Evolutionary Politics: the left-right spectrum

The left-right divide in politics doesn’t completely reflect the whole range of human ideology. One dimension is simply not enough and that is the reason why the positions on this spectrum have never been completely stable and shifting. However, people’s position on the spectrum is somewhat predictive regarding their votes, attitudes and behaviours.

What’s more, political views are often tightly connected to people’s personalities. Here are the respective tendencies:

trait	economic liberal	social liberal	economic conservative	social conservative
conscientiousness			x	x
openness	x	x
neuroticism	x	x
agreeableness	x			x
extraversion	no major effect

I have argued before that conscientiousness (including higher self-control and forward planning abilities) is a trait that arose with early farming, whereas openness (flexibility in a changing environment) and neuroticism (cautiousness) can be associated with hunter-gatherer types. From a genetic-evolutionary point of view, conservatism can be associated with farmer types and liberalism with hunter-gatherer types.

Hunter-gatherers were egalitarian whereas early farmers started to establish hierarchies. Cooperation and obedience were highly important to them. Farmers also relied much more on tradition due to the routine nature and cyclicity of their work.

This description from Wikipedia fits the two profiles quite well.

hunter-gatherer	farmer
High on personality trait “openness”, low on “conscientiousness”	High on personality trait “conscientiousness”, low on “openness”
Strongly (actively) egalitarian	status-seeking
Tendency towards out-group sociality, more accepting of diversity (e.g.  different sexuality, refugees, etc.)	Tendency towards in-group sociality (identifies more strongly with a core group, like family, religious group, country or sports team)
More liberal ideology	More conservative ideology
Less sexual dimorphism	More (display of) sexual dimorphism
Later onset of puberty	Earlier onset of puberty
Tendency to wanting fewer children	Tendency to wanting more children
Relaxed child-rearing attitude	Authoritative child rearing, “helicopter parenting”
Night owls	Early risers
“Lazier” when it comes to routine work Hyperfocus on relevant/interesting work	More hard-working and ambitious, good focus on planning and  routine
highly rebellious when feeling personal freedom and values are threatened	status-seeking, but also more conformist and highly loyal to their core group(s)
Less interest in small-talk and gossip	Higher interest in small-talk and gossip

As more people are conservatives than liberals, we can assume that more people have inherited farmer traits than hunter-gatherer traits, or put in other words, farmers have been more successful in reproducing than hunter-gatherers.

Of course, this is an oversimplified view. We can also expect mixed types, e.g. people high in both openness and conscientiousness tend to be conservatives more often than liberals. Moreover, there are many other factors, such as environment and gender.

Agreeableness, for example, seems to destroy this neat pattern. However, trait agreeableness is not connected to our ancestral mode of subsistence, but to the caregiving (female) personality profile rather than the provisioning (male) profile. It is therefore not surprising that high in agreeableness tends to yield an economically liberal (helping poor people) but socially conservative (maintaining social order and tradition) result. After all, the majority of people tend to have a farmer profile. On the flip side, a lot of hunter-gatherer males might actually be on the right side of the spectrum despite disliking hierarchy and tradition (being socially liberal), as they prefer meritocracy over a welfare state.

A further complication of the simple liberal/conservative picture is that there is a third personality group due to traits evolved to adoption to a substance economy: pastoralists.

Pastoralists can actually be found anywhere on the spectrum, as they tend to dislike fixed social structures, they might be highly prosocial (more restricted to their own group, though), but they are also more conservative regarding gender roles, hierarchy, refugees and race.

hunter-gatherers	farmers	pastoralists
Late-onset of puberty	average onset of puberty	Early-onset of puberty
More egalitarian	more status-oriented	more status-oriented
Out-group social	more In-group social	most in-group social
Often dislike routine, playful and imaginative	Love routine, industrious	Dislike routine, artful, likes variety
Tendency towards monogamy; increasing status doesn’t change that much	Tendency towards monogamy,  with increasing status towards polygamy	Tendency towards polygamy with increasing status
Tends towards the centre- left; in the past often communist	Tends towards centre-right	Tends to be on more extreme left or right-wing, currently more right-wing

It should be possible to predict the outcome of elections depending on the proportion of each group within a population. In the future, this might even be possible on the basis of polygenic scores.

The American Declaration of Independence is a cornerstone of modern human rights. It was signed mostly by hunter-gatherer minds. America has become much more “formalized” in recent decades. Building walls in order to keep people out is a farmer mentality.