Revilo Oliver papers: Does Integration Equal Progress?

The paper discussed here (Does Integration Equal Progress?) was found among the papers of Prof. Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994), a professor of classics at the University of Illinois and an important racialist thinker who was quite aware of Jewish influence in opposition to the interests of White Americans. He was entirely in the mainstream of conservative thinking until expunged from the movement by William F. Buckley. Wikipedia:

Oliver was an early book reviewer for National Review from 1956 until May 1960 when he was ousted by its editor, William F. Buckley Jr, for his public antisemitism.^[9] Oliver also wrote for The American Mercury.^[2] Buckley, who aimed to make conservatism more respectable to Americans averse to antisemitism and extremism, kept a close friendship with Oliver but acknowledged privately that Oliver was antisemitic.^[10]

In 1958, Oliver joined as a founding member of Robert W. Welch, Jr.‘s John Birch Society, an anti-communist organization.^[11][12] He was a member of its national board and associate editor of its magazine, American Opinion.^[13][1][12] In 1962, Buckley repudiated Welch and the “Birchers”, saying they were “far removed from common sense” and urging the GOP to purge itself of Welch’s influence.^[14] The repudiation drove a wedge in Buckley’s friendship with Oliver.^[10]

Revilo Oliver paper: Does Integration Equal Progress?

Oliver’s article makes two main points. First, he was aware of the  importance of Jewish influence on the demise of thinking in terms of race and biologically based race differences. I was particularly gratified to notice that he used the same quote from Melvin Herskovits, a Boas protégé, that I use in Chapter 2 of The Culture of Critique, on the influence of Franz Boas:

[Boas’s] protégé Melville Herskovits (1953, p. 23) noted:

[T]he four decades of the tenure of [Boas’s] professorship at Columbia gave a continuity to his teaching that permitted him to develop students who eventually made up the greater part of the significant professional core of American anthropologists, and who came to man and direct most of the major departments of anthropology in the United States. In their turn, they trained the students who . . . have continued the tradition in which their teachers were trained.

This quote and much else also appeared in Carleton Putnam’s Race and Reason: A Yankee View (Public Affairs Press, 1961) and shows clearly that even in the 1950s there was a significant community of intellectuals who understood the importance of Jewish influence on thinking about race and were aware of race differences in intelligence and ability to inhibit biological tendencies seated in the more evolutionarily ancient parts of the brain. Regarding intelligence, Oliver notes:

There is reason to believe that hot climates shape human evolution in ways which inhibit, or at least do not adequately stimulate, the growth of mental capacity. In their book, Geography of Intellect, Nathaniel Weyl and Stefan Possony state: “Tropical man is shaped by evolutionary forces to enable him to lose body heat by sweating; this dictates a specific somatic, or physical, structure and accordingly, he is lean, attenuated and has a high ratio of skin surface to bulk. this tends to produce narrow pelves and heads with subnormal cranial capacity. In the case of the Negro, there is a good deal of evidence that the smaller brain capacity means a more than proportionate reduction in the capacity of the new brain, namely, those cortical areas which are specifically adapted to the higher process of reasoning.3

Such reasoning fits well with the later writing of authors such as J. P. Rushton and other who have emphasized that northern  climates favored intelligence and foresight needed to plan for a long winter when crops could not grow. Instant gratification was strongly selected against. —

These findings are  broadly compatible with my own work emphasizing the importance of prefrontal cortical control of impulses (MacDonald, K., 2008; Effortful Control, Explicit Processing and the Regulation of Human Evolved Predispositions. Psychological Review, 115(4), 1012–1031). Here Oliver quotes a Prof. J. J. Connelly on brain differences in prefrontal control between Blacks and Whites:

Comparing the two large groups of Whites and Negroes, while the variability is large and there is much overlapping, the mean values reveal significant differences. The dimensions correlate well with what we might expect from a knowledge of the cranium in the two races. The Negro brain is on the average relatively longer, narrower, and flatter, than the brain of Whites. The frontal region, as measured by the projectional distance to midpoint of central culcus, is, relative to the total length of the brain, larger in male Whites than in Negroes, while the parietal is larger in Negroes than in Whites…It can be said that the pattern of the frontal lobes in the White brains of our series is more regular, more uniform than in the Negro brain,..The White series is perhaps slightly more fissurated and there is more anastomosing of the sulci [indicating greater complexity more apparent in higher primates]. It is a matter of frequencies.

I do not discuss race differences in this paper because it is impossible to get a paper published in a mainstream  psychology journal that has an evidence-based discussion of race differences in brain size or anything else. It’s interesting that Putnam discusses interviewing academics who personally accepted the importance of race differences but were afraid to say so publicly:

Most of them expressed their reluctance in terms of a temporary condition. One was about to publish a book and he felt it more important in the long run to keep the track clear for the book than to declare his position now. Another had a confidential assignment for his state that he must first perform. Another said, “I cannot commit academic suicide. I still have work to do. But when I retire—!” Another was simply “biding his time.” How much of this was rationalization, arising from a timidity that ought to be overcome, I would not venture to say. It was easy enough for me, a man entirely independent of control, to speak—indeed it made my obligation unavoidable. It was less easy for them. (p. 21)

So even in the 1950s the academic world was being rigorously policed to favor environmentalist views on race and punish dissenters. However, Richard Lynn has written on race differences in prefrontal control (Race Differences in Psychopathic Personality: An Evolutionary Perspective; Washington Summit Press, 2018), summarized in my Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition:

People who are low on Nurturance/Pair Bonding are prone to psychopathic personality—exploitative interpersonal relationships, lack of warmth, love, and empathy, an inability to form long term pair bonds and close, confiding relationships, and lack of guilt or remorse for violating others’ rights. The finding that males in the general population are three times as likely as females to be categorized with Antisocial Personality Disorder[1] fits with the robust sex differences in this system. Psychopathic personality, which is characterized by lack of empathy and social bonds, is associated with having many sexual partners, an uncommitted approach to mating, sexual coercion,[2] many short sexual relationships, sexual promiscuity,[3] and lack of nurturance of children.[4]

In terms of race differences, the Nurturance/Love system is a central aspect of a slow life history strategy,[5] with the result that it is expected that African and African-derived populations will be less prone to affectionate pair bonding and paternal investment in children, and more prone to short-term sexual relationships. Indeed, while African mothers are sensitive and responsive to babies’ needs, mother-child interactions in prototypical African cultures are devoid of the warmth and affection that are typical in European cultures.[6] Thus Mary Ainsworth, a pioneer in attachment research, found that Ugandan babies were quite securely attached despite the fact that their mothers rarely showed any affection toward them—a phenomenon also noted by Robert and Sarah LeVine for another African group.[7]

Prefrontal Executive Control (PEC). Having a reputation as conscientious and dependable is important for being accepted in a moral community [a central institution of social control in individualistic Western cultures]. A relatively recent trend in evolution, especially in the Primate line, has been the evolution of a centralized control system able to integrate and coordinate lower-level adaptations. This top-down Prefrontal Executive Control (PEC) system control enables coordination of specialized adaptations, including all of the mechanisms associated with the Behavioral Approach System (BAS) [e.g., proneness to reward seeking].[8] PEC involves explicit processing of linguistic and symbolic information and the top-down control of behavior. Unlike the automatic processing typical of the BAS, it is able to evaluate complex contexts in order to generate behavior that is adaptive in contemporary human societies with their constantly changing, highly complex environments.

For example, emotional states resulting from adaptations designed to react to evolutionary regularities may place people in a prepotently aggressive state energized by anger [e.g., an insult]—an emotional state that is one of the subsystems of the BAS [Behavioral Approach System] discussed above. However, whether or not aggression actually occurs may also be influenced, at least for people with sufficient levels of the the PEC system, by explicit evaluation of the wider context, including explicit evaluation of the possible costs and benefits of the aggressive act (e.g., penalties at law, possible retaliation). These explicitly calculated costs and benefits are not recurrent over evolutionary time but are products of the analytic system evaluating current environments and producing mental models of possible consequences of behavior.

Individual differences in PEC are most closely associated with the personality trait of conscientiousness.[9] Conscientiousness involves variation in the ability to defer gratification and pleasure (both related to the BAS) in the service of attaining long-term goals, persevering in unpleasant tasks, paying close attention to detail, and behaving in a responsible, dependable, cooperative manner. Not  surprisingly, conscientiousness is also associated with academic success;[10] indeed, higher conscientiousness is likely the reason for the finding of sex differences favoring females throughout the school years, including college.

Conscientiousness refers to “socially prescribed impulse control that facilitates task and goal-directed behavior”[11] and is thus central to understanding undercontrolled behaviors associated with psychopathic personality.[12] Specifically, variation in PEC is central to understanding the difference between controlled and uncontrolled aggression—i.e., the difference between an impulsive act of aggression carried out in anger because of an insult versus a well-planned attack of revenge carried out in cold blood. Variation in PEC is also central to controlling reward-oriented behavior, another central component of the BAS.[13] Individuals with low levels of prefrontal control are prone to impulsivity, substance abuse, and have low levels of emotional control, including relative inability to control anger, a prime motivator of some types of aggression.

Richard Lynn’s Race Differences in Personality: Whites as More Generous and Empathic than Other Races

Richard Lynn’s Race Differences in Personality provides a welcome review of the personality literature related to race differences that fits well with the material on personality discussed above.[14] Studies from the United States have consistently found a rank ordering of races on behaviors related to psychopathic personality—highest in Blacks and Native Americans, followed by Hispanics, lower in Whites, and lowest in Asians, especially in Northeast Asians. The variables studied in the research included conduct disorder, direct measures of psychopathic personality, measures of sexual promiscuity (indicating less proneness to pair bonding and being high on the BAS), conscientiousness (Blacks vs. Whites only), criminality, school suspensions, emotional intelligence (Blacks vs. Whites only), drug and substance abuse, child abuse, and self-esteem (linked to the BAS: individuals high on the BAS are prone to high self-esteem and self-confidence). An important exception to this rank ordering is in behavior related to altruism and charitable giving (see discussion below). In general, as with IQ, race differences are greatest between Whites and Blacks and much attenuated between Whites and Northeast Asians.

Given the data on European individualism and its effects on mating patterns (highlighting the importance of love and pair bonding in choice of marriage partner compared to more kinship-oriented societies), I suggest that the differences between Northeast Asians and Whites are best explained mainly by differences in Prefrontal Executive Control. The results for Blacks clearly indicate higher levels of the BAS, lower on Love/Nurturance, and lower on PEC.

So Prof. Oliver was correct to emphasize race differences in the ability to control impulses. The academic world was hostile to such ideas back in the 1950s and remains so today.

[1] American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (Washington DC, 2012).

[2] Martin L. Lalumiere and Vernon L. Quinsey, “Sexual Deviance, Antisociality, Mating Effort, and the Use of Sexually Coercive Behaviors,” Personality and Individual Differences. 21 (1996): 33–48.

[3] Robert D. Hare, Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) (2nd ed.) (Toronto: Multi-Health Systems, Inc., 2003).

[4] Andrea L. Glenn and Adrian Raine, “Psychopathy and Instrumental Aggression: Evolutionary, Neurobiological, and Legal Perspectives,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 32 (2009): 253–258.

[5] Aurelio J. Figueredo et al. “The Psychometric Assessment of Human Life History Strategy: A Meta-analytic Construct Validation,” Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences 8, no. 3 (2014): 148–185.

[6] Kevin MacDonald, Emily Patch, and Aurelio José Figueredo, “Love, Trust, and Evolution: Nurturance/Love and Trust as Two Independent Attachment Systems Underlying Intimate Relationships,” Psychology 7, no. 2 (2016): 238–253.

[7] Mary D. S. Ainsworth, Infancy in Uganda (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967); Robert A. LeVine and Sarah E. LeVine, “Parental Strategies among the Gusii of Kenya,” in Robert A. LeVine, Patrice M. Miller, and Mary Maxwell West (eds.), Parental Behavior in Diverse Societies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988): 28–35.

[8] MacDonald, “Effortful Control, Explicit Processing, and the Regulation of Human Evolved Predispositions.”

[9] Ibid.

[10] Oliver P. John and Sanjay Srivastava, “The Big Five Trait Taxonomy: History, Measurement, and Theoretical Perspectives,” in Lawrence A. Pervin and Oliver P. John (Eds.), Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, 2nd ed. (New York: Guilford Press: 102–138.

[11] Ibid., 121; italics in original

[12] Adrian Raine, “Psychophysiology and Antisocial Behavior: A Biosocial Perspective and a Prefrontal Dysfunction Hypothesis,” in Daniel M. Stoff, James Breiling, and Jack D. Maser (Eds.), Handbook of Antisocial Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1997): 289–304.

[13] MacDonald, “Effortful Control, Explicit Processing, and the Regulation of Human Evolved Predispositions.”

[14] Lynn, Race Differences in Personality.