modular mind would imply, and some portion will be slower and reflective but still constrained by certain rules of thumb.

In sum, there should be some distinctive patterns of cognition that reflect evolutionary demands, such as the rapid transmission of certain types of information

(such as concepts that fall within particular categories or are of high salience), systematic distortions in reasoning processes (such as with framing effects or other heuristics), and differentiated memory processes. In regards to human politics, certain types of political values should be evident in relationship to particular categories of conceptual primitives, expressed in distinct patterns of cognition, and learnable in a differentiated manner. For example, we might expect that humans have distinct mental modules about reciprocity and thus be able to remember the names of non-reciprocators more easily or better perform allocation tasks when framed in social terms. But we might also expect humans to have some domain general process regarding reciprocity and thus exhibit behaviors such as greater curiosity about violations of reciprocal norms or be more adept about 25 learning rules about cheating and the distribution of goods. We should expect that some social rules will be more easily learned than others. For instance, my two-year-old daughter has shown little problem in learning to exchange one toy for another but demonstrates a frustratingly high level of resistance with learning how to share. This seemingly common tendency may reflect a differentiated capacity for learning certain types of cooperative behaviors.4

Food, Sex, and Death

But while these evolutionary rules may tell us how to look for an “innate” or a

“learnable” value, it does not tell us where to look. To solve this problem, the most

common approach comes from cross-cultural surveys and anthropological research on

“universal” values. After all, if a value seems evident in every culture, then it seems a good candidate for having a specified mental process. The difficulty with this approach, however, is a lack of consensus about what universal human values are. For example, from his synthesis of the social science research, Alan Fiske (1991) offers four

elementary models of social relations: communal sharing, authority ranking, equality

matching, and market pricing. Based on surveys from over three dozen countries,

Shalom Schwartz (1992) suggests ten other universal human values: self-direction,

stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power, security, conformity, benevolence,

universalism, and tradition. Surveying the anthropological record, Donald Brown (1991)

4 Another indication of mental modularity may be in the power of priming and framing in shaping political opinion. The reason why such small changes in the presentation of an issue or question can have such large effects on opinion or responses could lie in the types of conceptual modules being invoked (Chong and Druckman 2007). Thus people may exhibit strong support for welfare spending when framed in terms of the “deserving poor” because it evokes specific mental modules related to affective cues of compassion or caring (Gilens 1999). 26 offers even longer and more complex list of universal attributes to human sociability such as self-conception, sexual attraction, shelter seeking, pre and post-natal care, division of labor, and male dominance in the public sphere just to name a few. From this research and their own experiments, Haidt and Joseph (2004, 2007) winnow down a list of five

“moral foundations”: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Authority/Respect,

Ingroup/Outgroup, and Purity/Sanctity.

Yet, here again, we face a fundamental problem: not only are these lists incommensurate with each other, they are largely atheoretical. The universal lists are generated largely from surveys of social science or contemporary cultures and are not made in reference to the environmental constraints faced by early hominids.

Consequently, they offer little distinction between which values are innate or learned.5

This also means they have an inherently arbitrary quality. None of the authors of these

lists offers any explicit rationale for which items should be included or excluded. One

could easily critique each of these lists for what it leaves off—Fiske’s work has little on

coercion, Haidt and Joseph leave out self-esteem or the integrity of self-concept.

To better understand where to look for innate human political values, it is

important to consider the specific political conditions under which these values would

have been selected. At the risk of reinventing the wheel, it may be useful to start with

some simple deductions about hominid life in the Pleistocene. Cladistic analysis of

primates suggests that a common pan ancestor was a quadrupedal, arboreal ape, who

lived in small, fission-fusion social groups, subsisted largely on fruits and plants, and was

capable of engaging in forming temporary political coalitions to challenge status

5 Haidt is currently engaged in a wide spread research project linking responses so certain moral items to larger political tendencies. 27 hierarchies (Boehm 2006, Wrangham 1987). The evolution of a prehensile thumb, bi- pedalism, enlarged brains, and tools use in early hominid species allowed for a wider hunting of mega-fauna on savannas (which was also complemented by the evolution of hair loss, sweat glands, and vascular brain cooling). These factors also introduced significant pressures on hominan social structure. With the adoption of hunting tools, for example, status hierarchies based on pure physical strength were no longer stable—alpha tendencies among males would have been undermined and sharing of game would have been more common. According to Christopher Boehm (1999), the move to hunting large-game put strong evolutionary pressure for humans to create moral communities with rules and enforcement mechanisms. Indeed, it may have been precisely the distinct human adaptation of language, higher order abstract thinking, and behavioral self-control that allowed for these moral communities to expand and displace other types of hominid species, such as Neanderthals.

In these circumstances, it is plausible that distinctly political values began to emerge (i.e., values that steered individual behavior in reference to collective concerns), particularly in regards to three major categorical challenges to sustaining cooperation, what I group into conceptual categories of FOOD, SEX, and DEATH. As illustrated in

Table 2, each of these political values would have reflected a tension between preexisting value systems that promoted individual or kin interests and those that facilitated group level success. Each of these would have also required particular (although not mutually exclusive) types of cognitive adaptations to overcome the individualistic or nepotistic values and, perhaps, to adjudicate the value ambivalence. 28

Table 2 – Value Conflicts in

Value Conflict Mental Module Political Expression FOOD Sharing vs. self- Equality, Egalitarianism preservation Reciprocity, Status SEX Sexual restraint vs. Taboo Activity, Moralism reproductive Status, Purity advantage DEATH Limiting violence Group Affiliation Ethnocentrism vs. status positioning

Consider, for example, the category of FOOD. Food provision in the time of the

shared ancestor was probably similar to that of other primates—most food is acquired

individually with some sporadic collective hunting activities for small game (Wrangham

1987). Consequently, the nutritional economy required little adjudication. Once

hominids started hunting large fauna on the savanna, they needed to better coordinate

their activities and to develop means of appropriating food stuffs. Although this may

have generated numerous cognitive adaptations, it seems likely that hominids would have

become extremely sensitive to issues of sharing, social status, and reciprocity. On the one hand, exclusionary consumption of game would have posed a significant challenge to sustaining group cohesion (and thus put a pressure on developing egalitarian values within the group); on the other hand, purely altruistic behavior would be collectively untenable and individuals would have valued some differential compensation for hunting skill. Most likely this would have resulted in some expression of social status and reciprocity around hunting success. This pattern is evident in many hunter-gatherer societies, where successful male hunters typically exhibit greater sexual activity (Ridley 29

1996), but this might have also varied among groups. Nevertheless, it seems plausible that hominids would have evolved a set of what could be loosely labeled egalitarian cognitive processes. These would be mechanisms that would prioritize the identifying the status and distributive behavior of other group members, would utilize certain rules or heuristics for interpreting social information, and would provide a keen interest in learning rules or norms about the distribution of resources.

Similarly, the adoption of hunting weapons would have also demanded new cognitive adaptations with respect to SEX. The shared ancestors, like most primates, coercively organized themselves in a status hierarchy to adjudicate sexual prerogatives

(albeit to varying degrees of stringency). They also had innate tendencies towards incest avoidance, probably adapted through affective mechanisms registering disgust and cleanliness (Douglas 1966). Once again, the development of projectile weapons dramatically altered this social dynamic. As raw physical coercion would be less tenable, sexual prerogatives would have been more fiercely contested, as when any primate society is in a period of status disequilibrium (Mastripieri 2007). Hominids would have faced very strong adaptive pressures to evolve new mechanisms for defining and sustaining sexual prerogatives. Status could be established relative to hunting prowess, leadership, or social skill (Cummins 2005). Sexual restraint could be enforced through group sanctions regarding appropriate sexual behavior and linking status position to perceived moral violations, particularly among females. The confluence of these forces would result in a series of cognitive processes particularly attuned to learning moral norms, perceptions of norm violations, and different perceptions of acceptable behavior by age, sex, and family position. This could be manifest in specific inference systems 30 concerning individual sexual behavior and affective responses to non-sanctioned sexual behavior. Such developments also would have created a tension between innate values of promoting reproductive advantage (which would encourage sexual licentiousness) and group cohesion around maintaining an equitably sexual economy. Together, these would underscore a significant set of moralistic mental processes concerned primarily with identifying and regulating individualized sexual behavior in relationship to group norms.

If this is the case, then there should be different patterns of information seeking and processing, memory, self-regulation, and learning around sexual behaviors.

Another pressure on hominid cooperation would have been in relationship to channeling aggression within and among human groups, what I put under the heading of

DEATH. Lethal aggression among primates rarely occurs among group members contesting status hierarchies; rather, it is limited largely to members of out-groups or during periods of hierarchical instability (Cummins 2005). The advent of hunting weapons, however greatly increased the power and danger of intra-group violence.

Boehm (1999) suggests that the reduction of alpha bullying behavior was the first moral imperative that hominids faced and that strong group sanctions would have evolved in relationship to restraining aggression against in-group members. The creation of such a moral community, however, would have created pressure for a greater group identity, as extending non-aggression to out-group members would have been maladaptive.

Presumably, cognitive mechanisms evolved focusing attention on group related norms, in-group versus out-group membership, and wariness in regards to expressions of aggression depending on the target. These collective processes could be grouped under the heading of ethnocentrism. 31

Together, these three categories represent the major adaptive pressures by hominids to develop specific types of cognitive competencies in regards to issues of group life. Several characteristics of these mental mechanisms are worth noting. First, nearly all of the values concerning group life conflict in some way with narrow individualistic values of self-preservation or maximizing reproductive fitness. Although it does not mean that such individualistic or nepotistic values will disappear (as they would remain highly functional across many domains), but rather new cognitive mechanisms would have to develop that could either suppress or override them. Most importantly, this also means that some level of ambivalence is inherent to any system of political values, an ambivalence that would need to be reconciled through some type of cognitive or affective mechanisms (and reinforced through nascent cultural practices).

This would imply that any types of mental modules relating to political values would have to retain some type of flexibility or be in conflict with one another.

Second, although these categories of mental modules would have arisen in response to distinct adaptive pressures, these categories were, by no means, mutually exclusive. Status differences would have impacted the distribution both of food and sexual prerogatives, concerns of reciprocity would have occurred for sex and resource distribution, and group cohesion would have been important for identifying appropriate targets for sharing and reproduction. Although issues of FOOD, SEX, and DEATH each present some distinct challenges to cooperation, there is also a high degree of overlap and interaction among them as well.

Third, many of the values would invoke a combination of content-specific cognitive processes and general heuristics. The parochial nature of human social life, 32 particularly in regard to specific ecological niches, would create a high degree of variation in the patterns described above. For instance, humans living in resource poor environments may be far more attuned to cheating or non-reciprocity (Boehm 1999).

Although some types of political knowledge will be semantic (i.e., organized along specific principles, cued by particular stimuli, and based on specific neural structures), other will have to be flexible to reflect war and inter-breeding among groups. The difference between these two would be most apparent where learning would be both costly and inaccessible. For instance, learning that snakes bite or that walking off cliffs leads to falls can be catastrophic. In political terms, such semantic knowledge could include a general propensity for differentiating between in-groups and out-groups, monitoring sexual or violent behavior in others, attention to long-term patterns of reciprocity, punishing the violation of social norms, or engaging in altruistic behavior with fellow group members. Even as the definition of each of these actions could be parochial and thus learnable, the cues of such actions (and thus the ability to differentiate them) would presumably be innate. In short, the ability to learn most political values is based partly on the presence of innate value systems that relate to the functioning of group life.

Of course, the point of this exercise is not simply to parse out what types of political values may be innate, but to identify how contemporary patterns of political cognition may operate relative to the evolution of the human mind. The challenge, therefore, is to move from the deductions listed above to a series of testable hypotheses. Although these are still tentative, below I list two possible suggestions:

33

H1. Human political cognition will be oriented around dimensions related to egalitarianism, moralism, and ethnocentrism.

According to this hypothesis, political preferences will not be randomly distributed by highly constrained relative to specific domains that they invoke. This is not dissimilar to public opinion research reporting the major constraints of democracy and capitalism

(McCloskey and Zaller 1984) or equality of opportunity, economic liberalism, and free enterprise (Feldman 1988). My suggestion is that human political values will align along the three dimensions listed above for any particular issue, depending upon their particular social position (see figure 1). The poles of each of these dimensions represent either individualized orientations or group constraints. People’s preferences on political issues will depend on whether the particular domain is invoked, whether the collective identity is salient, and whether the underlying values are in conflict.

H2. People should exhibit specific mental proficiencies in respect to each of these domains in comparison to other types of social or political questions.

If humans evolved domain specific mental modules in respect to cooperative challenges of food, sex, and death, then they should demonstrate differential cognitive tendencies regarding issues around these. For example, we would expect people to seek and retain more information regarding distributions of resources, sexual improprieties, or violation of group norms than other types of political information. In short, they should be better learners about political questions of egalitarianism, morality, and ethnocentrism than others. Similarly, people might also be more sensitive to framing or priming effects around these specific dimensions than others.

34

Hypothesis Tests

To test these hypotheses, I employed an on-line survey experiment from 1000 randomly assigned respondents in the Polimetrix, Inc. pool during the fall of 2008. As part of a larger survey on political attitudes and activities, respondents were shown a 40 second video clip (see Appendix 1) showing pictures and one sentence descriptions of 7

“elected officials.” All pictures depicted white males (photos were taken from members of the Australian House of Commons) of roughly the same age range (35 to 55). All had similarly standard, Anglicized names (e.g., David Carlson, Steven Green). As a control, three members were assigned relatively innocuous yet important biographical descriptions (“likes to fish and collect stamps,” “represents the 10th district in

Tennessee,” and “is on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.”). As a

treatment, one member was given egalitarian salient information (“was caught taking $5

million in bribes and graft”), one was given a moralistic salient information (“was caught

having an affair with a male aide”), and one was given an ethnocentric information (“is a

Democrat”). As a final test, one representative was also assigned a controversial policy

position (“supports a bill banning abortion”). Although this last position might capture

some “moralistic” political cognition, it also represents the only recognizable piece of

legislation and may evoke some other political content.

After seeing the short video piece, respondents were instructed to play a series of

allocation games (i.e., a dictator game, a prisoner’s dilemma game) that took approximately 5 minutes. Then they were shown a screen with each representatives face and given all of the descriptions to choose from (and the option of answering “don’t know.”). The order of these pictures was randomly assigned. 35

FINDINGS

If the hypotheses above are correct, respondents should exhibit greater rates of recognition for information invoking the egalitarian, moralistic, and ethnocentric domains than the other pieces of information. As illustrated in Appendix 2, this seems to be the case. Less than one third of the respondents were able to correctly identify the representatives in the control group and there we not statistically significant differences in their abilities to identify particular representatives in the control group. Only 24 percent correctly identified the congress member on the “House Transportation and

Infrastructure Committee,” 28 percent could correctly identify the member from the “10th district in Tennessee,” and 32 percent correctly identified the member who likes to “fish and collect stamps.”

Respondents were far more adept at identifying the representatives with cues of moralism and egalitarianism. Forty-three percent of respondents correctly identified both the representatives who had “an affair with a male aide” and who “took $5 million in bribes and graft.” The correct percentages increase even further for the “ethnocentric” treatment: 52 percent of the sample were able to correctly identify the “Democrat.”

Finally, the greatest level of retention came for the moralism/policy treatment: 62 percent of respondents were able to correctly identify the legislator who “supports a bill banning abortion.”

To further examine some individual differences in these results, I employed some multivariate analysis. A dichotomous dependent variable was constructed for whether the respondent correctly identified each candidate. Using a logistic regression, this 36 variable was then regressed on a number of individual level predictors including education, party identification, sex, race (measured with dummy variables for African

Americans and Latinos), a dummy variable for whether the respondent self-identified as an evangelical, and a composite measure of ideology based on responses to five questions regarding key social issues.6 The results are depicted in Table 3.

With the exception of the last two treatments, there are few systematic individual

differences in the respondents’ ability to correctly identify the representatives.

Respondents with higher education levels were more likely to correctly identify the first

control figure (“House Infrastructure and Transportation); self-identified Democrats were

more likely to correctly identify the treatment for egalitarian violation (“$5 million in

bribes and graft). There were a number of individual level differences in the ability to

correctly identify the last two treatments. The better educated, liberals, and evangelicals were all better able to correctly identify the candidate labeled “is a Democrat.” The better educated, conservatives, evangelicals, women, Latinos, and people with liberal

positions on moral issues were better able to identify the candidate who “supports a bill

banning abortion.” It is important to note, however, that none of these difference are very

great in magnitude and the overall fit of the regression models is quite poor.

Discussion of Findings

Although these results are consistent with the hypotheses listed above, they must

be interpreted with a great deal of caution. It is by no means definitive that these results

are being caused by any innate cognitive differences described above. Indeed, there are

6 Respondents were asked their opinions on several key social issues including opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, school prayer, and sexual education. 37 many alternative hypotheses that could also explain these results. Several are worth mentioning in more detail.

First, we may wonder how these responses are affected by the ordering of the candidates in the video. In the results, two of the three least well-identified congressmen went first and third in the video and the two most commonly identified congressmen went last. This is consistent with the “recency effect” whereby items given last in a list are remembered first. However, another body of research in psychology would suggest that the opposite “primacy effect” should occur (i.e., items at the top of the list should be better remembered). If this is the case, then respondents should have performed better with regards to the first candidates they were exposed to and more poorly with regards to the last candidates. If both the recency and primacy effects were occurring we would expect a curvilinear pattern with the lowest level of recall in the middle of the list. These competing hypotheses thus leave us with two possible conclusions. First, the higher recognition of candidates towards the end of the video is an example of recency effect, although this would not then explain why representative #5 was only recognized by 28 percent of the sample. Second, both the recency and primacy effects are occurring simultaneously and were attenuating the differences between the experimental controls and the treatments. In other words, if the ordering of the video was different, we may actually see a greater difference in recognition between the treatment and control.

Resolving this issue awaits further experimentation with numerous videos where the ordering of the candidates is randomly distributed.

Second, one might also argue that differences in response levels are a function of a utility heuristic. Thus rather than cognizing around dimensions of moralism or 38 ethnocentricism, respondents employ a utility heuristic: when the piece of information is useful or relevant, respondents actually store information in their working memory that is more easily accessible to conscious recall. If this is the case, then we would expect that a representative’s position on a specific issue or his party identification is a much better heuristic for a citizen than his hobbies, the location of his home district, or what committees he serves on. Although this alternative hypothesis is important to note, it presumes, a priori, what a utility heuristic might be. It is not clear that a candidate’s position on abortion is necessarily a good predictor of their views on foreign policy or taxes. Similarly, if this hypothesis were correct, it would presume that policy positions are more important as indicators than financial malfeasance or violations of commonly held moral norms. Both of these seem implausible. In addition, respondents were not asked to evaluate the representatives in any way or make use of any knowledge. And the absence of any strong effects by party or ideology between most of the treatments and controls also undermines a utility heuristic as an explanation.

Third, one might wonder how much these findings are the consequence of the phenotypes of the individual photos. The last two pictures are somewhat younger than the rest of the group; two of the controls are fair-haired middle-aged men; the representative who supports a bill banning abortion has a much ruddier complexion and darker features. It is unclear how much these results vary in regards to phenotype and how patterns of recognition might differ if the gender, age, or racial characteristics of the treatments and controlled were further varied. All of this awaits future research.

These caveats noted, the experiment does not falsify the idea that humans cognize political information in a particularized fashion. Although the question of whether 39 concerns of FOOD, SEX, and DEATH are central organizes principles of political cognition is still wide open, the experimental results do suggest that people process information in ways related to concerns of moral violations or group identities.

Conclusion

For political scientists, evolutionary theory offers an intriguing new way of understanding a host of political behaviors and attitudes. As the discussion above reveals, an evolutionary theorist might observe that Americans are “innocent of ideology” not because they are valueless but because common political discourse does not neatly align with the way they cognitively organize their values. All political values entail some inherent ambivalence for their holders and people may also experience conflicts along many of the same issues. For example, Americans may seem inconsistent or hypocritical in their racially motivated support for welfare spending (Gilens 1999), but this is because welfare invokes so many contradictory value dimensions. Most political issues are largely abstract and do not concern issues that most people encounter in their daily lives and few people are offered the opportunity to develop the cognitive proficiencies that generate highly predictable behaviors (Lieberman 2006).

But, like any nascent scientific endeavor, an evolutionary approach to political psychology raises as many questions as it answers. Perhaps the biggest is differentiating between what types of political behaviors arise from innate psychological traits and what types are learned or contingent on the specific environment. The answer to this question depends upon how we understand the evolution of the human mind. There is a considerable debate about how much of our cognition is delimited by thousands of 40 distinct and encapsulated modules adapted for specific problems and how much of it is a general-purpose, information-processing mechanism. If it is the former, then how domain specific are these modules? How do they interact? How do they relate to learning processes? These are essential questions for which there are no clear answers at this time.

Even if these issues get resolved, there will still be numerous other challenges for understanding the linkages between innate psychological traits and exhibited political behaviors. As an example, consider the question of why some sets of political values predominate in some people over others. In other words, why do some people stress egalitarianism but not moralism, while others deemphasize egalitarian concerns and concentrate on moralistic issues? From an evolutionary perspective, one can imagine at least three important considerations that would have to be measured. First, given the genetic diversity in the population, the traits that promote egalitarianism or moralism may be more pronounced in some people than others: some people may be “hardwired” to be more conservative or liberal. To test for this, we would need to identify the genetic basis of egalitarian or moralistic tendencies and see if mutations occurred along certain alleles.

One might also see if differences in personality traits are somehow connected with differential processing along these lines.

Second, socialization and childhood experience may evoke some kinds of traits and suppress others, particularly if we think that many modules are constructed as learning devices. Political psychologists have long theorized that childhood experiences could shape adult ideology. Altemeyer (1988), for example, reports that childhood spanking is a significant predictor of later authoritarian attitudes. Presumably some types 41 of political values may become manifest during childhood. To test for this, we would need information not only on life history, but to measure some kind of effect between individual experience and the expression of a psychological trait.

Third, we would need to consider the current social and political circumstances of the subject. In light of the oft-repeated adage that a conservative is a “liberal who has been mugged,” and one might consider whether certain traits become expressed depending on one’s political situation. Such contextual variability is evident with other types of bio-psychological processes. For instance, testosterone levels in males vary considerably depending on one’s status position (Cummings 2006) – men who lose contests or gambling bets often demonstrate significant drops in testosterone and aggression. The importance of context maybe particularly high in regards to the political values that evolved largely around concerns of regulating group life. The salience of any political value will fundamentally be related to the relative position of the individual vis-

à-vis the group. Thus, someone with disproportionate low resources should be more concerned with egalitarian cues, while another person inexorably aligned with particular groups may be more oriented around ethnocentric considerations. These individualized dynamics will also be reinforced or suppressed by larger social and institutional forces.

The likelihood of acting on egalitarian political values will be a lot higher if there are other group members in a similar position. To make matters even more complicated, we should also expect that each of these three considerations above (innate tendencies, learned experiences, and contemporary social circumstances) would interact with each other as well. 42

Given the daunting nature of these types of issues and the sheer complexity of the human brain, we may very well question the viability of pursuing research along evolutionary lines. After all, the brief example above only scratches the surface of all the possible linkages between political values and cognition. Other issues that would need to be considered include self-concept, memory, learned competencies, abstract reasoning processes, and the dynamics of language. Despite these facts, the potential of evolutionary theory remains a powerful lure for understanding contemporary political psychology. As long as the limitations of our inferences are kept clearly in sight, evolution could provide some fruitful new perspectives on solving some of the most puzzling questions about human political behavior.

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Figure 1: Three Dimensions of Political Values

Ethnocentrism

Moralism

Egalitarianism

44

Appendix 1: Video clip shown to survey respondents

slideshow_final.wmv

45

Appendix 2: Results from Experiment

House Infrastructure 24 Percent who Comm. 1 correctly identify

th 10 Dist. Tenn. 28 5

Fish & Collect Stamp 32 3

43 $5m Bribe 4

Affair with Male Aide 43 2 52 Democrat 6

62 Ban Abortion 7

Numbers in the bottom left corner of each photo indicate the order of the candidate in the video.

Total cases: 2050.

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Table 3: Predictors of Correct Responses to Elected Official Recall Experiment

House 10th Fish & Affair $5m in Is a Support Transport District. Collect Male Bribes Democ. Abortn. Commit. Tennes. Stamps Aide & Graft Ban

Education .244 .027 .039 .111 .096 .143 .266 (.086)* (.080) (.077) (.073) (.072) (.072)* (.073)*

Conservative -.167 .185 .237 -.204 .148 .167 .336 (.180) (.171) (.164) (.155) (.155) (.153) (.156) *

Party Ident. -.069 .008 -.148 -.046 -.165 -.060 -.013 (.095) (.090) (.087) (.081) (.081)* (.081) (.082)

Evangelical .333 -.042 .047 .102 .172 .263 .335 (.147) (.142) (.135) (.129) (.128) (.128)* (.132)*

Female .075 .138 .251 .059 .088 .156 .354 (.128) (.120) (.115) (.109) (.109) (.109) (.112)*

Black -.529 .175 -.349 -.019 -.024 -.204 -.255 (.290) (.241) (.251) (.225) (.224) (.224) (.226)

Latino -.030 -.091 .455 .419 -.062 .390 .670 (.272) (.262) (.234) (.230) (.233) (.236) (.262)*

Moral Issue .138 -.093 .082 .006 -.064 -.277 -.222 (.111) (.105) (.101) (.095) (.095) (.094)* (.096)*

Constant -.995 -.974 -.932 -.509 -.167 .176 -.006 (.302) (.294) (.283) (.266) (.265) (.263) (.268)

Cox & Snell R- .02 .002 .009 .008 .008 .019 .026 sq Ncases 1505 1505 1505 1505 1505 1505 1505

Source: 2008 Chicago CCES On-line Survey, *= p > .05