Our ideology is shaped by how we learn to respond to affects

Silvan Tomkins’ investigation into affect and emotion, as ambitious as it was, was only one
aspect of his expansive mind. He developed a robust theory of ideology, examining how and
why it forms and how through western history people have been drawn to opposite ideological
poles. He noted that there has always been a left and right in western culture, and he
conducted research to show how a polarized belief about one thing reliably predicts polarized
beliefs about many other things in many different domains.

What is ideology?

To understand what Tomkins had to say about ideology, let’s look at what ideology is.
If we are to live ordered lives, it is essential that we have working theories about justice,
child rearing, science, knowledge and so on. These big questions might sound like,

 “What is the purpose of science?”

 “How do we know if justice has been done?”
 “What is the best way to raise a child?”
 “How do we know whether something is true?”

What all of these questions have in common is that there is no unambiguous evidence
that would allow us to form certain, definitive answers to them. So we answer them as
best we can. But Tomkins observed that these answers are rooted in even deeper,
unexamined and unprovable assumptions such as:

 “What is the value of human life?”

 “What is the worth of a person’s inner life?”
 “Is the goal of life perfection or happiness?”

And for all this, these beliefs are often not believed to be beliefs. Our ideologies are
very passionately held as if true and very elaborately articulated, which brings us to
Tomkins’ definition of an ideology:

By ideology I will mean any organized set of ideas about which human beings are at
once most articulate and most passionate, and for which there is no evidence and about
which they are least certain.

When something has been proven or disproven, like the sun revolving around the earth,
it ceases to be an ideology. Says Tomkins, “Yesterday’s ideology is today’s fact or
fiction.”

Polarization

It is this uncertainty that leads to polarization of ideology.

What is lacking in evidence is filled by passion and faith, and hatred and scorn for
disbelievers . . . ideology, in its purest form, appears in controversies which are
centuries old, never ceasing to find true believers who become polarized, over and over,
generation after generation.
Here are some examples Tomkins gave of how this polarization has played out in some
of the biggest controversies throughout history:

Examples of Ideological Polarity

Domain Left Right

Tomkins’ Label Humanistic Normative

In other words Person-centered Rule-based

Human beings are Basically good Basically evil

Math is for Play Usefulness

Science is for Raising new questions Describing reality

Perception is Constructed by mind Stimulated by real world

The Good is Happiness Perfection

The state is Created by the people Allows people freedoms

Politics should Promote change Preserve the status quo

Laws are Created by people Transcendental

In art Romanticism Classicism

The mind Projects onto objects Reflects external objects

Virtue is Doing good Being good

Parenting is Tolerant, permissive Directive, moralistic

In religion God of love God of authority

Source of Ideology

The source of polarization, in fact the source of all ideological thinking, is rooted in the
affects, more specifically, how people are socialized to handle their affective lives.
Tomkins proposed that the way that parents respond to a child’s emotional life leads to
fundamental beliefs about the worth of human life, which lead to beliefs that cluster
around the humanistic and normative poles of ideology.

At the humanistic pole, the parent identifies with the child in play and shared delight,
and is revitalized by the child’s zest for life, joy in simple human interaction, driving
curiosity, and attempts to control his own body. Such a parent bestows on the child the
feeling that he is an end in himself and that shared human interaction is a deeply
satisfying experience. The child discovers a world that presents itself with endless
opportunities for positive affect, joy, excitement, love of people, places, activities and
things. He becomes adept at creating this inner satisfaction for himself and for others.

At the normative pole, the parent invests in molding the child to some norm, be it moral
or behavioral. The parent bestows on the child the sense that positive satisfaction is not
an internally felt experience as much as it is a result of effort, struggle and the
renunciation of the child’s own wishes. Rewarded for renouncing and devaluing his
wishes and his very self, the child expects the outer world of rules and objective reality
to provide the rewards of life.

At this juncture, it is worth noting that Tomkins was writing this in 1991, as the
explosion in new information about the brain emerged as a result of new technology.
Before that explosion, few scientists would have claimed that there is any other source
for your relationship to your own affects other than how you were raised. Over the past
several decades, fMRI and other methods have revealed significant differences in brain
structure and function in various conditions, such as schizophrenia and autism. Given
this, it is worth noting that there might be innate tendencies toward recognizing and
valuing affective inner life. Ideological polarity might be due in part to biological
differences, not just socialization.

In either case, the fundamental principle of his theory is logically sound, that a person
who experiences affect as manageable and mostly positive is more likely to consider
human life an end in itself, while a person who experiences affect as an obstacle to
achieving normative success is more likely to find meaning, relevance and safety in an
objectively verified and sanctioned reality.

Middle of the Road

Tomkins also writes briefly about the “middle of the road” which he proposes is even
more radical than even the extremes of either pole.

Indeed, one might defend the thesis that the middle of the road represents the most
radical ideology rather than a compromise position. This is so because the tension
between the right and the left wing in ideology has been perennial, and a creative
synthesis evokes some resonance from each side.

Unfortunately, Tomkins did not elaborate much on this idea, perhaps because the task at
hand was to demonstrate, first, that there is a perennial ideological polarity. He did,
however, present Kant’s moral imperative as an elegant synthesis of the two poles. Kant
resolved the pull toward either pole by proposing a moral compass that includes
both. He said, “Act only in such a way as can be made universal.” Don’t do anything
that, if everyone else did it, would be harmful. If you litter, and if everyone litters, we
will all live in a garbage heap. If you yell at your subordinates, and everyone yells at
their subordinates that means you will be yelled at along with everyone else. Tomkins
remarked that this formulation resolves the conflict between the subjective and
objective.
Be yourself, find morality within, but let it be possible that your morality is capable of
serving as a norm for humankind.

Contrasting Assumptions

Tomkins explores the dimensions of this polarity even further by contrasting ten
defining assumptions. These assumptions stem from an individual’s basic tendency to
idealize himself or derogate himself, which, according to Tomkins, are the most
pressing concerns a person can have. “No question with which man confronts himself
engages him more than the question of his own worth.” How he understands his worth
is based on how he has come to experience his affective life, and the impact of that
evaluation cascades over all manner of beliefs and assumptions.

Here are the ten assumptions in a simplified form.

10 Contrasting Assumptions of the Ideological Polarity

Left Right

The object of life is outside man, what is

Man is an end in himself, value is
1 valuable is objective, man should be loved if
subjective, man should be loved
he is worthy

2 What is real and valuable is man. What is real and valuable is the ideal.

3 Values are what man wishes Values exist independent of man

Man should satisfy and maximize drives Man should be governed by norms which
4
and affects limit his drives and affects

Man should minimize negative affect and

5 Man should maximize norm conformity
unsatisfied drives

6 Affect inhibition should be minimized Affects should be controlled by norms

Power should be used to maximize Power should be used to maximize norm

7
positive affect and minimize negative compliance and achievement

Pluralism – conflict between individuals Hierarchy – no attempt to minimize conflict

8 and within the affects of individuals per se, as wishes should be ordered
should be minimized according to the norm

Selection criteria are based on maximizing Selection criteria are based on a normative
9
positive and minimizing negative affect hierarchy of needs

10 Weakness is tolerated and worked on. Weakness is not tolerated and is punished
Polarity Scale

To test this theory Tomkins and colleagues developed a 57-item scale with the
hypothesis that humanistic answers with correlate with other humanistic answers, while
normative answers will correlate with other normative answers. When tested on 500
people, this hypothesis was supported in 97% of the all possible intercorrelations.
Furthermore, the average positive intercorrelation was +.30. Even more impressive, if a
person agrees with “human beings are basically good” and disagrees with “human
beings are basically evil” he or she will agree with 80% of all other items keyed
humanistic, at a correlation of +.30 or better. If the person agrees with the reverse, he or
she will agree with 80% of all other items keyed normative, at a correlation of +.30 or
better.

Let’s look at some examples of the most striking correlations:

Correlation Human beings are good Human beings are evil

The beauty of theorizing is that it has

The trouble with theorizing is that it
made it possible to invent things
+.55 leads people away from the facts and
which otherwise would have never
substitutes opinion for truth.
existed.

Thinking is responsible for all Thinking keeps people on the straight

+.53
discovery and invention. and narrow.

If an individual breaks the law, it is

not always to his advantage or to the If an individual breaks the law, he should
+.63
advantage of society that he be be punished for the good of society.
punished.

To every lover, his beloved is the Love is blind. Otherwise no one would
+.70
most beautiful person in the world. ever fall in love.

To assume that most people are well- To assume that most people are well-
+.61
meaning brings out the best in others meaning is asking for trouble.

Little white lies are justified when the

Little white lies in the long run lead to
+.63 truth might hurt the feelings of a
big black lies.
close friend.

Fear can make the bravest man

Cowardice is despicable and in a soldier
+.58 tremble. We should not condemn
should be severely punished.
failure of nerve.

Play is important for all human Play is childish. Although it is proper for
+.79 beings. No one is too old to enjoy the children to play, adults should concern
excitement of play. themselves with more serious matters.
 What children demand, parents
What children demand should be of little
+.66 should take seriously and try to
consequence to their parents.
satisfy.

The changeableness of human The changeableness of human feelings is

+.54
feelings makes life more interesting. a weakness in human beings.

Here is a unique avenue to reality There is no surer road to insanity than

+.68 through feelings, even when they surrender to the feelings, particularly
seem alien those which are alien to the self.

Life sometimes leaves a bad taste in

+.49 Life sometimes smells bad.
the mouth.

Ideology and the face

This last correlation, which gets at a tendency toward disgust versus dissmell, lent
credence to the hypothesis that contempt is more dominant in normatively-oriented
people than in humanistically-oriented people. Tomkins went on to explore this
hypothesis in a study of people’s cognitive preference for smiles versus contempt. To
test this he showed 37 participants two faces simultaneously: one smiling, one
contemptuous, alternating each between the left or right eye. Then he showed one of the
two faces and asked the participant if this was the one he had seen. The correlation of
the dominance of the humanistic orientation with the smiling face was .42, while the
correlation of the normative orientation with the contemptuous face was .60.

Lastly, in another study, Tomkins found that humanistic orientation correlated with a
higher likelihood of smiling at the experimenter asking questions than did the normative
correlation.

Implications

The implications for Tomkins’ observations about ideology are wide-ranging. Politics,
leadership, marriage, education, child rearing, and clinical psychology are only a few of
the domains where an understanding of humanistic versus normative assumption sets
could enable better collaboration, productivity, negotiation, and satisfaction. While
more research is needed, if these findings hold, any area of understanding that benefits
from emotional intelligence could be enhanced by Tomkins’ take on how a person’s
affective life impacts his or her belief system.