Negative ideologies as self-fulfilling theories

The other day I posted The power of storytelling versus the power of the story. In that post I had an extensive quote from the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt (I suggest reading the whole post before proceeding). Among his comments:

When a crisis strikes, people cope in three primary ways: active coping (taking direct action to fix the problem), reappraisal (doing the work within — getting one's own thoughts right and looking for silver linings), and avoidance coping (working to blunt one's emotional reactions by denying or avoiding the events, or by drinking, drugs, and other distractions).

Optimists address negative externalities primarily through active coping and reappraisal. All well and good. Then he observes that pessimists deal with negative exogenous shocks differently.

In contrast, people who have a relatively negative affective style (complete with more activity in the front right cortex than the front left) live in a world filled with many more threats and have less confidence that they can deal with them. They develop a coping style that relies more heavily on avoidance and other defense mechanisms. They work harder to manage their pain than to fix their problems, so their problems often get worse.

Drawing the lesson that the world is unjust and uncontrollable, and that things often work out for the worst, they weave this lesson into their life story where it contaminates the narrative.

Here are a couple of other articles, books and research affirming Haidt's position - Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain by Jill Suttie and Pessimism Is Hazardous to Health, a Study Says by Philip J. Hilts.

So what happens when one's preferred ideological position is based on and depends on an assumption that "the world is unjust and uncontrollable, and that things often work out for the worst"? Does such an ideology attract only pessimists? Does it attract a normal distribution of people but does it then morph their approach to a negative affective style?

I have been reading up on a couple of academic ideologies that are pertinent to a variety of arguments that often arise in the field of children's literature (principally the degree to which children's perceptions are shaped primarily by storybooks and the putative racial/gender stereotypes therein.) The two specific ideologies are Critical Race Theory and particular arguments out of women's studies fields regarding Patriarchy. Both presume a fixed and negative external reality ostensibly inhospitable to the needs and aspirations of respectively, racial minorities and women. Part of the interesting aspect of both these theories is that in their abstract form, they are irrefutable in the sense that their predicate and unproven assumptions prevent them from being able to make testable forecasts. The other interesting aspect is that they continue to exert traction in some side conversations of the vox populi despite the overwhelming evidence against so many of their predicate assumptions.

So the irony to me has been that academically popular explanations which have such weak empirical grounds should have so much stamina, at least within the halls of academia. My assumption has been that these relatively weakly supported ideas have continued primarily because they only exist within the protected halls of academia, that outside that arena, other than in some segments of media, there is very little credence given to the arguments of CRT and adherents of Patriarchy as a negative force.

Haidt's observation provides another perspective. CRT posits that America (and any majority white governance) is inherently and necessarily suppressive of people of color. Patriarchists argue that all significant forms of disparate male-female achievement can be attributed to the suppression inherent in social patriarchy. Neither ideology seeks to validate or refute alternative explanations. Both positions are empirically and objectively refutable.

Haidt's observation suggests that perhaps the ideologues of both CRT and Patriarchy may have a different perspective that blinds them to the empirical objective data.

If you believe in an ideology that tells you that "the world is unjust and uncontrollable, and that things often work out for the worst" then you are likely, per Haidt, to adopt a different and less effective coping mechanism when dealing with the statistically inevitable range of exogenous shocks to which everyone is subject. If that is the case, then such ideological adherents will indeed see from direct experience that things do work out for the worst (because they have adopted a less effective coping mechanism). Therefore, through belief in their ideology, they do indeed experience lesser Life Outcomes than those of a more positive bent. Even though they might be confronted by statistical data indicating that their premises are incorrect for the greater population (i.e. those that do not subscribe to their belief set), those premises will have been affirmed to the ideologues, and their direct experience is allowed to trump objective data.

And that isn't irrational. There are plenty of occasions where objective empirical data is indeed wrong for a variety of reasons (poor definitions, poor measurement, corrupted measurement mechanisms, etc.)

Where this leads us though, if what Haidt says is true, is that adherents to a pessimistic ideology are likely to in fact have, on average, lesser life outcomes simply because of their belief (via the mechanism of their preferred but inferior coping technique.) You end up with the majority view being empirically true for the whole population average but the negative ideology have their beliefs affirmed empirically at the same time for their individual persons, even if it is primarily because of those beliefs.

So maybe the sustenance of these negative ideologies is not simply a matter of academic hot housing but is also empirically true for the practitioners of those beliefs because of what those beliefs drive them towards (ineffective coping).