The 2016 US presidential election stunned the world. After a meteoric rise through the Republican primaries, a reality TV show host, professional wrestling dabbler, and political novice with zero experience in public office upset former Democratic senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton to win the most politically muscular office in the world. Donald J. Trump's xenophobic and warmongering rhetoric on the road to the White House, and his subsequent election, strongly divided American society, set off a wave of protests in the United States and abroad, and drew searing international criticism.
Regardless of how Trump is viewed by history, his election serves as an illuminating case study of our political psychology. Clearly, a presidential election involves a large, convoluted flow of influences, like so many tributaries pouring into a twisted, torrential, and sometimes dirty river. A large swath of the Democratic electorate lost trust in Hillary Clinton during the primaries when leaked emails from top officials at the Democratic National Committee suggested that it may have colluded against Clinton's opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders.1 Similarly, credible evidence emerged that Russian hackers tried to influence the election in favor of Trump. There was the role of third-party candidates, such as Jill Stein, who shunted votes away from major party candidates, as well as the rural-leaning influence of the Electoral College, which went against the popular vote in 2016. But the most potent factor in Trump's victory was something far more primal. Human political psychology operates on a set of adaptations designed for ancestral environments in which powerful men protected the clan against outsiders, predators, and starvation. This ancient history continues to have a tremendous, largely subconscious influence over our present-day political stances. To be sure, it played a central role in 2016.
Before we explore how this history influenced Trump's win, let us consider the criticisms that have been raised of his qualifications for leader of the free world. Intellectuals, world leaders, and civilian spectators have offered an unusually candid litany of reproaches, far more extensive than the standard political commentary. To begin, many have criticized his level of sophistication. Gavin Newlands, a British member of Parliament (MP) with the Scottish National Party, said plainly, “Let's be clear, Donald Trump is an idiot. I have tried to find different, perhaps more parliamentary adjectives to describe him but none was clear enough. He is an idiot.” Similarly, former British prime minister David Cameron labeled Trump's rhetoric as “divisive, stupid, and wrong.” Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa said, “His discourse is so dumb, so basic,” while Gavin Robinson, British MP from Northern Ireland, said, “The person you are dealing with may be a successful businessman, but he's also a buffoon.” And we have Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo's blunt and exasperated exhortation: “Mr. Trump is so stupid, my God!”2
Others have opined on Trump's psychological stability. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox said, “This nation [the United States] is going to fail if it goes into the hands of a crazy guy.” Australian opposition leader Bill Shorten followed, “I think Donald Trump's views are just barking mad on some issues.”3 Many suggested Trump suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, citing the fact that he often talks about himself in the third person, that he actually bragged about his penis size during the presidential debates, and that he has a tendency to frame himself as the best at things: “There is nobody who has done so much for equality as I have,” “There is nobody more conservative than me,” “Nobody has ever had crowds like Trump has had,” “Nobody is better to people with disabilities than me,” “Nobody builds walls better than me,” “Nobody loves the Bible more than I do,” “Nobody would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump,” or “There's nobody that understands the horror of nuclear [sic] better than me.”4
Trump's behavior inspired Democratic representative Ted Liu from California to introduce legislation that would require a psychiatrist at the White House. This sentiment is not restricted to the Left. Charles Krauthammer, a conservative columnist who was a frequent panelist on Fox News, cited Trump's “pathological narcissism” as one reason for his disqualification as president.5 Notably, Krauthammer was not just a conservative mouthpiece but also a psychiatrist who contributed to the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the manual used to diagnose psychiatric conditions.
Compounding concerns over Trump's mental fitness were his foreign policy approaches, which to many came across as not only warlike but also wincingly simplistic. While campaigning, he outlined his solution to ISIS: “I would bomb the shit out of them. I would just bomb those suckers, and, that's right, I'd blow up the pipes, I'd blow up the refineries, I'd blow up every single inch, there would be nothing left…. It will be beautiful, and I'll take the oil.”6 He also promised that he would happily bring back torture (“I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”) and that he would kill the families of suspected terrorists, defying the Geneva conventions.7
Trump's style of propaganda stoked fears across the globe, particularly among those who have studied the history of fascism, or come from a land that suffered under it. Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto warned, “That's the way Mussolini arrived and the way Hitler arrived.” Former minister of Sweden Carl Bilt cautioned, “If Donald Trump was to end up as president of the United States, I think we better head for the bunkers.” Elmar Brok, German member of the European Parliament and chair of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee, said, “He is not predictable and this unpredictability is a danger.”8 During Trump's inauguration, Pope Francis chimed in to observe, “Hitler didn't steal the power, his people voted for him, and then he destroyed his people.”9
Moreover, Trump's behavior seems directly at odds with the ethical positions of many of the Christian conservatives who voted for him. Trump has changed stances on abortion and fumbled with Bible passages, as when during his convocation address to Liberty University he called Second Corinthians “Two Corinthians.”10 Further, he has been married three times and was caught on audio, boasting that he tried to have sex with a married woman (“I tried to fuck her, and she was married”) and that because of his fame he could do anything to the women he meets, including “grab them by the pussy.”11 He has thus violated cherished values held by the conservative Right in America, particularly among Evangelicals, such as sexual restraint, devotion to marriage, and religion.
The point of all this is that Trump seems a monumentally unlikely conservative presidential candidate. Yet he was elected by slightly under half of the US voting population (he narrowly lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College). Despite everything covered above, which is the condensed version, Donald Trump exuded a mesmerizing, magnetic pull that drew in a stunningly large swath of the American electorate, including Evangelical Christians who should by all reason have been appalled by his personal life and shaky grasp of their religion. Trump's election has dumbfounded rational minds on both sides of the political spectrum. His appeal, however, does not reside on the plane of the rational; it resides on the primordial plains of Africa, where human leadership preferences were formed by the brutalities of daily living.
OF LARGE APES AND BIG MEN
In The Republic, Plato asks, “Imagine…a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better.”12 In keeping with the ancient Greeks’ savvy grasp of political psychology, Plato argues that the crew will be biased by the large, physical stature of the man with little to recommend him even as a sailor, and that this bias will hamper their ability to rationally select a competent captain. Size, as the ancient Greeks appear to have understood, can be an emotionally appealing criterion for leadership ability, even when seemingly irrelevant.
The truth is that size matters in a violent world where survival is won by raw physicality. Across social animals, powerful, larger, aggressive males play a critical role in the group's survival—dispatching predators, providing protection against outsiders, securing and defending territory, and winning contested resources. Perhaps not surprising then, primatological research finds that larger size is related to higher social rank in nonhuman primates, including baboons, gorillas, and chimpanzees.13 The same is true for humans.
Because lethal intergroup violence was terrifyingly common among our ancestors, today we tend to prefer larger leaders, even though our presidents will never physically represent us in a fight. The empirical evidence on this preference is robust. For instance, subjects in the research lab show preference for taller leaders,14 reflecting real-world political choices: between 1789 and 2008 the taller of the US presidential candidates won the race the majority of the time, and all pairs of major-party US presidential candidates have been taller than the average US male citizen.15 Greater height also predicts higher status in labor markets, whether someone holds a blue- or white-collar job.16 On a more primal level, height among men is associated with greater physical strength,17 fighting ability,18 or even reproductive success.19 The latter makes sense when we consider that sexual dimorphism among animals originates as a result of mate competition; the bigger, stronger male usually wins fights over females and passes on his genes coding for size and strength.
But could our choice of political leaders be reduced to something as primitive as how we size them up in a fight? Male leaders across the political spectrum seem to think so, often going out of their way to demonstrate their fighting prowess. For example, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has arranged to be filmed working out in a boxing gym,20 as has Russian president Vladimir Putin. Putin has also been filmed lifting weights or riding shirtless on horseback—slightly more sublimated displays of his fighting toughness.
But in the 2016 race for US president, displays of fighting prowess became unusually raw and literal. During a Democratic debate, candidate Jim Webb boasted with an eerie smile about having killed an enemy soldier in Vietnam.21 Republican candidate Ben Carson bragged that in his youth he tried to stab someone, that he attacked a schoolmate with a combination lock, and that “I would go after people with rocks, bricks, baseball bats, and hammers” (claims none of his contemporaries seem to recall).22 When an audience member raised protest at a campaign rally in Nevada, Trump yelled, “I'd like to punch him in the face, I tell ya!” to roaring applause.23 The history or desire for violence was not hidden from view, but intentionally trumpeted and to a primate crowd who alighted.
But again, Trump's actual fighting prowess has little relevance for his competence as US president. In fact, playing out a thought experiment in which our world leaders actually fight, war correspondent and author Sebastian Junger has suggested that Trump's life of comfort and privilege would equate to him getting flattened in a real brawl against other heads of state, such as Putin.24 Putin studied judo and sambo from the age of twelve and trained among the brutal ranks of the KGB, whereas Trump dodged the draft because of heel spurs. However, in our current world, appearances are everything.
Accordingly, Trump also highlighted his relative size and strength by derogating his rivals—plainly when he continually called former Florida governor Jeb Bush “weak,” when he repeatedly referred to Florida senator Marco Rubio as “Little Marco,” and when he called Texas senator Ted Cruz a “pussy” at a rally.25 Further, when Trump announced his run for president on The O'Reilly Factor, he boasted, “There's nobody bigger or better at the military than I am.”26 Trump's choice of words could not have been more evolutionarily apropos. Nor could those of his running mate, Mike Pence.
Researchers have linked the sexually dimorphic male trait of broad shoulders to fighting ability, and in particular to the effective use of deadly handheld weapons, a specialty of male humans.27 Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the standard of dress among politicians, the business suit, enhances shoulder width, and female politicians often wear business suits with exaggerated shoulder pads. In evolutionary terms, women's shoulder pads give the illusion of a male adaptation designed for fighting to an audience evolutionarily programmed to find it meaningful. (Interestingly, the fashion of shoulder pads in women's professional attire hit their most exaggerated breadth during the 1980s when women began entering the world of politics and business in large numbers.)
Fittingly, while on campaign for Trump, Pence referred to Trump as “broad shouldered” on at least seventeen different occasions. On CNN, he said plainly, “Look, Donald Trump's got broad shoulders.” At other venues he emphasized the importance of Trump's shoulder width in interactions with other nations. On ABC's This Week, for example, he claimed, “He's going to be out there advancing America's interests first with that broad-shouldered leadership,” and on NBC News’ Meet the Press that Trump is “a strong leader with a clear vision, with broad shoulders who's going to advance America's interest.” On Fox News he directly tied Trump's shoulder width to our national safety: “Donald Trump is going to provide the kind of broad-shouldered American leadership on the world stage that I think will make the world a more stable place.”28
To many (Jane Goodall included),29 Trump's behavior on the campaign trail effused a certain male chimpanzee aroma as he vied to make more noise than his political rivals. But his tactics resonated. During the campaign, T-shirts, buttons, and other campaign paraphernalia surfaced, reading, “Trump: Finally a Candidate with Balls.” Interestingly, while testicles (or penis size) would also seem irrelevant to political elections, balls produce testosterone, the hormone that generates sexual and aggressive drives, and muscularity, which is used for mate competition. Testosterone also produces masculine facial features, such as wide jaws, square faces, and pronounced eyebrows.30 More masculine facial features are associated with dominance,31 and research finds that dominant faces have an impact on human rank status. In one study, subjects were shown photos of West Point cadets and instructed to rate their faces on perceived dominance. Cadets rated with higher facial dominance attained higher military rank later in their careers.32 Likewise, facial dominance has also predicted success in elections across the world.33
What is perhaps even more telling is the fact that this preference for big men appears to be context-dependent. Research finds that people prefer taller leaders with more masculine facial features in times of war, and more feminized faces in times of peace.34 Similarly, in lab studies, people choose more masculine faces during competition with an outside group, and feminine faces in contexts where in-group cooperation is needed.35 In general, women are seen as more competent at resolving conflicts than men and are preferred in times of in-group tension.36 Still, our impulse to turn to big, powerful males for protection is nearly ubiquitous, found not only in the ranks of government but also in the halls of religion.
ALPHA GODS AND THE MEN WHO REPRESENT THEM
The prehistoric role of the “strong man,” as protector and conqueror, is a continuous theme in the Judeo-Christian Bible and may even be how Trump won fully 80 percent of the white Evangelical vote.37 Evangelicals tend to be staunchly conservative, and we have now demonstrated that conservatives are wired to be threat-sensitive, to be wary of outsiders, and to seek comfort from dominant males with fighting abilities. Nearly all of biblical patriarchs were warrior-kings or fighters, as was the Judeo-Christian god, per the Bible: “The Lord is a man of war.”38
In my book Alpha God, I detail how the god of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) is based on the dominant, territorial, protective males of our evolutionary past.39 Like male primates, that male god protects against outsiders and acquires territory for his in-group (e.g., “I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory”40); provides resources necessary for survival (e.g., “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven”41 and “He hath given meat unto them that fear him”42); and even protects against predators (e.g., “But you, LORD, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen”43).
In many ways, men like Trump offer the same protections. By claiming Mexico is sending America its rapists, and promising that Mexicans would finance a wall to keep themselves out, Trump simultaneously addressed the tribe's primal need to protect women (as we have discussed, warring tribes often stole and raped each other's women), and defined territorial boundaries (in plainest terms by literally erecting a border wall) and competed-for resources (by making Mexico pay for said wall). Other world leaders have promised to address our evolutionary fears in more sublimated ways. Trump's tactic was simply to be incredibly concrete about it all.
For the religious, whose devotion is spent striving to draw closer to the protective embrace of their omnipotent male god, powerful men have always been ready to serve as proxies. History is filled with examples of dominant men possessing divine authority, considered walking gods on Earth, or having a special war alliance with God. For example, Trump's closest religious advisor, Evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress, claimed, “In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong-Un.”44 For believers, being aligned with the most powerful male in the universe is sure to relieve fear, particularly in bloody conflict with outsiders. US general William Boykin, a man central to the “war on terror,” once claimed of George W. Bush, “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”45 When Somali warlord Osman Otto was captured, Boykin pitted the Christian god's size against the god of Islam: “He [Otto] went on CNN and he laughed at us, and he said, ‘They'll never get me because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.’ Well, you know what? I knew that my God was bigger than his.”46
Never mind the fact that size should be irrelevant to an omnipotent being without physical form, as the god of Christianity is described. Size is not psychologically irrelevant to us humans. Larger size even has influence on the ranks of men in church hierarchy; research has found that height can predict whether one is a bishop or a priest.47
But recall again that size connotes strength, and strength has been used in violent (and by definition inegalitarian) male mate competition far before we humans developed anything that could be described as political ideology. Bearing this legacy in mind, it should be no surprise that our political efforts to create egalitarian societies so often strain against the evolved ambitions of men.
BIG MEN ON THE LEFT
In considering the connection between conservatism and masculinity, the presence of leftist strongmen across history may seem paradoxical. Let us briefly consider whether alpha leftist and alpha right-wing leaders are really the same animal. French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye was the first to describe the horseshoe theory, the concept that political orientation forms more of a horseshoe than a continuum, with the extreme Right and extreme Left nearly touching in the middle. On the extreme Right you have authoritarianism (where the dominant male has total power) and on the extreme Left totalitarianism (where the state has total power), both of which bear striking resemblance to one another. Avi Tuschman explains the theory:
The two ends of the horseshoe spectrum do not actually touch…. The extreme right's ideology takes ethnocentrism and hierarchy to an extreme. In practice the extreme right's policies are more likely to result in genocide. The ideology of the extreme left takes anti-ethnocentrism and egalitarianism to an extreme. In practice, these governments are more prone to ethnocidal assimilations and politicidal purges (such as Stalinist Russia, or Cambodia under Pol Pot).48
Ideologically this model has merit, and conceptually it brings the ruling fists of men like Stalin and Hitler even closer together. When we distill ideology down to its evolutionary base, the two “sides” become even less distinguishable. The behavior of prominent male leaders of the extreme Right and extreme Left suggests both are equally driven by evolutionary competition for power, wealth, and females, which, as we have been discussing, are all zero-sum (i.e., inegalitarian) enterprises.
For example, leftist totalitarians also strive to project bigger size and strength, which among primates is essential to male dominance. Kim Jong Il, for example, wore platform shoes and a bouffant hairstyle purposefully to make himself appear taller and more imposing.49 Joseph Stalin wore shoe lifts also, stood on wooden platforms during parades, and changed his given name Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili to Stalin, which translates in Russian to “man of steel”—not exactly a moniker conveying disinterest in power.50 China's Communist leader Mao Tse-Tung also understood the need to project power, as well as the populace's need for dominant leaders. Mao argued that the personality cult was necessary to “stimulate the masses.” It was difficult, said Mao, to “overcome the habits of 3,000 years of emperor-worshipping tradition.”51 While Mao may have underestimated the span of time humans have been engaged in leader worship, he and his cabinet were sure to emphasize power difference, promoting even Mao's ideas to take a greater status than those of other men. In one speech, his defense minister Lin Bao said, “Every sentence said or written [by Mao] is truth,” and that “one sentence is equal to ten thousand sentences by us.”52
Nor have leftist dictators been soft on outside tribes. Mao called for violence against the enemy, said to include “all those in league with imperialism—the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big Landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them,” and he too preached xenophobia: “After the enemies with guns have been wiped out, there will still be enemies without guns; they are bound to struggle desperately against us, and we must never regard these enemies lightly. If we do not now raise and understand the problem in this way, we shall commit the gravest mistakes.”53 Like other alphas, Mao exterminated his political enemies. Under his Communist, social, and economic campaign, the Great Leap Forward, up to forty-five million people were starved, beaten, or worked to death54 (by comparison, fifty-five million died in the entirety of World War II55). Stalin, the man of steel, was responsible for the deaths of some nine million.56
Among leftist dictators, xenophobic aggression also comes with sexual conquest, as we would expect from male primates. Despite being the leader of the largest left-wing political movement in the world, championing an ethos of equality (that included sexual equality), Mao was a notorious womanizer who was reported to have indulged in sex parties and who kept a constant flow of young women on rotation in his quarters.57 Needless to say the male proletariats of Mao's China weren't invited to share in his sexual spoils. Similarly, despite Fidel Castro's carefully crafted public image as a modest, fatigue-wearing comrade, his ex-bodyguard reported that the Cuban dictator kept some twenty lavish properties, a yacht, a private island, and a battalion of mistresses.58 When asked in an interview how many children he had, he boasted, “Almost a tribe.”59 Kim Jong Il and his successor, Kim Jong Un, have also used their power and wealth to keep “pleasure squads,” hundreds of teenage girls used to service them and elite government officials, while they gorged on Black Sea caviar and French cognac.60 This while the North Korean populace starved.
Moreover, when liberal dictators ascend the primate hierarchy, the public deifies them, sometimes with great encouragement by the leaders themselves. The Vietnamese Communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh achieved godlike status, and like the pious lining up for a glimpse of Christ's reliquaries, hundreds of devotees still queue daily to see Ho's embalmed corpse in Hanoi. Lenin's body is treated similarly in its Moscow shrine, and while alive his atheistic propaganda machine coopted deist concepts; in a play on words and concepts, one maxim transformed the idea that God (or Jesus) is always with us, with “Lenin is always with us.” But for an unabashed case of a contemporary walking god on Earth, we look to North Korea. Mandatory images of the Kim dynasty alpha gods are worshipped everywhere. Rare footage inside the insulated nation shows citizens prostrating themselves in front of Kim Jong Il's photo, wailing, and praising his greatness and omnipotence. North Koreans are literally instructed to worship the Kims as their gods.61 Needless to say, appointing oneself a god is not an egalitarian gesture.
In trying to understand the clear contradiction between egalitarian word and hierarchical deed among these leaders, it's worth noting that many of them didn't start out as dictators; they often began living closer to their egalitarian ideals, only to turn as they gained power. As philosopher Peter Singer poignantly asks, “What egalitarian revolution has not been betrayed by its leaders? And why do we dream the next revolution will be any different?”62 As we have previously discussed, male primates lower on the hierarchy have a fitness incentive to adopt political philosophies that seek to right power imbalances. The problem, however, is that those same primates also have a fitness incentive to revert to a hierarchical order once they assume power, increasing their influence, expanding their territory, and maximizing their access to women. In this sense, the leaders of leftist movements have an incentive to shift “right,” moving from their emphasis on equality, toward hierarchical control, and ultimately taking on the role of dictator. But the crucial point is that male mate competition is a unifying theme between both the extreme Left and right-wing leaders of the world. This commonality helps to explain the ideological inconsistencies we notice when so-called egalitarian leaders behave as despots.
In fact, research on the general populace, examining psychological traits such as aggression, the desire to force conformity, and obeisance to leaders, has largely failed to find “true” left-wing authoritarians. Canadian psychologist Robert Altemeyer, for example, developed a scale to measure left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) with statements such as, “Socialist revolutions require great leadership. When a strong, determined rebel leads the attack on the Establishment, that person deserves our complete faith and support,” and “A leftist revolutionary movement is quite justified in attacking the Establishment and demanding obedience and conformity from its members.” Analyses failed to find strong left-wing authoritarians but instead found that those who scored high on LWA also scored high on right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and displayed the highest hostility and dogmatism.63 American psychologist Sam McFarland examined political psychology in the Soviet Union and found that high RWA predicted hostility toward and mistrust of America, bias against women, prejudice against outside groups such as capitalists, and that those high on RWA were typically members of the Communist Party.64 Altemeyer explains these results:
The most cock-sure belligerents in the populations on each side of the Cold War, the ones who hated and blamed each other the most, were in fact the same people, psychologically. If they had grown up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, they probably would have believed the leaders they presently despised, and despised the leaders they now trusted.65
In other words, the male-oriented, tribalistic psychology that we find on the right wing runs deeper than political parties, or even political systems. In this sense, the extreme politically Left citizen can be better understood as the gendered psychological Right in the manner we have been exploring, just like the brash cults of personality that they tend to follow.
RIGHT-WING AUTHORITARIANISM DENUDED
In cults of personality, the personality is often a dominant male primate. History is riddled with powerful men—Ismael the Bloodthirsty, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un, and Stalin, to name a few—who have used fear to draw in followers and command mass murder on their behalf, ultimately to serve their own evolutionary interests. While some men have murdered more, none stand out in the memory of Westerners quite like Adolf Hitler, such that today when men of power start making demagogic postures, Hitler's name and image are evoked as a warning. The rise of Hitler offers a poignant historical case study in the dangers of demagoguery.
In 1933, German president Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor. When Hindenburg died the next year, Hitler quickly consolidated power to become absolute dictator of Germany. Hitler's rise coincided with a swell of fear and uncertainty brought about by the aftermath of World War I, when Germany was left in complete economic ruin. Hitler relieved Germany's woes in part by building a massive military-industrial complex and greatly expanding public works, which included the construction of the autobahn. Led by its strongman, the Nazi Party gained wide popular support for soothing the existential fears brought upon by Germany's Great Depression.66
In the alpha role, Hitler quickly began exerting totalitarian control over all aspects of German life. His word became law and his power godlike. Joseph Goebbels, the Reich's minister of propaganda, declared in a 1936 broadcast that “Germany has been transformed into a great house of the Lord where the Fuhrer as our mediator stands before the throne of God.”67 Hitler's subordinates pledged unconditional loyalty to him, personally, both above any political ideal and even above the state of Germany. Any challenge to his supremacy was summarily crushed—political dissenters were jailed, publications uncomplimentary to the Nazi regime were suppressed, and civil liberties were tightly constricted in order to cripple any potential for opposition.68 From this seat of absolute power, Hitler behaved as we might expect of a dominant primate male, with the added advantage of enormous manpower, modern weaponry, and purported alliance with God: he began seizing territory. Starting with Austria, and then Czechoslovakia, he continued his expansionist pursuits across Europe. With the help of Joseph Stalin, Hitler attacked Poland, and so began the start of World War II in Europe.
Germany's economic depression was a result of reparations that the Allied forces required under the Treaty of Versailles in the wake of World War I—in a way, the reparations could be considered pressure from an outside tribe that resulted in resource shortages. Following the classic pattern, Hitler responded by demonizing outsiders, and, mesmerized by this evolutionary terror, his loyalists rallied behind him with an emotional fervor. The Nazi Party soon became deeply rooted in racism—anti-Semitism in particular, though all so-called “outside races” were deemed inferior. To secure the ascendancy (social dominance) of the Aryan race above all others, Hitler's men exterminated millions. Some were killed with bullets, others were burnt in ovens, others were starved to death, and others died as subjects of macabre scientific experiments. In total, WWII brought the death of some fifty-five million human beings (to date the deadliest conflict in human history), and much of Europe was bombed into ruin. The volume of human suffering set in motion by one man's personal ambition stupefied the world. Perhaps equally stunning was the fact that Hitler's subordinates followed him with such unquestioning obeisance.
Since WWII, an army of social scientists has set itself the task of understanding the psychology that gave the world Hitler. Refining the work of Berkeley researchers—including Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford—psychologist Robert Altemeyer devised a concept called right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). By pairing down the Berkeley scientists’ original notions of authoritarian personality, three discrete factors emerged, explains Altemeyer:
RWA is characterized by (a) “a high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate”; (b) “a general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, which is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities”; and (c) “a high degree of adherence to the social conventions which are perceived to be endorsed by society.”69
RWA shares some similarities with social dominance orientation (SDO), which we talked about in chapter 4. Like SDO, RWA is associated with xenophobia,70 being closed to experience,71 and, strongly, with political conservatism.72 There are theoretically meaningful differences, however. In discussing those differences, Altemeyer argued that RWA best captures passive deference to authoritarian leaders, the tendency to “trust unworthy people who tell them what they want to hear,” whereas SDO best captures the tendency to target out-group members for domination.73
As it turns out, RWA and SDO are only modestly correlated.74 Citing Altemeyer,75 political scientists John Jost and his colleagues explain that while SDO and RWA reflect different concerns,
Together, they account for both halves of the “dominance-submissive authoritarian embrace” and they predict more than half of the statistical variance in prejudice and ethnocentrism. One can therefore infer that the most inexorable right-wingers are those who are motivated simultaneously by fear and aggression.76
From an evolutionary standpoint, these two constructs reflect the survival strategies underlying the conservative political stance—on the one hand seeking to identify, villainize, and target outside competitors (SDO), and on the other hand deferentially following authorities who protect against the external threat (RWA), particularly large, aggressive male leaders. Ultimately these strategies are rooted in reproductive strategy. Tellingly, RWA and SDO do not develop until adolescence when humans reach reproductive capacity.77
WAR AS THE SOURCE OF RWA
What has never been fully explored is how RWA, like SDO and political conservatism more generally, reflects a long and violent history of mate competition among men. Some illustration of its value can be seen in how neatly the three constructs of RWA—aggressiveness, submission to authority, and adherence to social convention—map onto military social organization. First, deference to authority forms the very basis of military hierarchy. In the combat theater, unquestioning obeisance down the chain of command is essential. Military actions require quick, coordinated, and decisive action, which is facilitated by adhering to a strict hierarchy with centralized decision-making capacity. Imagine how slowly a military force would act (and how quickly it would be defeated) if decision-making was democratic and all men were not particularly obliged to obey commands. Second, aggression against outsiders “sanctioned by established authorities” (as Altemeyer describes RWA) is the very purpose of militaries. Third, high conformity to military convention is not only evident in military jargon, dress, haircuts, and formations but also in conformity to rules and procedures, which is necessary both for maintaining order among testosterone-filled men and for coordinating their actions. Perhaps understandably, then, military cadets score higher on authoritarianism than do those in the civilian world.78
Further “submitting to authority” and “adherence to the social conventions” are often one and the same, for it is often the male authorities who dictate social convention. In other words, conforming to the social order can also mean accepting the dominance hierarchy, which includes the authority and rules of the alpha male at its apex. This dynamic is ubiquitous and captured neatly in the phrase “for king and country,” a maxim that originated in Britain and was meant to connote in-group loyalty. Practically speaking then, for men, observing convention means not competing for dominance with the in-group leaders or “jumping rank,” as the behavior is known in the military.
The takeaway message is that RWA reflects a group-level survival strategy among humans in a dangerous and highly competitive natural world. Among Earth's life-forms, the ability to engage in organized, cooperative enterprises provides a powerful survival advantage. This ability to coordinate not only explains intergroup competition but also why the small, relatively weak naked apes of our ancestral past were not wiped from existence on the predator-laden plains of Africa where they arose. Without organized alliances we would not exist today.
SUPPRESSING COMPETITION AND IN-GROUP ORDER
Achieving stable alliances, however, requires overcoming certain challenges, most particularly the male drive to ascend the hierarchy; thus alliances require suppressing competition within the ranks. In the struggle for survival, the most effective maneuvers come from groups able to suppress in-group competition to serve joint goals such as defense. Ants and other social insects offer a vivid example. By suppressing competition within the colony, ants have been able to achieve complete dominion over individualistic insect species by displacing them or turning them into food. If there is any species that rivals humans for its coordinated, militaristic dominion, it is ants. As renowned myrmecologists (ant scientists) E. O. Wilson and Burt Hölldobler describe, “The foreign policy aims of ants can be summed up as follows: relentless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal annihilation of neighboring colonies whenever possible.”79
Through self-sacrificing alliances (which have been studied by the US military80), ants rule the insect world, and every macrocosmic life-form in their vicinity is either chopped to pieces, stabbed, or sprayed with acid, and dragged back to the nest and consumed. So successful has this strategy been that collectively these miniature warriors equal the total biomass of humans on Earth, and no family of ultra-social insects (such as ants, wasps, bees, etc.) has ever become extinct.81
But, as mentioned before, for cooperation at this level to work, ants have to suppress competition. Ants are able to achieve this in part by sharing 75 percent of their genes (human siblings share 50 percent) and through sterility in their soldier class.82 Sterility removes mate competition from the alliance and creates genetic incentive to defend the queen, as their only means of passing on genes, with complete, self-sacrificial loyalty.
Alliances among men are also cemented through shared genes and restricted competition. Through our history of patrilocality, male alliances emerged from bands of highly interrelated male kin. Among men in groups, the risk of annihilation by outside men creates genetic incentive to defend one another as brothers and to sequester the rival tribe's territory and females. And while shared genes have thinned out as the human population exploded around the globe, today's male collectives use cultural means to suppress competition by exaggerating similarity—through group identity, common language and dress, and psychological adaptations such as RWA.
But men have a tendency to violently compete for mates, which destabilizes alliances. Rather than developing an entire sterile class, as with ants, the solution for men has been to enforce strict adherence to sexual boundaries. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the concern over sexual boundaries is a prominent feature of the RWA scale, as seen in statements such as the following (all reverse scored):
• There is nothing wrong with premarital sexual intercourse.
• A lot of our rules regarding sexual behavior are just customs which are not necessarily any better or holier than those which other people follow.
• There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps.83
Those with high RWA tend to take umbrage with the kinds of sexual behaviors listed here and tend to emphasize sexual rules and customs. But framing these tendencies as mere conservative prudishness, which is not uncommon among liberal critics, misses their utilitarian value.
In military settings, where coordinated male action is most critical, sexual boundaries are legislated far more strictly than in civilian law; US military penal codes harshly punish adultery with confinement, fines, and risk of dishonorable discharge. In 2016, two-star general David Haight was stripped of his stars, demoted to lieutenant colonel, and run out of the military for having an extramarital sexual affair.84 In contemporary morality, adultery is seen as a regrettable but not mortal error, so this response might seem extreme. But in evolutionary terms, extramarital affairs remove females from the mating pool, which creates mate shortages and can result in male-on-male conflict. And when the affairs involve other men's mates, male fury is roused. In the military context, both of these factors have the potential to erode group cohesion. In fact, evolutionary scientists have surmised that marriage may have arisen as an in-group rule designed to help men respect each other's mating claims, which makes alliance-making possible in a sex with programming designed to aid in violent competition for women.85
As it turns out, suppressing male mate competition is powerfully wired into our endocrine systems. Research has found that olfactory sensitivity to androstenone, a chemical related to testosterone, is related to a preference for social order and social hierarchies. This preference, moreover, is concentrated in those with conservative political ideologies.86 In other words, we can (literally, if unconsciously) smell this chemical, and those who are better attuned to its smell are more likely to prefer a clear, stable hierarchy. Testosterone itself appears to be regulated in part by male alliances. Research on rural villagers in the Caribbean island of Dominica finds that when male teams compete in games against men from outside villages, their testosterone levels rise. But in competitions with men from their own villages, testosterone levels stay low, providing a biological means to keep coalitionary peace.87 Strikingly, research has even found that men show elevated testosterone in the presence of attractive women but not in the presence of women who are pair-bonded with men from their own coalition.88 Thus, the sexual restrictiveness that so often characterizes the conservative Right has some basis in maintaining male coalitions.
Given the concentration of religiosity on the Right, it is perhaps not surprising that religion, too, codifies the rules of male coalitions. The Judeo-Christian religion emerged during a shockingly violent era in the Fertile Crescent, where tribes of men regularly raided the neighboring tribe, hacked their male rivals to pieces with dull bronze weapons, and captured their women. In this era, suppressing in-group male competition was urgently necessary to ensure coalitionary defense. Thus, we have the seminal commandment from Moses: “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife.”
Raping the wives of the out-group was fair game for Moses's men, however, and the Bible is replete with wartime rape references. Here, rape is commanded against foreign nations but suppressed within nearby nations, which were very likely tied through kinship:
When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.89
There are other evolutionary reasons for sexual control among conservatives, which we will explore in the next chapter, but maintaining warring male coalitions is central among them. Another means to maintain coalitions, also captured by RWA, is the conservative emphasis on social conformity.
CONFORMITY AND ORDER
Competition within human groups is inevitable because each individual is programmed by selfish genes. And so countrymen and countrywomen will compete with each other for resources such as mates, status, and wealth. However, the value of suppressing in-group competition in order to ensure successful competition with outsiders is fundamental. This imperative is captured in a famous American pre–Revolutionary War song, written by Founding Father John Dickerson, which rings, “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!” The Bible too presages the dangers of division: “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.”90 Such maxims derive from an ancient human instinct to drop in-group differences in the presence of an outside threat.
Psychological research can measure this impulse in action. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, for example, crime rates dropped precipitously across the United States as Americans banded together. Murder rates in New York City dropped 40 percent in the six months following the attack, and we find the same drop in antisocial behaviors in many other societies in the midst of war or environmental crises.91 Research has also found that witnessing death or injury during the 9/11 attacks predicted a higher RWA score.92 These results underscore the idea that political conservatism is an evolved strategy that switches on in response to male coalitionary violence; a glaring yet rarely mentioned fact is that every one of the 9/11 hijackers was male.
The drop in antisocial behavior (violence, stealing, and rape against the in-group) and the increase in RWA after 9/11 help to illustrate that conforming to group norms to promote collective defense is an important component of the conservative strategy. This purpose becomes clearer when we consider the extent to which conservatives view breaches in the social order as dangerous. Concerns tapped by items drawn from the RWA scale are also illustrative here (note, too, the role of dominant leaders in enforcing norms; italics are mine):
• The facts on crime, sexual immorality and the recent public disorders all show we have to crack down harder on deviant groups and troublemakers, if we are going to save our moral standards and preserve law and order.
• The situation in our country is getting so serious, the strongest methods would be justified if they eliminated the troublemakers and got us back to our true path.
• The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leader in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.
• What our country needs most is disciplined citizens, following national leaders in unity.93
Thus, from the RWA perspective, social order has practical value as a means to facilitate defense (or even conquest). Perhaps not surprisingly, both maintaining order and providing defense are enterprises championed by powerful men.
Whether in war or peacetime, functioning societies require order, and dominant males have an ancient role in enforcing order among their male subordinates. Strong alpha chimpanzees, for example, maintain order in the troop with violence and threat displays, which makes male upstartism a costly proposition.94 Yet when we grant men too much power, we invite abuse. Granting power to the largest, loudest, most aggressive males may at times protect the in-group, but authoritarianism is a poor strategy for improving the human condition overall, particularly as we engage in ever more cooperation across national boundaries. Authoritarians may temporarily keep the peace at home, and their projections of strength may occasionally dissuade attack from the outside, but they also start wars and oppress their subordinates. Moreover, not all means of establishing order require a powerful male. In fact, there is a good case to be made that social order is best established by placing a ceiling on the amount of power that men can acquire and by transferring greater power to women. The following chapters will explore this dynamic, as well as the reasons why men have historically resisted giving women control.