In this series I’ve been inching through Strange Bedfellows: The Alliance Theory of Political Belief Systems, a recent paper by David Pinsof, David Sears and Martie Haselton, in the hope of strengthening my understanding of the authors’ arguments and opening paths to explore further. Per Pinsof et al, here’s a brief summary* of their theory: 

What is the moral thread that ties all political beliefs together? For the most part, there is none. Moral standards primarily serve a strategic function: to mobilize support for a specific political ally or mobilize opposition to a specific political rival. The more heterogeneous one’s allies and rivals, the more heterogeneous one’s political beliefs will be. Political belief systems are not so much “philosophies” as collections of ad hoc justifications, rationalizations, moralizations, embellishments, and rhetorical tactics designed to advance the interests of complex political alliances in competition with their rivals. 

According to Alliance Theory, allies are chosen mostly on the basis of similarity, shared allies/rivals, and mutual benefit.  After choosing one another, allies must then support each other, especially in conflicts, e.g., “by defending their allies’ reputations, attacking their rivals’ reputations, and mobilizing support from third parties”. The authors propose an array of “propagandistic biases” that serve these functions.

Perpetrator biases

Perpetrators of wrongdoing commonly use propaganda to defend their interests. They downplay their personal responsibility for the transgression, emphasize the role of mitigating circumstances, embellish their good intentions, and minimize the severity and duration of the harm inflicted on their victims. Importantly, people also apply perpetrator biases to their allies, rationalizing their allies’ transgressions in precisely the same way—a finding which has been replicated across cultures. 

Victim biases

Victims exhibit the opposite set of biases as perpetrators. They emphasize the perpetrator’s personal responsibility for the transgression, deny the role of mitigating circumstances, attribute the perpetrator’s motives to irrational malevolence, and embellish the severity and duration of the harm inflicted on them. Importantly, people also apply victim biases to their allies, embellishing their allies’ grievances in precisely the same way. Across cultures, victim biases on both sides of a conflict can lead to “competitive victimhood,” wherein groups strive to “establish that their in-group was subjected to more injustice at the hands of the out-group than the other way around” (Noor et al., 2012; p. 7;)

Attribution biases

Well-off people also use propaganda to defend their interests. They assume their social and material advantages derive from internal dispositions (talent, hard work) rather than external causes (luck, circumstances). Worse-off people exhibit the opposite bias: they assume their disadvantages derive from external causes (misfortune, mistreatment) rather than internal dispositions (incompetence, low effort). This general pattern of results, observed within the same individuals, is known as the “self-serving attributional bias” (Bradley, 1978). People also apply this attributional bias to their allies, attributing their allies’ advantages to internal causes and their disadvantages to external causes.

I’m going to assume that just about all political allies have been portrayed as perpetrators of wrongdoing and/or victims of injustice, no matter their ideological leanings. This would include LGBTQ+ groups, labor unions, environmentalists, Blacks, Whites, poor people, young people, Hispanics, student activists, old people, business people, farmers, rural folk, pro-life groups, pro-choice groups, moderates, evangelicals, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Asian Americans, men, women, and plenty of others.

The flip-side of self-serving attributional bias is also common among political allies, in which they attribute their rivals’ advantage to external causes (e.g., undeserved “privilege”) and their disadvantages to internal causes (e.g., they reaped what they sowed).

If you strip out these biases, what’s left of ideology? Maybe a system of abstract moral principles, combined with a philosophy of governance, that favors no group in particular? Hmm - that sounds pretty toothless. More thinking required.

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* All indented passages are excerpts from Strange Bedfellows.

References

Noor, M., Shnabel, N., Halabi, S., & Nadler, A. (2012). When suffering begets suffering: The psychology of competitive victimhood between adversarial groups in violent conflicts. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16(4), 351-374Asian Americans, men, and women.

Pinsof, D., Sears, D. O., & Haselton, M. G. (2023). Strange Bedfellows: The Alliance Theory of Political Belief Systems. Psychological Inquiry, 34(3), 139–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2023.2274433