there's no such thing as "mental illness."
Are Liberals Crazy? part IV: deconstructing the P-Factor
This article was inspired by Ian Jobling’s piece, What If Mental Illnesses Aren’t Illnesses?
When I say “there’s no such thing as mental illness,” this doesn’t mean that “there’s no such thing as mental illnesses.” The distinction between singular and plural is important.
In the psychometrics of intelligence, G-factor is the general factor of intelligence. In the psychometrics of mental illness, the P-factor is the general factor of psychopathology. Liberals have a higher P-factor than conservatives, but unlike intelligence and G, the correlation between P and each individual mental illness is much weaker.
Verbal IQ correlates well with mathematical IQ. Just as some cognitive abilities are more G-loaded (they are more predictive of overall intelligence), some psychopathologies are more P-loaded. The most P-loaded psychopathologies are anxiety, depression, neuroticism, and narcissism. These traits have a higher rate of comorbidity with a basket of other psychopathologies.
However, this is a deceptive definition of pathology, since it is these “highly P-loaded” traits which are the most adaptive, while it is the “low P-loaded” traits (like Down’s Syndrome) that are the least adaptive.
When I say, “there’s no such thing as mental illness,” but there are in fact “mental illnesses,” I am claiming that, unlike intelligence, it is not scientifically accurate to claim that there is a general factor of mental illness. Breaking a bone does not correlate well with catching a flu; eczema does not correlate well with catching Lyme’s Disease.
There might be some kind of GP-factor of general pathology, where any injury or disease is more likely to lead to another injury or disease. More specifically, there might be an I-factor of injury, where one injury leads to another, because some people are clumsy or risk-seeking and more likely to be injured than others. But this would be weaker than the G-factor, or an S-factor of physical strength. There’s no such thing as “luck,” or an L-factor, where some people are lucky, and others are unlucky.
I may be going too far in declaring that “the P-factor doesn’t exist and is useless,” but it is certainly weaker and less statistically significant than the G-factor, especially when we consider that the four most strongly P-loaded “diseases” have fitness payoffs. A person who uses big words and a person who calculates big numbers is tapping into related mechanisms of intelligence (whatever that means). It is not the case that a neurotic person is tapping into some well of “general pathology” that also increases their likelihood of Down’s Syndrome — at least not to the same extent that verbal IQ and math IQ are related.
True mental illnesses have diverse origins. Some are caused by concussive forces. For example, personality changes can result from traumatic brain injury. Others are genetic and heritable, like Fragile X Syndrome. Others are not heritable, but are due to genetic mutations, as in the case of Down’s Syndrome.1 Others can be caused by epigenetic effects, or exposure to toxics or pollution, such as mercury poisoning.
The problem with including narcissism, neuroticism, depression, and anxiety in a P-factor is that, qualitatively, they do not consistently meet the definition of pathology from an evolutionary or biological perspective. Since the P-factor relies most heavily on these traits for proof of its existence, I am leaning toward skepticism of its existence.
In this sense, there is no such thing as “general mental illness” in the way that there exists “general intelligence,” but there are diverse and unrelated mental illnesses, which must be clearly distinguished according to their pathological impact on biological, reproductive, and evolutionary fitness. Some so-called mental illnesses are better described as deviations from the norm, since they are not pathological, despite the insistence of conservatives.
There are many forms of mental illness, and each of them is not equally weighted in terms of harm, depending on the context. A fear of heights could be considered a phobia, but few would contend that a fear of heights is as destructive as a suicide attempt. A fear of heights is not inherently pathological, either, since it has an evolutionary payoff in reducing deaths due to falling.
Within the context of a person’s performance as a tight-rope walker, a fear of heights would be costly. I would also contend that the suicide at Masada should not be considered pathological, especially if that suicide inspired greater levels of Jewish ethnocentrism at a group level across Israel. The martyr complex is only pathological at the myopic level of the individual, since it provides group-level payoffs.
Psycho-Deviance
When referring to narcissism, neuroticism, anxiety, and depression, I prefer the term “psycho-deviance” to psychopathology, because pathologies are traits without redeeming qualities. There are no evolutionary advantages to having a broken leg, or catching the flu.
However, leftism provides evolutionary advantages, especially to those with low SES. Anxiety, depression, and neuroticism carry group-selective advantages, and narcissism provides advantages to the individual. It is not correct, from an evolutionary perspective, to call these pathologies. That is a conservative moral judgment, not a biological or scientific one.
Imagine, for example, a “Noah” figure with extreme schizophrenia, narcissism, delusions of grandeur, autism, and neuroticism. His extreme personality traits, in the past, may have allowed him to become a prophet or shaman.
If mentally deviant people like Charles Manson are more likely to become cult leaders than conscientious stable personalities, and cult leaders are more sexually successful, then this psychological deviance is a high-risk, high-reward evolutionary strategy. If one hyper-successful cult leader passes on his genes to a large enough percentage of women, these genes for psycho-deviance will persist in the population, even if they are deleterious when expressed in combination with other traits (like low testosterone or low intelligence).
Obviously, the homeless man defecating on the sidewalks of San Francisco is not evolutionarily successful — right? Surely? You would be wrong. 13% of young homeless women are pregnant, which is double the national rate. Roughly 60% of homeless people are men, and 40% are women. This means that, as a homeless man, you are more likely to come in contact with a hyper-fertile group of women than you are as a normal dude.
It may be the case that homeless communities practice polygamy, where one “alpha homeless” guy impregnates all the women. Extensive genetic testing on children born to homeless women could help determine the level of effective polygamy. But it isn’t obvious that homeless people are less fertile than non-homeless people.
We can call homeless people pathological, but this isn’t a biological or scientific definition of pathology until we prove that they have lower fertility. Schizophrenics, at an individual level, do have 50% of the fertility of the average person. However, the relatives of schizophrenics have a higher fertility than average.2
I will address the causes for this in a future article, but for now, we shouldn’t simply assume that schizophrenia has no net group-level evolutionary advantage. Without proof to the contrary, all heritable persistent human traits should be viewed as having payoffs and tradeoffs. While schizophrenia has clear tradeoffs, in terms of disconnectedness with reality, it may have group-level benefits.
I’m not suggesting that diseases or pathologies don’t exist. Having a broken leg or a case of the flu is pathological (at least in pre-modern populations), because it leads to decreased sexual success. But just because leftists have lower fertility doesn’t mean that their personality traits are pathological, since they might also provide group-level benefits.
Data from Sweden indicates that, in highly developed countries, individuals with IQs under 80 have significantly lower fertility. Since intelligence correlates with psychological stability, it seems reasonable to assume that mentally deviant people also have lower fertility. However, this isn’t the case for all mental deviations:
in a high-fertility human population… In women, neuroticism positively predicts the number of children3
With these caveats in mind, let us consider some of the confounding variables between leftism, mental deviance, gender, and age.
gender, age, and sexuality.
Liberals are more likely to be women, and women have a higher rate of diagnosed mental illness. Liberals are more likely to be young, and young people have a higher rate of diagnosed mental illness.
Liberals are still more mentally deviant even when we control for these factors:
“The relationship between anxiety and wokeness could mostly not be explained by age… these results mostly held up in regressions that adjusted for age, sex, and race.”4
If we are going to say “leftism is bad because it correlates with mental illness,” would we also say, “youth is bad because it correlates with mental illness”? Even if youth does correlate with mental illness, it is not bad in itself to be young, and being young holds many advantages. Rather than seeing youth, or leftism, as bad because of psycho-deviance alone, the whole picture should be shown. Let’s explore some reasons why young people are more mentally ill.
Why are youth more mentally ill?
Here are some possible explanations:
Dysgenics or mutational load;
Environmental factors:
Hormonal pollution;
Worsening diets;
Increased obesity;
Cultural changes (internet, cellphones, religion).
Who is at fault for these: liberals or conservatives?
Regarding mutational load, it is conservatives who fight abortion and promote natalism for the poor.
Regarding pollution, it is conservatives who fight environmental regulation.
Regarding diets and obesity, it is conservatives who are more obese.
It might also be the case that young people have always been more mentally unstable, and that mental stability increases with age. Or, perhaps we have become more culturally sensitive to mental deviance, and more testing is being done on younger people. Perhaps young people see it as higher status to receive a diagnosis than past generations. The “mental illness epidemic” among young people might be an artificially induced byproduct of an increase in narcissism and the desire for attention among young people. Narcissism, however, is not a pathology for the individual, since caring about one’s self and competing for attention provides fitness payoffs:
[Narcissism] positively indirectly predicted number of children via higher positive childbearing motivations5
This payoff is not without tradeoffs, since narcissism also negatively correlated with relationship length. Narcissistic women are more likely to be single mothers, and narcissistic men are more likely to be divorced dads. Narcissism appears to be an R-selective strategy — but R-selection is not a pathology.
Feminism Fights Dysgenics
If the dysgenics or mutational load theory is correct, then conservatives might accuse leftists of causing dysgenics for a host of reasons: decreasing the fertility of the intelligent or education; using socialism to reduce the mortality of the unfit; inviting in refugees from the third world.
Refugees may have lower intelligence, but they are not higher in neuroticism, depression, or anxiety. In fact, mass immigration is suppressing these traits.
Reductions in child mortality since 1950 have been minimal; reductions since 1980 have been negligent. Even if the welfare state were abolished, it is not apparent that this would significantly increase child mortality enough to have “eugenic effects,” since welfare itself might suppress fertility by discouraging marriage.
What about the effects of leftism in suppressing the fertility of the educated and the intelligent? Didn’t conservative, traditional societies have eugenic fertility, per Lynn?
In a paper published in 2012 by Michaela Potancokova, 58 countries were surveyed by their total fertility rates. Within each country, six segments of society were then surveyed for their education-specific TFR:
no education
incomplete primary (left education before 3rd grade)
completed primary (4th grade education, basic reading, writing, and arithmetic)
lower secondary (8th grade)
upper secondary (12th grade)
post-secondary (college or university)
For those countries with a high total fertility, like Niger, the trend is strongly dysgenic by education. This means that those with no education have, on average, four more children than those with the most education.
For countries with low total fertility, like South Korea, the dysgenic trend shrinks dramatically, toward a vanishing point.
If we project this trend forward, it is entirely possible that the dysgenic trend will reverse toward a “eugenic” norm, where those with more education have more children. This is already the case in Finland.
It is not necessarily the case that those who are more educated or intelligent are more “biologically fit” than those of average intelligence. My purpose is merely to defeat the conservative accusation of “leftist dysgenics.”
The data from South Korea and Finland shows that, when a society has low total fertility, the “dysgenic gap” closes. When a society has high total fertility, the “dysgenic gap” widens. To close the gap, the best method is to lower total fertility.
Feminism is the primary cause of low fertility. Religious communities which reject feminism, like Muslim, Jewish, and Christian fundamentalism, all have high fertility. Feminism, therefore, is eugenic. If young people are more mentally ill due to mutational loud or dysgenics, then the solution is more feminism, and more leftism. Leftism is the cure, not the disease.
Conservatives claim that “liberals create dysgenic conditions; liberals cause obesity; liberals control the culture,” and then blame liberalism for worsening mental illness for society as a whole. However, liberals also practice assortative mating; they place a higher value on higher education; and they are less obese.
It may be true that liberals are ruining the country, but as parents, liberals do a much better job of avoiding childhood obesity and emphasizing the importance of education. This is an intra-racial statement that only applies to the majority population. Black conservatives may emphasize education more than black liberals. This aids my case that “wokeness” is a white and Jewish phenomenon, and is part of a larger evolutionary strategy.
Wokeness by gender:
Women reported almost no change in incidence of mental health treatment between “slightly slightly conservative” and “extremely liberal.” Wokeness does not cause mental illness in women. Extremely conservative women were less likely to receive treatment for mental illness, but this might be because of anti-scientific attitudes, a substitution of therapy for religious counseling, and differential birth rates.
Conclusion
Emil Kirkegaard claims that leftists are more “P-loaded,” since they have higher rates of narcissism, neuroticism, depression, and anxiety. However, assuming that these traits are pathological at the group-level is unwarranted, given their exceptional persistence in white and Jewish populations. Conservatives should stop being anti-white and antisemitic, and consider the possibility that their moral values are biasing what they claim are “objective, scientific, biological definitions of pathology.”
Emil is certainly not alone in this error: neuroticism, anxiety, depression, and narcissism have been described as pathological for hundreds if not thousands of years. Similarly, women have been described as overly emotional, hysterical, and the “weaker sex.” But when we test these claims against biological reality, a different picture emerges.
Psychological stability can be viewed as a “low risk, low reward” strategy. Psycho-deviance, on the other hand, is “high risk, high reward.” Cult leaders are narcissistic, delusional, and disconnected from reality, but their strategy provides fitness payoffs. Even the homeless, who are notoriously mentally deviant, have higher fertility than average.
Conservatives have a higher disgust reaction than leftists. They also have a stronger behavioral immune system. Conversely, conservatives are lower in openness. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The conservative fantasy is riding out the apocalypse by using time-tested survival strategies in the wilderness.
The leftist fantasy, by contrast, is averting the apocalypse through a “moral revival” which saves the world. Noah was not a conservative, but a rebel with a delusional sense of his own importance as the “world savior.” Jesus carried his own cross in order to save the world. Taking radical, unprecedented, unusual, or non-traditional actions isn’t conservative, but it can have massive fitness payoffs.
Joseph Smith reintroduced polygamy, and although his followers were hunted down, killed, and imprisoned, he managed to be much more biologically successful than if he had followed the existing Christin sects of his time. The rise of agriculture, 12,000 years ago, was not introduced by conservatives, but by leftist priests whose unique personality traits allowed them to reorganize society around a set of planting and harvesting rituals.
In Part Five, we will explore how religion suppresses or hides mental illness, artificially making it appear as if conservatives are “mentally healthier” than liberals.
In 99% of cases — in 1% of cases, Down’s Syndrome does have a heritable component.
1997, Fertility and schizophrenia: evidence for increased fertility in the relatives of schizophrenic patients: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9350954/
2010, Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1001752107
2024, Explaining the Links Between Narcissism and Fertility: Are There Differences Between the Grandiose and Vulnerable Component?: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-024-00421-3
This rebuttal to that page on the "P-factor" was a long time coming. Excellent article.
Nobody seems to have ever given me an example of what a non-mentally ill person looks like. This only strengthens your argument.