Hans Eysenck Political Map - Radical vs Conservative, Authoritarian vs Democratic
We recommend that along with this section of the Culture War Encyclopedia, you see the political alignment charts section.
Hans Eysenck was a Ph.D. (according to his book), a British psychologist (according to Britannica) and a professor (according to the NY Times). Consider figure 16 A, B and C (shown below) from his book The Psychology of Politics (page 111), published in 1954, about which he writes (starting on page 109),
It is often said that in the political spectrum Socialists are to the left of Liberals, Liberals to the left of Conservatives, with Communists and Fascists, respectively, constituting the extreme left and the extreme right. In terms of dimensions, therefore, we might represent the position somewhat as in Figure 16 A, with one dimension being thought sufficient to represent political parties.
On the other hand, it is also sometimes said that there is a considerable similarity between Fascists and Communists; so much so, indeed, that there is very little to choose between them. Both, on this reckoning, are opposed to the democratic parties, i.e. the Socialist, Conservative, and Liberal parties, and some observers (usually Liberals) would add that both the Conservatives and Socialist parties have advanced some way towards the Communist-Fascist outlook, leaving the Liberals, as it were, at the other end of this continuum, which might therefore look something like that indicated in Figure 16 B.
Much might be said in favour of both these hypotheses, but clearly they cannot both be true as long as we restrict ourselves to a one-dimensional system. They could easily be reconciled if we accepted a two-dimensional system, as illustrated in Figure 16c, where our abscissa represents our left-right continuum, and our ordinate represents our democratic versus autocratic continuum, as we may provisionally call it.
Eysenck offers this (page 111)…
He places Authoritarian opposite of Democratic. We note this because, as you can see in the section on the political compass, today’s political compass places Authoritarian opposite of Libertarian. On page 130 we have the following…
Now we see the tender-minded to tough-minded spectrum, which Hans Eysenck acknowledges he borrowed from William James, as a vertical line on a horizontal line that more or less represents a spectrum ranging from political radicalism to political conservatism. This welds William James’ psychological spectrum to a political spectrum at a right angle creating a plane with 4 quadrants. It is on pages 130 to 132 where Eysenck explains that he borrowed the tender-mindedness/tough-mindedness factor from
a book by W. James, where he refers to two opposed types of temperament leading to opposed philosophical beliefs as the ‘tender-minded’ and the ‘tough-minded’ respectively. As we shall make much use of this dichotomy, a brief quotation from James will make its meaning clearer. James starts his discussion on pragmatism by pointing out that philosophical systems are often influenced or determined by the temperament of their authors. He goes on to say that ‘the particular difference of temperament that I have in mind ... is one that has counted in literature, art, government, and manners as well as in philosophy. In manners we find formalists and free-and easy persons. In government, authoritarians and anarchists. In literature, purists or academicals, and realists. In art, classics and romantics. You recognize these contrasts as familiar; well, in philosophy we have a very similar contrast expressed in the pair of terms ‘rationalist’ and ‘“‘empiricist’’, ‘“empiricist’’? meaning your lover of facts in all their crude variety, “‘rationalist’? meaning your devotee to abstract and eternal principles.’ James then goes on to a brief discussion of some of these differences and finally gives a table of these: ‘I will write these traits down in two columns. I think you will practically recognize the two types of mental-make up that I mean if I head the columns by the titles ‘‘tender-minded”’ and “‘tough-minded” respectively…
Eysenck then provides the following that one can see in the political spectrum section from William James, word-for-word,
THE TENDER-MINDED
Rationalistic (going by 'principles'), Intellectualistic, Idealistic, Optimistic, Religious, Free-willist, Monistic, Dogmatical.
THE TOUGH-MINDED
Empiricist (going by 'facts'), Sensationalistic, Materialistic, Pessimistic, Irreligious, Fatalistic, Pluralistic, Sceptical.
Eysenck then writes,
We may perhaps accept for the time being James’s term and call this dimension tender-mindedness versus tough-mindedness, or, more simply, the T-factor. The intrinsic meaningfulness of this factor will become more apparent as we discuss further evidence; for the moment let us merely note that the tender-minded set of opinions appears to be dominated by ethical, moralistic, super-ego, altruistic values, while the tough-minded set of opinions is dominated by realistic, worldly, egotistic values, and it may be noted that Koestler’s book, The Yogi and the Commissar, seems to drive at much the same division as indicated by this factor, a division which clearly cuts across party lines. On the left we have the ‘tenderminded’ (Lansbury, I.L.P., the Pacifist group, the religious leftists, etc.) as well as the ‘tough-minded’ (Communists, Trotskyites, etc.). Similarly, on the right there are the ‘tender-minded’ religious groups as well as the ‘tough-minded’ semi-fascist combinations. Indeed, in practice this division is well recognized by parties of the right as well as of the left, but no term has been suggested to point out what is common to the adherents of either the ‘tough’ or the ‘tender’ line in both parties.
Later, on pages 174 and 175, Eysenck writes,
We shall suggest that ‘tough-mindedness’ is a projection on to the field of social attitudes of the extraverted personality type, while ‘tender-mindedness’ is a projection of the introverted personality type. Before turning to a proof of this hypothesis let us first briefly discuss this concept of extraversion-introversion. Unfortunately these terms have been used so widely by non-psychological writers and by the man in the street that they have lost almost entirely the meaning which they originally carried, and to which we must revert here. The terms extravert and introvert were used by the psychiatrist Jung to refer to two types of personality which are antithetical to each other and which had in essence been described by several other writers before him, notably by the English psychologist Furneaux Jordan and by the Austrian psychiatrist Otto Gross.
Jordan had posited an antithesis between the reflective and the active type of person; he went on to point out that the reflective type tended to be more emotional, the active type less emotional. Gross added to this hypothesis a physiological theory of how this distinction might have come about. It was not however until Jung popularized and extended these concepts that they were really widely accepted among psychologists.
Jung states very extensively all the personality traits which characterize the introvert and the extravert respectively; they all derive from the fundamental fact that the extravert has turned his interests and his instinctual energies outwards, i.e. towards the world of objective reality, while the introvert has turned his interests and his instinctual energies inwards, i.e. towards himself. ‘Quite generally one might characterize the introvert point of view by pointing to the constant subjection of the object and objective reality to the ego and the subjective psychological process ... according to the extraverted point of view the subject is considered as inferior to the object; the importance of the subjective aspect is only secondary.’ Apart from this fundamental distinction the extravert emerges as a person who values the outer world both in its material and in its immaterial aspects (possessions, riches, power, prestige), he shows outward physical activity while the introvert’s activity is mainly in the mental, intellectual sphere. The extravert is changeable and his emotions are easily aroused, but never very deeply; he is relatively insensitive, impressionable, experimental, materialistic and tough-minded.
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