The State of Illusion: False Conscious Beliefs Underlying Conservative Political Ideology
Keywords: #false consciousness #motivated social cognition #conservative ideology
The concept of false consciousness was first conceived by Marxist social theory and describes a phenomenon where members of a subordinate class wilfully comply to the ideology of the ruling elite, even when it directly opposes their own interests. Karl Marx and later theorists argued that capitalism entrenches this mindset in the working class, legitimizing inequality and justifying exploitation. However, as the term evolved within sociology, it came to represent any belief system that misleads individuals about their own best interests and gaslights people about the injustice of their situation.
While theorists attempt to understand why people adopt belief systems that fulfil the interests of others if they oppose their own personal interests, there is an underlying assumption that the individual’s interests are purely economic; in which case, as a human being, it is in everyone’s interests to be kind and cooperative. In fact, research does support the notion that friendliness is key to evolutionary success (Hare and Woods, 2020); however, subjugated classes of individuals aligning with the upper ruling class doesn’t necessarily mean that those individuals are being misled about their own beliefs. The interrogation of neuroscientific studies indicates that they happen to be a group of people from different backgrounds with beliefs rooted in shared cognitive motivation.
Individual beliefs about the best way to structure society and the means for achieving this social structure are said to be influenced by the social-cognitive motives of the individual, according to the motivated social cognition (MSC) model of political ideology (Jost et al., 2003). The MSC model argues that individual psychology forms the basis for adopting political ideology. Conservative political ideology and the personality traits leading to fascism is a focus of this research, where the interaction of social and cognitive variables sees individuals adopt conservative ideology to appease their internal fear of a perceived threat – a bogeyman.
Neuroimaging studies have found that political conservatives - in particular, white conservatives – display a hyperactive amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for fear-processing and negative emotion, when they are shown images of Black faces (Krosch, Jost & Van Bavel, 2021; Cunningham et al., 2004). This suggests that hierarchical social systems are not just political structures but also neurological and psychological mechanisms that reinforce divisions and maintain the dominance of privileged ingroups.
Based on research, the MSC model argues that conservative political ideology is characterised by two core beliefs; the endorsement of hierarchy and resistance to change (White et al., 2020; Jost et al., 2003). However, these core beliefs are not as targeted at the distinct origins of conservative ideology, because at the very core of the concern for conservatives is the question – are we (the ingroup) safe? Fear and disgust are a survival mechanism, negative emotions that arise to motivate the individual to protect themselves from a perceived threat. Where a group is concerned, the usual course of action is to protect themselves by dominating and controlling the perceived threat.
Individuals who find common interests in the subjugation of others and shared beliefs in social hierarchy in large groups become emboldened. Their fears and negative emotion are validated by others and the neural pathways that choose fear and negativity over compassion and empathy become ever stronger. False consciousness is, as WEB du Bois described it, a symptom of the ‘psychological wage’ paid to members of subjugated classes by the upper class, who feed their desire for feelings of security and belonging by dominating and controlling the perceived threat, potentially at the expense of economic interests, physical resources and survival needs. The imagined hierarchies where categories of people have more or less value than others, affects the psychology of all social groups in society.
Social-cultural messaging is used to promote false conscious belief systems that either inflate or degrade the worthiness of individuals depending on their social position, and appeal to every degree of conservativism, whether economic, where the administration of capitalism keeps people down, or fascist, where pervasive messaging is weaponised as psychological and physical abuse. Conservativism is all shades of grey to black, stemming from the overactive amygdala of individuals, narcissism and fear demanding its immediate relief.
The social-cultural messaging is reinforced by systemic barriers designed to exclude marginalized groups from full participation in society. Social institutions - educational, policymaking, military and health and welfare, for example - are structured to reinforce social hierarchies and maintain inequality, allowing wealthy upper classes to justify and maintain their position. By convincing people that hierarchies are natural, conservatism neutralises critique of the oppressor, for if there is a lower class then there must be an upper class. And when people of subjugated classes are made to feel a sense of belonging through shared beliefs with the wealthy upper classes, the threat that the wealthy upper class pose to resources can be ignored.
The interaction between social-cultural messaging and social institutions will embed and reinforce false conscious beliefs that create basic power structures upholding class, gender and racial hierarchies. For example, consistent media representations of young scantily clad women in sexually suggestive advertising conveys the message, and embeds the false conscious belief, that a woman’s value lies in her capacity to be the object of male desire. Concurrently, age discrimination negatively impacts a woman’s ability to find employment from her late 30s, according to research, whereas age discrimination for men doesn’t begin until mid-fifties (Neumark et al, 2019), reinforcing the message for women that their value is only in their youth, and society has no use for a woman of substance.
A worker who believes that their poverty is due to personal failure rather than systemic exploitation is also experiencing false consciousness. Patriarchal narratives inform men that they are naturally competent and destined for leadership, denying the competencies of women, indigenous, people of colour, LGBTQI and people with disabilities, disguising men’s privilege as merit. In fact, social hierarchies are not natural to human beings.
Social cooperation is a higher executive function of the prefrontal cortex, also known as the rational brain. In a fairness study by Dutch American primatologist and ethologist, Frans de Waal’s, a capuchin monkey shook its cage in frustration when it saw its neighbour receive grapes for the same work it only received cucumber pieces for, demonstrating that even monkeys understand the concept of fairness and equality. The persistent messaging that some individuals are "less than" others—due to economic status, ethnicity, or gender—instils a deep sense of unworthiness that is tantamount to psychological abuse by society and is incredibly traumatic to unpick for individuals.
False conscious belief systems are social phenomena that are reproduced intergenerationally, following patterns that weave narratives into the fabric of society that are not overly complex to trace; we have been recording history and theorising social phenomena for centuries – yet are unable to prevent the theoretically predictable, resurgences of fascism. The key reason for this is that false conscious beliefs become deeply entrenched in our psychology, as anyone who has experienced psychological abuse will testify, and reprogramming beliefs about ourselves is a painful exercise.
False conscious beliefs are illusions created about our self-worth to establish social hierarchies and maintain the social positions of powerful upper classes and appease the cognitive motivations of dominant social groups. Liberation from these beliefs demands active rejection of imposed narratives and the unlearning of deeply ingrained biases. Only through this process can individuals reclaim their autonomy, challenge oppressive systems, and redefine their own worth beyond the constraints of social hierarchy.
References:
Cunningham, W. A., Johnson, M., Raye, C., Gatenby, C., Gore, J. & Banaji, M. (2004) Separable Neural Components in the Processing of Black and White Faces. Psychological Science, Vol. 15, No. 12, pp. 806-813.
Hare, B. and Woods, V. (2020) Survival of the Friendliest. London: Oneworld Publications.
Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition. Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 129, No. 3, pp. 339–375.
Krosch, A. R., Jost, J. T. & Van Bavel, J. J. (2021) The neural basis of ideological differences in race categorization. Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B, Vol. 376, Issue 1822, https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0139.
Neumark, D., Burn, I., & Button, P. (2019). Is It Harder for Older Workers to Find Jobs? New and Improved Evidence from a Field Experiment. The Journal of Political Economy, 127(2), 922–970. https://doi.org/10.1086/701029
White, K. R. G., Kinney, D., Danek, R. H., Smith, B. & Harben, C. (2020). The Resistance to Change-Beliefs Scale: Validation of a New Measure of Conservative Ideology. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 20–35.
