by Robin Hanson
All these incentives—romantic, professional, and social—undoubtedly put pressure on us to adopt the political beliefs of our local communities. But insofar as we cave to these pressures, it certainly doesn’t happen overnight. We’ve all been in situations where we’ve had to admit to an unpopular political opinion, and we don’t suddenly change our minds for fear of a few disapproving scowls.37 But when the same forces play out slowly, over years or even decades, we shouldn’t be surprised to find our beliefs slowly falling into line. And in the extreme case—when we’re socialized from birth into a politically homogenous community—we might find it all but impossible to notice these social influences on our beliefs. Our political views will simply seem right, natural, and true.
THE LOGIC OF LOYALTY SIGNALING
Let’s now take a closer look at some of the predictions made by the loyalty-signaling (apparatchik) model, to see how they’re borne out in our political beliefs and behaviors.
Self-Interest versus Group Interest
First, and perhaps most important, the desire to signal loyalty helps explain why we don’t always vote our self-interest (i.e., for the candidates and policies that would bring us, as individuals, the greatest benefit). Rather, we tend to vote for our groups’ interests.38 Naturally, on many issues, our group and self-interests align. But when they don’t, we often choose to side with our groups. In this way, politics (like religion) is a team sport.
When a particular issue is polarized geographically, for example, people who live in the South will tend to vote for whichever position is (commonly perceived to be) in the South’s interest. When an issue is racially polarized, blacks will tend to vote for whatever seems to help blacks overall (even if some individual black voters might be hurt by it). And of course, when an issue is polarized across the major political parties, we tend to vote the party line. It’s not that we never break rank and vote against our group interests, but when we do, we risk appearing disloyal to our peers and our communities.
Expressive Voting and the Appeal of Badges
Political scientists often distinguish between “instrumental voting” and “expressive voting.” Instrumental voters use their votes in order to influence outcomes. They may be entirely altruistic (like a Do-Right) or entirely selfish, but regardless, they want their votes to make a difference. Expressive voters, however, don’t care about outcomes, but instead derive “expressive” value from the act of voting.39 Even if all of their chosen candidates end up losing in the election, expressive voters will still be happy to have cast their ballots.
An apparatchik, then, is an expressive voter, but not just any expressive voter. While political scientists are mostly agnostic about why people like to express themselves at the voting booth, some treat expressive voting as an act of consumption—something we do in order to feel good, without concern for external benefits.40 In this view, voting is seen as providing a psychological reward, like getting to “affirm one’s identity” or “feel a sense of belonging.” But as we’ve seen many times in this book, explanations that are strictly psychological often fall prey to self-deception, and at any rate are often trumped by social explanations. Incentives that begin and end within one’s own head ultimately lead nowhere, whereas external incentives have real consequences, both material and biological. Thus the apparatchik is an expressive voter who is rewarded socially for expressing him- or herself at the polls.
Now, voting is protected by the secret ballot (an important institution that prevents the most egregious forms of voter manipulation). But to get credit for our political beliefs, we need to advertise them; people can’t reward us for what they can’t see. For an apparatchik, then, the real benefits come not from voting per se, but rather from all the activities surrounding the election, like attending rallies, discussing the issues, posting to social media, and watching election coverage with friends and family.41 It’s during these social activities, and not just at the polls, that it’s important for us to express our political opinions. Actually casting the ballot is largely a formality—a little “cherry on top” of the political sundae.
The need to advertise our political beliefs also helps to explain the appeal of political “badges”—conspicuous symbols of group membership like the kind we discussed in Chapter 15.42 In the physical world, for example, we put up lawn signs and bumper stickers, while on social media, we use politically charged hashtags and change our profile pictures to show support for the cause-du-jour. We also embrace slogans like “Black lives matter” or “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” As arguments, these slogans radically oversimplify the issues—but as badges, they work great.
In part, our use of badges can be interpreted as Do-Right activism, an attempt to change other people’s minds. But as we saw in previous chapters, we often use badges to affiliate with nonpolitical groups like sports teams, music subcultures, and religious communities. This suggests there’s value in advertising our tribal loyalties, apart from trying to “make a difference” in the political realm.
Loyalty Demands Sacrifice
Anyone can act sensibly in their narrow self-interest. In order to demonstrate loyalty, we have to do things that other, less loyal people wouldn’t do—like cheering 11 minutes for Comrade Stalin.43
This logic helps shed light on our voting behavior. Apparatchiks don’t mind that voting is less personally rewarding than buying a lottery ticket. In fact, the sacrifice is, in some ways, what actually motivates them to vote. If voting were a straightforward act of self-interest, it would lose much if not all of its value as a loyalty signal.
Beyond showing loyalty to specific political coalitions (e.g., by voting Republican), voting also functions as a display of loyalty to the nation as a whole. This is the popular belief that voting is a civic duty, something we’re just supposed to do, personal costs and benefits be damned. Thus we earn patriotism points by hauling ourselves down to the polls (especially in the middle of a busy day) and kneeling at the altar of democracy—as long as we make sure to advertise our sacrifice to others, of course. This helps explain why many U.S. polling stations hand out stickers that say, “I Voted,” replete with an American flag (see Box 16).
Another sacrifice we make in the name of politics is limiting our social, professional, and romantic opportunities. The more ideological alignment we require from coworkers, friends, and spouses, the smaller our pool of available options. In this way, a Democrat who refuses to work at a company with conservative values sends a message to her liberal peers: “I care so much about ‘our side’ in politics that I’m even willing to forego professional opportunities.”44 Naturally, she may not be conscious of such messages, but the counterfactual embarrassment she might feel if she took the “conservative” job suggests that she has an audience somewhere in mind.
Box 16: Kevin’s Misadventures in Do-Right Voting
For the 2000 U.S. presidential election, when I was a fresh-faced college student, I tried my hand at a “rational” voting process. I was committed to voting for whichever candidate best matched my own views, so I quantified my positions on a variety of issues, then asked my better-informed friend to do the same for each of the major candidates. According to the spreadsheet we put together, the best match was Al Gore, the Democratic nominee—so that’s who I voted for.
Now, many readers could probably design a better system. But all in all, it was pretty sensible. And yet, instead of refining the process for subsequent elections, I abandoned it after just a single use. Why?
Well, psychologically speaking, the method was distinctly unsatisfying. It produced a result, but there was no joy in arriving at it. Moving past the psychological, however, there were very few social rewards to this process. It didn’t provide opportunities for me to discuss or debate the issues with my friends, nor to advertise my loyalty to one political team over another. Yes, the Democratic candidate was popular among my left-leaning peers—but I wasn’t voting for the Democrats per se. The very fact that I
was open to voting for Bush betrayed my lack of political loyalty. As if to drive home the point, when Bush eventually won the election, I wasn’t particularly disappointed. Sure, my preferred candidate had lost, but without an associated team to root for, it was hard to get too worked up over it. If politics is a team sport, “rational” voting is like playing Tetris alone in the corner.
Loyalty Demands (Strategic) Irrationality
As we saw in Chapter 5, contexts that reward loyalty are a breeding ground for self-deception and strategic irrationality. For our beliefs to function as loyalty signals, we can’t simply “follow the facts” and “listen to reason.” Instead, we have to believe things that are beyond reason, things that other, less-loyal people wouldn’t believe.45
This helps explain why voters feel little pressure to be informed. As long as we adopt the “right” beliefs—those of our main coalitions—we get full credit for loyalty. We don’t need to be well informed because the truth isn’t particularly relevant to our expressive agendas. The main actions we take based on our political beliefs are preaching and voting, neither of which has practical consequences for our lives (only social consequences). And on the rare occasions when our political beliefs do suggest concrete actions, we’re happy to ignore their suggestions and act as we would even if we believed the opposite. For example, we might think, “Everyone deserves access to the same opportunities” and yet fiercely compete to get our kids into the best schools. This kind of mild hypocrisy might bother us on occasion, but it probably won’t keep us up at night.
We have to strike a balance, though, between critical thinking and mindless obedience. If we adopt beliefs that are too far-fetched, we risk looking foolish, thereby offsetting the benefit we get for showing loyalty. Thus the best apparatchiks are highly intelligent and even skeptical, as long as their skepticism stops short of questioning the sacred tenets of their political groups.
The fact that we use political beliefs to express loyalty, rather than to take action, also explains why we’re emotionally attached to our beliefs, and why political discussions often generate more heat than light. When our beliefs are anchored not to reasons and evidence, but to social factors we don’t share with our conversation partners (like loyalty to different political groups46), disagreement is all but inevitable, and our arguments fall on deaf ears. We may try to point out one another’s hypocrisy, but that’s not exactly a recipe for winning hearts and minds.
Good arguments and evidence may eventually prevail, of course, but it rarely happens during heated conversations with our political enemies. Reasoning is a social process,47 and we typically have to convince disinterested third parties before there’s any chance our opponents will accept defeat. Thus (and with apologies to Martin Luther King Jr.) the arc of politics may bend toward truth, but it’s a long and tortuous arc.
Disdain for Compromise
A common symptom of loyalty signaling is an unwillingness to compromise. Now, if you’re a Do-Right pragmatist concerned only with outcomes, compromise can be very attractive, since it’s often the best way to make progress. But when you’re doing politics as a performance, like an apparatchik, you don’t care about outcomes as much as you care about the appearance of loyalty. And what better way to signal your loyalty than to say, “I’m not budging. It’s my (group’s) way or the highway.”
This kind of attitude admits to no middle ground: “You’re either with us or against us.” In such polarized climates, anyone who advocates for compromise risks being accused of insufficient loyalty. More generally, any attempt to deviate from the preexisting consensus will be considered suspect. We see this kind of attitude during elections: voters typically punish politicians who change their positions to match the changing opinions of their constituents,48 even though it’s in the spirit of democracy for a representative to “reflect the will of the people.” Plausibly, this is because some voters feel betrayed, and their anger more than offsets the appeal of the politician’s new, more popular opinion.
One-Dimensional Politics
Given the vast range of issues and the positions we can take on those issues, it might seem strange that people who support strong border controls also tend to favor lower taxes, school choice, and traditional marriage—and that people who oppose any of these also tend to oppose the others. We find this clustering of positions not just among citizens, but also in our politicians. For example, 80 percent of the votes of U.S. congressional representatives are explained by a single left–right ideological dimension, and a similar focus is found in other nations.49 Why do we see such a high degree of correlation among political beliefs?
While intellectuals have at times tried to explain the one key moral dimension that underlies most political disputes, in fact, different societies at different times have had quite different main political dimensions.50 Instead of being caused by a key moral dispute, this phenomenon of low-dimensional politics seems to be a general feature of competing political coalitions. That is, political groups tend to join alliances until there are only a few major coalitions, after which members show loyalty by focusing on issues that most clearly distinguish them from opposing coalitions. (And with only two main coalitions, only one main dimension separates them.) Voters and politicians who instead focus on other, less-distinguishing issues are penalized, as those issues seem to distract from the main fight.
These largest coalitions can break down and re-form during national political “realignments,” exposing some of the underlying tensions.51 For example, prior to the 1850s, politics in America was driven largely by economic issues like tariffs, the national bank, and public lands. Then, in the 1850s and 1860s, it became polarized instead between pro- and antislavery (leading ultimately to the Civil War).52 What this and other realignments make clear is that the main political parties have not always stood firm behind fixed principles, but instead are a complex patchwork of (sometimes conflicting) agendas—strange bedfellows brought together by common interests and held together, in part, by the bonds of loyalty.
Extreme Activists
So far we’ve mostly focused on citizens who devote only a small fraction of their energies to politics. But what about our most politically engaged citizens, those who sacrifice the most for political causes? Are they better modeled as Do-Rights or apparatchiks?
Consider the case of soldiers. In some sense, these are our most extreme activists, in that they risk their lives to favor our nation over other nations. And yes, they’re motivated by patriotism, but at the same time, it’s well known that soldiers fight more out of loyalty to their immediate comrades than to distant organizations or nations.53
Likewise, terrorists—including the most extreme version, suicide terrorists—seem more motivated by the desire to bond with and impress their compatriots. Terrorist groups frequently reject compromise, for example, even when it could help their overall cause, and they don’t disband when they achieve their stated goals.54
Within nations, our most devoted activists are plausibly those who see themselves as political “soldiers” fighting for a cause, but whom opponents see as political “terrorists,” since their actions risk hurting both themselves and others. Either way, we should be skeptical that their activism ultimately counts as self-sacrifice, since they stand to gain a lot of credit from their immediate peers. To give just one example, those who devote themselves to a politician’s campaign often expect to be given a role in the new administration, if their candidate wins the election.
CONCLUSION
Why should humble citizens (read: selfish primates) care what happens in distant halls of power—especially regarding actions in the political arena, like voting, which are mostly futile? Aren’t we better off minding our own business and tending to local issues, like those at home and in the workplace?
The answer we’ve given in this chapter is that we use far-off national politics as a medium in which to jockey for local advantages. As apparatchiks, we’re motivated less by civic virtue than
by the desire to appear loyal to our political coalitions. And if politics is a performance, then our audience is mostly our peers—friends and family, coworkers and bosses, churchmates and potential romantic partners, and anyone who might follow us on social media.
Understandably, this picture is incomplete. We certainly have other political motives, both psychological and social. Some of us have strong inner Do-Rights who do, occasionally, take the helm, even if it means losing friends. Others among us may be more interested in appearing smart than loyal. In some rare cases, we may even be rewarded for political nonconformity.55 But by and large, when we stand up and cheer for our political beliefs, we’re acting like Soviet apparatchiks.
17
Conclusion
“Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.”
“We cannot look squarely at either death or the sun.”
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, 1678
Intelligent observers have long noted that while we profess many noble reasons for our behavior, other less-noble motives usually lurk in the background—and we find it hard to look squarely at them. In this book, we have steeled ourselves to confront some of these hidden motives that drive our behavior, both in our personal lives and some of our largest social institutions. Even so, we have only scratched the surface. Some of our explanations will surely be wrong, not to mention incomplete. (It’s hard to look directly at the elephant!) And of course there remain plenty of other behaviors and institutions in need of similar treatment.
