Crises that undermine cultural self-worth push people toward charismatic leaders.
Evidence
Becker began by observing that charismatic leaders rarely assume power unilaterally without the enthusiastic assent of their followers. He then made the now familiar point that we humans procure psychological equanimity by being valued in the eyes of higher powers: at first our parents, and, as we mature, the culture at large. But when protracted difficulties or acute crises arise, when the crops fail and the hunters return empty-handed, when wars are lost, when people are plagued with economic woes and civil unrest to the point where the cultural scheme of things no longer seems to provide a reliable basis for feeling significant and secure, they will look elsewhere to fulfill that need. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 459
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that chronic crisis, not just acute threat, transfers a person’s self-worth need from culture to a single leader is a dense mechanism worth sitting with.