To function, we need beliefs. Intelligence gives organisms the capacity to manipulate the environment in novel, adaptive ways. That requires that we have beliefs about (or models of) what will happen when a given action is performed. If I want light, for example, I must flick a light switch. But to flick a light switch, I must believe that flicking the light switch will give me light. I can’t know that it will. But if I don’t believe that it will, why would I flick the switch, and how would I get light? If we implement a stimulus program to rescue the economy, we must believe that it will have the intended effect. We can’t know that it will. But given certain theoretical and empirical considerations, we believe that it will. And so we act.

How do we acquire beliefs? Broadly, in two ways. (1) Through our own observations. That is, we seek out patterns in the world, even sometimes seeing causation where there’s none. And (2) through the observations of others. That is, we often obtain beliefs from authority, for example, from experts or people we trust. The latter is generally adaptive. We can’t acquire all the knowledge we need on our own, so we often use people better placed than ourselves to get it. (And language, of course, enables information to be cheaply passed to any number of people.)

And what is belief? It has two aspects: (1) recognition of a pattern (or regularity, or association, or rule of the form “If p then q”); and (2) a conception of some underlying force that systematically generates the pattern. We generally don’t know, or care all that much, about the latter. Understanding the mechanics behind an observable pattern can even be maladaptive since the cognitive cost of gaining that knowledge is large while the practical benefit is typically minimal. I don’t need to know how electricity works to turn on a light. To learn about it might indeed be maladaptive since the cognitive cost of acquiring the knowledge would be large while the gain, in terms of my capacity to have light, would be nil. It’s generally enough to apprehend the pattern and simply assume that something in the nature of things generates it.

Nevertheless, though we’re often blithely ignorant of the nature of the forces that underlie patterns, the notion that something is there, some underlying force systematically generating the pattern, is integral to belief. What we believe when we believe is that each time conditions X obtain, outcome Y occurs. (“Conditions X” may be a vast context of circumstances.) And that requires confidence that something deep in the nature of things systematically causes it. Belief then consists in confidence that a certain pattern is somehow in the nature of things.

Of course beliefs may be wrong and so must be revised periodically. But it would be dysfunctional to revise them instantly any time the expected effect of an action doesn’t occur. If I flick a light switch and nothing happens, I shouldn’t conclude that flicking light switches doesn’t cause lights to turn on. My confidence in the underlying forces that generate the pattern is unaffected (unfalsified) by one instance in which the pattern doesn’t occur. And though I may not understand those forces well, it’s adaptive that my confidence in them remain intact at least until the failure of light to appear when the switch is flicked becomes the predominant pattern.

So beliefs must have a certain durability. But how durable should they be? Here’s where the trouble starts. My hypothesis is that conservatives are less prone to revision of belief than non-conservatives. Specifically, they’re less likely to abandon their conceptions of the underlying forces that generate observed patterns than (shall we say) liberals (or others on the left) are. By itself, this is neither good nor bad. As noted, the precise connection between surface patterns and the underlying forces that generate them is typically vague, indeed ultimately unknowable. And people will simply differ in their predilections about when to revise their conceptions of the underlying forces that generate patterns, as events may or may not warrant.

Conservatism can indeed be adaptive. As noted, it’s dysfunctional to abandon beliefs instantly any time the expected effect of an action doesn’t occur, or any time a new idea appears. I gave the example of light switches, but the principle applies broadly. A reflexive skepticism about fads or new-fangled ideas is probably warranted. Burke was right about the French Revolution. Dostoyevsky was right that Raskolnikov was wrong that he, a “new man,” had the right to kill a corrupt pawnbroker. (Of course the extent to which Dostoyevsky was really right depends on the extent to which Raskolnikov wasn’t a straw man but a legitimate representative of his generation.) Efforts to build economic utopias in the 20^th century have proved the road to hell.

So everyone should be conservative to some degree. But it’s just basic human adaptiveness to change one’s mind when facts change. And a refusal to do so will at some point get dysfunctional. If we still believed earthquakes were caused by the whims of gods, we wouldn’t have developed seismology and so wouldn’t be able to prepare for them and spare countless lives. If we still believed illness was caused by disequilibria between the four “main” bodily fluids (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm), as doctors did as late as the sixteenth century, life expectancy would be much lower. (Life expectancy at birth in Tudor England was 35.)

So, on the one hand, one can’t revise beliefs instantly whenever an expected outcome doesn’t occur. On the other hand, it’s dysfunctional to maintain beliefs when evidence has eliminated all reasonable doubt that they’re wrong. Determining exactly when a belief should be abandoned is tricky. In modern times we have an institution, science, that systematically sorts out those beliefs that are warranted, discards those that aren’t, and over time generates an ever vaster body of beliefs that can be regarded as knowledge. “Rationality,” by my definition, means revising one’s beliefs in response to changing information. Science is then the epitome of rationality. Not that individual scientists are themselves strictly “rational” in this sense. But science, as a systematic means of utilizing all available information to form our best understanding of the world, is. A scientist proposes a hypothesis. It’s subjected to strenuous efforts by hundreds if not thousands of very smart people using the best testing methods available to falsify it. If the hypothesis survives the onslaught, it gains acceptance. If not, not. 

One manifestation of conservatism is an anti-science bias. Every major anti-science initiative historically has been from the right, whether the Catholic Church’s condemnation of Galileo, attacks on the teaching of evolution, climate change denial, etc.

Systematic Wrongness

Conservatism reaches its dysfunctional extreme with hyper-religiosity or political movements like the Tea Party. To take the latter, according to an April 2010 CBS poll, 66 percent of Tea Party supporters “think global warming will have no impact,” 64 percent “think Obama has increased taxes,” and 59 percent believe Obama either wasn’t born in the U.S. (30 percent) or are unsure about it (29 percent). One might ask: wouldn’t such blatant irrationality be selected out of a species that thrives on its ability to learn about the realities of its world? Well, as noted above, the realities of our world are complex and necessarily not-fully-understood. And it’s adaptive, to some extent, to resist switching beliefs when evidence turns against them. Inevitably there will be a fringe that’s most resistant to switching its beliefs. For reasons noted below, it may be optimal for groups to retain false beliefs in some circumstances.

Why is systematic wrongness such a powerful social force? I’ll propose three things: (1) conservatism itself, (2) the benefits of social solidarity, and (3) us-versus-them (or tribal) psychology. Conservatism, as described above, is simply the predilection to resist switching beliefs even when evidence turns against them. Everyone is to some degree conservative in this sense. But conservatism can be bolstered by a sense of social solidarity, as when a social group collectively holds a false belief. False views about Obama’s birth, for example, aren’t the product of rational individuals weighing evidence and arriving at a conclusion. Rather it’s a meme, an idea transmitted “virally” from mind to mind within a social circle. Acceptance of such a meme can be a badge of membership in a group, which for good Darwinian reasons may give people a sense of social solidarity. The cost of not knowing where Obama was born is trivial. The benefits of the social solidarity that come from believing the same (wrong) thing can be substantial.

A sense of social solidarity can, in turn, be bolstered by us-versus-them (or tribal) psychology. Humans are a social species. And of all the aspects of our environment that it behooves us to be able to predict, human behavior is surely the most important. How do we predict human behavior? As with beliefs generally, we don’t just extrapolate from observed patterns. We also employ a sense of the underlying “mechanism” that generates a pattern of behavior. In the case of human behavior the mechanism is “personality”—an abstract sense of the motivations, emotions, mindset, etc., that influence how a person will behave in different contexts. Finely-honed though our capacities to read personality are, there are limits. Human personalities are complex. But more important, I would propose, it may be optimal not to fully grasp another’s personality. Cognitively the task is taxing. And the benefits, beyond a certain point, probably diminish rapidly. Why might this be?

I assume that evolution equipped us with efficient means of acquiring social knowledge. And that would likely mean having fairly distinct categories of personality and a predilection to fit people into these categories. (To some extent, the categories may be inborn; to some extent we may be prepared to learn them.) The cognitive costs of acquiring social information would be minimized, since we need only assess people to the point where we can fit them to a category. The benefits of perusal of another beyond that point will then be minimal. We will wind up to a large extent with stereotypes that, though unfair in individual cases, enable us to navigate the social world fairly effectively, with a reasonable sense of who to avoid, who to deal with, who to help, who will help, who will harm us, etc.

Let’s take one category in which people are sometimes placed: “evil.” If you’re a member of a tribe and there’s a scarcity of resources over which your tribe vies with a neighboring tribe, it wouldn’t hurt to view members of the other tribe as “evil,” i.e., as having malicious intentions towards yourself and your fellows. You’ll then see members of the neighboring tribe as a threat and act accordingly. The attribution of “evil” is false, of course. But the other tribe will act in ways that favor the survival of its genes. And that may mean taking the resources of a neighboring tribe (yours) or even eliminating that tribe altogether. Having some such concept of the neighboring tribe—perhaps fleshed out with notions that they worship strange gods or are driven by demons—is, from your (or your genes’) perspective, advantageous.

One can of course unlearn the notion that others are “evil.” And in some circumstances (as when there are gains to be had from trade) that may be beneficial. But often—perhaps in circumstances more likely to prevail in prehistoric than in modern times—the benefits of viewing an out-group as malicious will dominate. Hence the utility of having the category “evil” “hardwired” into our perceptual apparatus. We need only find exemplars.

As I’ve hypothesized, conservatives are more reluctant to alter beliefs than non-conservatives. So broad categorizations of people in terms of “personality” (i.e., stereotypes) should figure relatively prominently in conservatives’ worldviews.

How does this relate to the false belief among some conservatives about Obama’s birth? I’ve suggested that conservatism, a sense of social solidarity, and tribal psychology combine to bolster such beliefs. Conservatism predisposes people to maintain beliefs even when evidence no longer warrants. Social solidarity instills in people a positive feeling from holding beliefs in common with one’s fellows. And tribal psychology slots others into an “other” category that enables one to imagine the worst of one’s “enemies.” The belief that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. is a motivated belief, a way of keeping the other securely defined as “other.” So on balance, there’s no harm and some benefit (for this subset of the population) in believing Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. Of course that needn’t be the case with all false beliefs. If the belief is that house prices will always rise or that climate change is a hoax, it’s a different matter.

What does it take to alter a belief, or unlearn the notion that another is “evil”? Fundamentally, it requires changing one’s conception of the mechanism that underlies an observed pattern. In the case of “evil,” it means changing one’s view of another’s personality. In the case of light bulbs, it means abandoning one’s sense that there’s something in the nature of things that causes filaments to glow when electrons pulse through them. In the case of religion, it means losing one’s faith that an omniscient being controls all things. Etc.

So really my view is that conservatives are slow to alter their beliefs in the mechanisms that underlie observed patterns. Such mechanisms are metaphysical, often vague, constructs seen to embody the systematic forces that underlie observed patterns. But if conservatives are less likely than others to alter their beliefs in the underlying mechanisms, they’re also more likely to have a sense of underlying mechanisms. This dovetails with the common perception that conservatives are “rule-governed.” Indeed that may be the defining characteristic of conservatism. As I’ve noted, everyone is conservative to some degree in this sense. It’s adaptive to be so, since by tagging certain patterns as systematic, we distinguish those that will prevail from those that are ephemeral. Thus we can better model and manipulate our environment.

Impact on Social Discourse

To take an example: religion. Conservatives are more likely to be religious than non-conservatives. Religion posits the ultimate explanatory mechanism, an omniscient being as “Author” of all things. Religion (and conservatism more broadly) appears to impact social discourse in three main ways:

(1) It provides automatic answers. Whatever occurs, one can always say it was “meant” to be. Having automatic answers appears to be a feature of conservative cognition. (2) It’s rhetorically powerful. To win, or at least not lose, an argument, one need only invoke one’s faith. Unsurprisingly “God” appears often in political speech. It resonates with supporters and keeps opponents at bay. (3) It’s often used to castigate others, those who don’t follow, or who obstruct, “God’s laws.” This creates the sense that certain (perhaps liberal-minded) others are upsetting an order that would otherwise work to one’s benefit, making them a threat.

One might wonder why conservative ideology so fetishizes the “market.” Renting oneself out on a labor market, after all, without union protection, isn’t favorable to maintenance of stable beliefs about the world. I strongly suspect conservatives’ reverence for the “market” is more abstract than real. Yet the idea of an automatic mechanism that, unfettered, is the source of our riches and a means of distributing goods and services in accordance with people’s contributions to the production of those goods and services has a natural appeal to a conservative mind. Like religion, the “market” provides automatic answers (in the material realm of course, not so much the spiritual realm). Supply-and-demand is a single pervasive abstract framework within which most economic phenomena can be understood. (The term “invisible hand” even gives it a mystical sheen. Adam Smith meant nothing of the kind, of course.) And like religion, the “market” can be used to powerful rhetorical effect. It is of course commonly referenced by politicians claiming their policies are “pro market” or to castigate others who would obstruct the workings of a mechanism that would otherwise work to our benefit.

In truth, markets solve certain problems. Profit-seeking producers are motivated to provide a wide range of goods and services at low cost. Thus markets help efficiently allocate many of our resources to their best uses. On the other hand, markets don’t help with certain other problems. Public goods such as fire and police protection, ambulance services, a justice system, highway construction, education, defense, parks, Fourth of July celebrations, etc., are all best handled through government purchases or by direct government provision. And finally, markets cause certain problems. An under-regulated financial sector, as Adam Smith noted, and as history has shown repeatedly, is a menace to society. And of course there are many other externalities, especially environmental.

So we must approach markets pragmatically. They’re useful for certain things, useless for others, and potentially harmful in certain ways unless care is taken to mitigate or eliminate their negative effects. Everyone should know this.

Yet market fundamentalism—the view that society benefits more, the more markets are unfettered—is a curiously powerful intellectual attractor. Why it’s so difficult to recognize that markets have uses and limits, and leave it at that, rather than ideologize them, dividing people into camps depending on fealty to this rather abstract explanatory principle (“markets”) is, I believe, accounted for by my theory of conservatism. The “market” is perceived as an automatic mechanism that, but for the interference of a human hand, delivers optimal results. Parasitic politicians exploit this by championing their policies as “pro market” and castigating those—at best misguided, at worst nefarious—“others” who would interfere with the workings of this mechanism. Interestingly, the “market” is invoked far more often by its absence than its presence. If the price of oil rises, it can’t be because of growing global demand and/or supply disruptions, an accurate explanation. It has to be Ben Bernanke or speculators, a deliberate interference in a mechanism that would otherwise work to our benefit.

Conservatism is not the same thing as tribal psychology (there are “tribes” on the left as well as the right), but I suspect it’s positively correlated with it. As I’ve noted, “personality” can be viewed as an underlying mechanism generating human behavioral patterns. Thus conservatism and tribal psychology, I suspect, combine to form a basis for a particularly virulent brand of partisan politics.

Summarizing

So anyway, that’s my general theory of conservatism. To function, one requires beliefs. These consist not just of expectations about the persistence of observable patterns, but also conceptions of the underlying forces generating them. The latter are really the “stuff” of belief—abstract, often vaguely understand, notions about the underlying forces that generate cause-effect relationships across multiple scenarios. And people will simply differ in their propensity to revise beliefs in the light of new facts. Everyone resists revising beliefs, but some more than others. The latter are conservatives.

Yes, I know that psychological studies find that political conservatism is associated with such traits as authoritarianism, an aversion to “system instability,” intolerance of ambiguity, lack of openness to experience, a need for structure or order, and a lack of “integrative complexity,” among others. All these traits are in fact consistent with my framework. But my chief purpose here is not to psychoanalyze conservatives (though I’ve done some of that). I mainly want to account for the fact that people naturally sort themselves into two broad groups.