Political Charts: Ideology & Psychology


The problem I see with political identifications is conflation of factors. 

A major confusion is that few people seem interested in the connection between political views and personality traits.  There has been a lot of psychological research.  There are three models that have been used for political research: MBTI, FFM, and Hartmann’s Boundary Types.  All of those models have been correlated to varying degrees.

When I read many political descriptions, I immediately notice that personality traits and types are being described.  Let me use some examples.

MBTI Intuition is correlated with Openness to Experience and Hartmann’s Thin Boundary Type.  This psychological characteristic correlates to many liberal tendencies: more open and less fearful of the new experience, more hopeful/optimistic about future possibilities, more willingness to experiment, more accepting of those who are different.  Et Cetera.

Boundary types are particularly helpful.  Thick Boundary types prefer clear rules and principles, strong hierarchies and established lines of authority.  Thick boundary types separate imagination from reality, subjectivity from objectivity.  Thick Boundary types want to keep things the same, want to maintain the familiar and known.

The main issue is separating out the psychological elements from the ideological elements… if it is possible.  I wonder what would be left of a political chart if the psychological elements were entirely removed.


Nice analysis.  I’m mostly interested, at the moment, in how the US two party system evolved.  There is one point I would clarify.  You said:

“In America, liberals were cut from their decentralized, agrarian roots and put in search of a new philosophy.”

I wouldn’t agree that the liberals were cut off.  It was more that politics and agriculture were becoming increasingly influenced by industrialization.  The main influence of industrialization was centralization of power and wealth.  It became possible for farmers to work larger fields and so the small family farmer became a less successful model.  In early US, farmers were the common working man, but this changed with industrialization.  The new common working man was the factory worker, and this is the demographic the liberals became identified with in the decades after the Civil War.

Many liberals still wanted power that was decentralized from an elite and instead controlled democratically.  However, centralization of power had gone so far that the only way to counter it was with a different centralization of power.  Worker Unions formed and they fought for laws to legislate the abuse of over-centralized capitalist power.  Decentralization is simply impossible in an industrialized world without dismantling industrialization.  Either power gets centralized in a capitalist elite or a political elite.  From the view of the common working man, the Federal government is a safer bet than the Robber Barons.  At least, Federal government offers the hope for democracy.

During and after WWI, the conservatives retold the narrative of the working class.  Using war patriotism, they were able to undermine the worker’s unions and align worker’s with capitalist interests (redefined as America’s interests).  A major force in causing this redefintion was the KKK and the film The Birth of a Nation.  The KKK encapsulated the new conservative ideology: patriotic nationalism, traditional family values, white culture, anti-immigrant sentiments, and fundamentalist Christianity.  They appealed to the anger and values of many working class people, but the KKK membership was mostly middle and upper class citizens.  The KKK was a gentlemen’s club filled with politicians, judges, police chiefs, and business owners. 

This is how the pro-capitalist conservatives captured the working man vote.  They attacked the blacks and the immigrants.  The conservatives told the working class that there is pride in being a good white person working hard for your family and your country.  This is your country.  You are the true Americans, not the blacks, Chinese, or Mexicans, not the “hyphenated Americans”.