The Return of Ideology: Personological Nuance

Abstract

The article examines the change in the nature of the political struggle in the United States, which can be described as the «return of ideology»: a turn from building political platforms as serving the interests of a complex combination of various groups to traditional ideologies, appealing, respectively, to the left – liberal – and right – conservative beliefs. The peculiarity of this «return» is that the foundations of traditional ideologies are associated with personological studies of recent years, which indicate a significant influence of stable personal characteristics on individual ideological preferences, while these characteristics demonstrate a high level of heritability, in other words, are largely congenital. The establishment of this connection changes the public perception of ideologies, turning them from a screen for economic interests into an expression of the fundamental features of certain types of people who, moreover, define themselves in the political field through opposition to each other. The article examines the influence of these theories on the understanding of the political process and their ability to provoke an aggravation of the political struggle.