Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
vi
 
        4.6.4  The Rise of the Dark Triad? 
136
  
4.7 
Ideological 
Conviction-Relativism 
142
5 Testing 
Pareto’s 
Theory 
151
  
5.1 
Introduction 
151
 
  5.2  The Student Study 
152
 
  5.3  The MP Study: Variable Selection 
158
  
5.4 
Scale 
Analysis 
166
  
5.5 
Population 
Diversity 
167
 
  5.6  Comparing the Three Parliamentary Parties 
167
 
  5.7  Seniority within Parliament 
178
 
  5.8  Do Findings Support Pareto’s Model of Personality? 
183
 
    5.8.1  Introduction 
183
 
    5.8.2  Conservatism-Liberalism 
184
 
    5.8.3  Individualism-Collectivism 
184
 
    5.8.4  Dissociation, Aggression and Aloofness 
185
 
        5.8.5  Do these Clusters form Broader Personality Configurations?  185
 
    5.8.6  Demographic Analysis 
 
189
  
5.9 
Final 
Conclusion 
191
Bibliography 195
Index  
211

---

List of Tables
Table 5.6(a) 
Differences between the parliamentary parties on all 
 measures 
168
Table 5.6(b) 
Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs 
 aged 
35–55 
173
Table 5.6(c) 
Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs 
 aged 
55+ 
173
Table 5.6(d) 
Differences between younger and older MPs of both Parties 
174
Table 5.6(e) 
Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs who 
 
have spent nine or less years in Parliament 
175
Table 5.6(f) 
Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs who
 
have spent more than nine years in Parliament 
175
Table 5.6(g) 
Differences between less and more politically 
 experienced 
MPs 
176
Table 5.7 
Differences between MPs by parliamentary seniority 
179
Table 5.8(a) 
Factor analysis of personality variables 
183
Table 5.8(b) 
Factor analysis of all variables 
190

---

This page intentionally left blank 

---

Series Editor’s Preface
An 11 page handwritten manuscript, Un bel tacer fu mai scritton, by Vilfredo 
Pareto (1848–1923), recently came under the hammer at Christies in London, as 
part of a Lot that included a number of separate items held together by the theme of 
mathematical social science. The manuscript – an extended book review, written in 
Italian at Céligny in 1909 – formed part of the now famous Albin Schram collection 
of autograph letters and manuscripts, which ran into over 500 lots and whose Sold 
Total was in excess of £3.8 million. There were a number of items available of 
interest to social science, including letters by Max Weber and by Adorno. These 
items sold, often fetching twice their estimates, but, nonetheless, the final prices were 
far behind those reached for other – mainly literary or historical or natural scientific 
– items. The Pareto mss had probably found its way into the Schram collection via a 
transaction in Italy in 2003. 
I want to use this example of the ‘value’ of an historical sociological document to 
examine the ‘value’ accorded to classical sociology within sociology and to consider 
the extent to which the relation of sociology to the classical tradition is a dimension 
of the history of the discipline or a theoretical enterprise in its own right in which 
past and present are more or less closely interwoven. These concerns are clearly of 
relevance to our series Rethinking Classical Sociology. 
Is the fact that this Pareto manuscript, along with other social science autograph 
letters, fetched far less than literary pieces – a letter of condolence by John Donne for 
example – or indeed other historical or scientific lots  – an indication of the lack of 
public interest in sociology, or indeed a lack of a realisation of the historical impacts on 
thought and institutions and policies of social science in the modern world? Of course, 
even those items of a scientific nature that ‘did well’ – for example, Darwin always 
commands a high price as does Freud – did not actually carry within their pages the 
scientific theories for which these authors are responsible: rather the value came from 
the aura of association: these were papers that had been seen and touched, and written 
on by famous persons. And within the disciplines that Darwin and Freud ‘founded’ 
their legacies are not without severe criticism: that is, lack of contemporary esteem for 
every idea they formulated does not correlate with the high value of their artefacts. 
All these items were of differential ‘value’ to private collectors – this was not 
an auction for academics, though some were no doubt in attendance; but common 
denominators in determining value were notions of age, authenticity, and when relevant, 
content (excellent examples of their genre for example). Rarity could play a role in 
arriving at final price, but the collector is driven to own that which exists, not to be 
familiar with the content and to intellectually ‘own’ that rather than the relic itself. 
What principles of value operate in sociology in relation to the texts from the 
past which date from the foundational eras of the discipline? There were no social 

---