Sense of Justice, Political Orientation and Biology

To “illegal immigrants”: “If you commit a crime while you’re here, we should hang you and send your body back to where you came from, and your family should pay for it.”

—Joyce Kaufman, Florida radio show host

As this recently publicized statement from Tea Party member and popular Florida radio host Joyce Kaufman illustrates, aggressive discourse surrounding American intergroup politics remains all too common (Wing, 2010). The recent passage of an immigration law in Arizona allowing the police to stop and detain anyone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant shows that aggressive anti-immigration sentiments are not confined to rhetoric. We argue that such aggressive intergroup attitudes and behaviors are an outgrowth of a distinct psychological orientation, which constitutes one component of social dominance orientation  (source)

Kaufman’s tough stance towards illegal immigrants is one that is common among Trump voters in the US and has a strong component of social dominance orientation (SDO). What most liberals will find shocking is that the accompanying sense of justice seems extremely unjust. SDO and retaliatory justice go hand in hand. It is what we find in Mafia feuds, honour killings and lynch mobbing, where justice is not relegated to the appropriate authorities but punitive measures are taken by the community concerned themselves.

This is a pattern that goes back to subsistence herding and is likely to have a genetic (evolutionary) component. Among pastoralists, it is common to raid cattle from other tribes, who then will retaliate. The retaliation had to be tough in order to be a successful deterrent. Only if the group could show it was more powerful and superior to the other groups there was little risk of becoming victims of predation. My hypothesis is that pastoralist subsistence strategy including raiding is the evolutionary origin and purpose of SDO.

We can see the accompanying patterns, including a high degree of violence again and again in history, be in in the slave-holding  American South, Wild West or fundamentalist religious groups:

On the other side of the world, the echoes of the culture of honor that were part of Scotland’s segmentary lineages still affect life and death: in counties of the U.S. South, the higher the percentage of Scottish or Scotch-Irish residents in the first U.S. census in 1790, the higher the murder rate is today. The cultural descendants of these migrants still tend to respond aggressively when their honor, family, or property is threatened. Globally, researchers have argued that the character of “Islamic terrorism” may be best explained by the honor psychology fermented in segmentary lineages. Boko Haram, Al Shabab, and Al Qaeda, for example, all recruit heavily from populations with segmentary lineages, and the character of their kin-based institutions may have shaped the particular religious creeds adopted by these groups. (The WEIRDest People in the World, 2020 Joseph Henrich)

Political scientists distinguish between four extreme political orientations.

These extreme right-wing positions stem from male food-producing herder (SDO) and farmer (authoritarianism) profiles. Anarchic communism is basically the dominant orientation among most hunter-gatherer populations.

Farming, especially irrigation farming, selected more hierarchical and rule-obeying (conformism) and a desire for competent authoritarian leaders.

Based on data from Cultural Dynamic I have created a map that visualises the above ideas:

Evolutionary farmer types are the ones most likely to agree with the statement that people should do what they are told and follow the rules. I will call this sense of justice the “Law and Order” type.

As far as pastoralist types go, I will call their sense of justice “Retaliatory Justice”. The data from Cultural Dynamic do not really make this type of justice visible:

Even though retaliation is high in the male herder area, it is also high in the farmer area. But then, the question is not entirely unequivocal. Herder type may have a high tolerance towards in-group members (usually close kin) and a lower tolerance towards out-group members.

The third and last type of sense of justice comes from hunter-gatherers.

Only hunter-gatherer types agree highly with the statement that it’s important that everyone - even people that don’t belong to their group - is treated equally. This is true egalitarianism or universal justice and the opposite of SOD. The male herder profile shows - accordingly - the least agreement.

There were likely different selective mechanisms at play. Universal justice requires a high degree of reciprocal altruism, whereas kin and group selection probably played an important role in shaping the farmer and herder sense of justice. 

subsistence pattern	hunter	gatherer	pastoralist	farmer
egalitarianism	egalitarian	egalitarian	in-group egalitarian	hierarchical
desire for status	low	low	high	medium
extreme political orientation	anarchism	communism	social dominance hierarchy	authoritarianism
selective mechanism	reciprocal altruism	reciprocal altruism	kin selection	group selection
sense of justice	Universal Justice	Universal Justice	Retaliatory Justice	Law and Order Justice

In our globalised world international diplomacy is seriously threatened by a SOD:

Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) has engaged the interest of social and personality psychologists as it has deep implications for the psychology of intergroup conflict, particularly regarding factors such as prejudice and discrimination, as well as international conflict resolution. Nevertheless, few studies have directly assessed how SDO relates to intergroup reconciliation. This study (effective N = 819) measured participants’ SDO along with their attitudes toward various governmental apologies to test the hypothesis that SDO is associated with unwillingness to issue intergroup apologies. The results showed that SDO was negatively correlated with supportive attitudes toward government-issued international apologies. This negative correlation remained intact after controlling for the effects of political conservatism and militarism. (source)

People with SDO do sincerely believe they are acting justly. However, everyone has to become aware that such evolved instincts are often extremely harmful in our modern world. Ironically, in the States, it is people with SDO who are most anti-Muslim, but they should take a close look at what’s going on in Afghanistan and then reflect where SDO is taking us and if we really desire such outcomes.

For more information about the evolution of the four temperaments  check out my book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZR3KPVH