If you鈥檝e ever talked politics in the pub near closing time, chances are it wasn鈥檛 an especially enlightened or right-on discussion. in New England and asked customers about their political views, they found that the drunker the punter, the more right wing their leanings. That wasn鈥檛 because right-wing people drink more, or get pissed more easily. Wherever people stood on the political spectrum when sober, alcohol shifted their views to the right.
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Why might that be? The researchers, led by Scott Eidelmanat the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, point out that alcohol strips away complex reasoning to reveal the default state of the mind. And that is why they were chatting to drunks: they were using drunkenness to test the hypothesis that low-effort, automatic thought promotes political conservatism.
The team also found that they could push people to the right by distracting them, putting them under time pressure or simply telling them not to think too hard. Participants who were asked to deliberate more deeply, in contrast, shifted their political thinking to the left. Similar effects have been seen with the three core components of conservative ideology: preference for the status quo, acceptance of hierarchy and belief in personal responsibility. All three, the researchers say, come naturally to the human mind. We think that way without trying, without even noticing. More liberal views, in contrast, require effortful deliberation.
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鈥淲hatever people鈥檚 political views when sober, alcohol shifts them to the right鈥�
Lots of research points in the same direction. Our political views are shaped by many factors, including personality, upbringing and education. However, as early as the 1950s, psychologists probing the appeal of fascism found that right-wing ideology was associated with dislike of ambiguity and cognitive complexity. That鈥檚 not to say that conservatives are less intelligent. The relationship between IQ and political leanings is complex. Broadly speaking, people with lower-than-average IQs tend to be lefties, probably out of economic self-interest. People of moderately above-average intelligence lean right for the same reason. And the top 20 per cent swing left again 鈥� although highly intelligent people are also over-represented in the libertarian camp, which defies simple left-right categorisation.
Nonetheless, dislike of 鈥� or lack of training in 鈥� analytical thinking is strongly associated with preference for the status quo. Conversely, people who are than their conservative peers, and having studied science is strongly associated with progressive views. This has led to the suggestion that left-wing political ideas are more complex and counter-intuitive than right-wing ones. Of course, not everyone agrees. 鈥淚n some areas they are, in some they aren鈥檛,鈥� says Noah Carl, a sociologist at the University of Oxford. 鈥淢arket allocation of resources is less intuitive than having somebody do it from the top, for example.鈥�
Whether you think our intuitive conservatism is good or bad probably depends on your personal politics. With around 85 per cent of the world population largely untrained in critical thinking, preference for the status quo is the clear winner. Nevertheless, progressive change does usually happen eventually.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淐onservatism鈥�
