ABSTRACT
The principal objective of the MP study was to clarify the extent to which Pareto's 'lions' and 'foxes' actually exist, at the level of either individual or social personality, within the Westminster Parliament. The linking of liberalism with altruism and conservatism with non-altruism can be further developed with reference to the scarcity hypothesis which informed Inglehart's more mature view of postmaterialism. This might draw heavily upon the view of psychological conservatism as a crisis orientation whose markers are a tendency to hoard possessions, to ration helping behaviours according to genetic similarity, to display suspicion and hostility towards out-groups, and to think rigidly and categorically at low levels of integrative complexity. The student study confirmed truths which have become embedded within the psychological literature over decades, appearing earlier not just within Pareto's sociology but also within the intuitions of political commentators dating back centuries.
