Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [39]
Many of those who blame the paranoia on economic conditions are unaware of the psychological underpinnings of their argument. The commonsense idea is based on what social psychologists call the frustration-aggression theory. According to the theory, when people are blocked from achieving a desired goal (frustration), they become angry (aggression). But instead of directing their anger toward the source of the frustration, they displace it onto vulnerable targets such as minorities. 17 The theory is sometimes called the scapegoat theory of prejudice, but it differs from classic scapegoating in that the frustrated individuals are redirecting their emotions, not transferring blame. For instance, one famous study found that in the old South, lynchings became more frequent whenever the price of cotton fell. The authors concluded that while Southern whites did not hold blacks responsible the price drops, the economic consequences produced frustration, leading Southern whites to wrathfully vent their anger at black victims.18
So, in the context of today’s persecution politics, a proponent of the frustration-aggression theory would argue that economic deprivation has produced widespread frustration, resulting in a surge of anger and aggression. But instead of directing their aggression at the source of the hardship—financial deregulation and high-risk investments—many people have displaced their aggression onto conveniently accessible villains to whom they ascribe incredible powers for evil—liberal elites, militant homosexuals, etc.
If the theory is correct, one could address the growth of persecution politics either by fixing the underlying economic conditions that created the frustration or by redirecting the aggression toward the true source of the hardship. Thus, Thomas Frank suggested that Democrats dropped the ball by allowing Republicans to redirect working-class anger from corporate fat cats to “liberal elites” and should recover their traditional working-class constituency by aggressively taking on the corporate interests that have exacerbated the economic decline of the lower middle class. President Obama, on the other hand, complacently predicted that the surge of anger that followed his election will dissipate once the country emerges from recession.
But there are reasons to suspect that the frustration-aggression theory is at best an incomplete explanation for the growth of right-wing paranoia. When psychologists originally applied the theory to group scapegoating in 1940, it seemed like a plausible explanation for the fascist anti-Semitism that arose during Germany’s economic depression. Subsequent psychological studies, however, failed to confirm the phenomenon in the context of large social groups, and some earlier corroborating studies, such as the one that correlated cotton prices and lynchings, have been heavily criticized as flawed.19
Moreover, today’s Tea Party demographics don’t support the hypothesis. If Tea Parties appealed to victims of the recession, you would expect them to attract the poor and unemployed, but according to the New York Times-CBS poll, 56 percent of Tea Party supporters earn over $50,000 a year, including 20 percent who earn over $100,000—in contrast to 44 and 14 percent of all poll respondents. Only 6 percent of Tea Party supporters are unemployed and looking for work—as opposed to 15 percent of all respondents.20 Thus, most Tea Party supporters do not seem to fit the model of the bitter working-class stiff staggering under the weight of economic hardship.
Finally, while economic changes may contribute to the growth of political paranoia, historical data suggest that the relationship is far from simple. One recent statistical