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Some puzzling political phenomena I’ve pondered lately:
We trust government more when we feel vulnerable to it, and then avoid info that might undermine such trust.
We don’t elect actors and other celebrities, who we seem to trust, respect, like, know, etc. more than the politicians we elect.
We think we’d be horrified live under a king, but quite enjoy stories set in such places.
We over-estimate leader autonomy, neglecting their need to serve supporting coalitions.
We love to look down on submissive sheep who accept domination by the powerful. And we think of ourselves as quite different, eager to control our leaders via democracy, and to keep them from becoming kings. Some of our actions even fit well with this story. But many other actions fit badly.
I hypothesize that much of this hails from our homo hypocritus heritage. Humans developed language to express and enforce social norms, most importantly to limit domination and related supporting behavior, such as bragging. But then foragers quickly learned to dominate and submit covertly, just out of reach of language-based norm enforcement. So we should expect to have many complex, subtle, and mostly unconscious capacities to dominate and submit, while pretending otherwise.
Thus we should expect to see people giving lip service to resisting domination, while largely accepting it when resistance is costly. We should be prone to telling ourselves that our dominators serve our interests well, when in fact we are just scared of being beaten down. We tell ourselves that our leaders’ power is solid, even when we notice cracks, to avoid appearing disloyal. And we tell ourselves that we want likable leaders, when we are actually more impressed by strength. Homo hypocritus cowers in a corner, pretending to examine a spot on the ground.
Political Puzzles
I think the claim that "we don't elect celebrities" needs to be substantiated. They may simply not run. In elections where celebrities do run, does their celebrity status help them or hinder them?
We trust government more when we feel vulnerable to it, and then avoid info that might undermine such trust.
That simply isn't what the evidence you linked says. Instead it says we trust government/authorities more on issues feel are too complex for us to understand (note that if we in fact feel we don't understand an issue we are obviously highly inclined to think it's complex). Well actually the study only backs up the idea that we trust the government less on contested issues that we think are simple. If you started asking people whether they trust the government policy of punishing murder I suspect you would find extreme trust. So basically all this says is that if you think an issue is simple then you can easily see that government policy isn't adopting the 'obviously' right answer so you are more likely to distrust the government on that issue. Also it's eminently rational to avoid spending time learning more information about an issue you feel is too complex for you to form a useful opinion about.
The only irrational behavior the study seems to demonstrate is a bias toward believing the government isn't powerless to deal with threatening situations. So on this minor point there is probably some Homo Hypocritus style behavior going on where we talk up the positive even while preparing (hoarding oil) for the worst. However, this particlar bias is easily explained on it's own without invoking an entire Homo Hypocritus theory (better moral/loyalty helps avoid the bad outcome and those groups who experienced the bad outcome didn't reproduce).
We don’t elect actors and other celebrities, who we seem to trust, respect, like, know, etc. more than the politicians we elect.
If you will note popularity and trust are highly context dependent. Traits we might admire in a celebrity would make them unelectable as a politician.
Asking if you trust/like/etc.. a celebrity is simply a different question than asking if you trust/like/etc.. a politician as only the later question is implicitly about their ability to govern.
We think we’d be horrified live under a king, but quite enjoy stories set in such places.
Umm so? No woman really wants to be raped yet studies show large majorities of women enjoy rape fantasies (yes ok with 7 billion people there is bound to be someone who is screwed up enough to want almost anything but the point stands).
As pointed out above a king provides for individual narratives that get out the vote drives don't. Besides, often fantasy novels assume that good and just kings do exist, are in fact supernaturally ordained for their role, and yield good just heirs (with only occasional exceptions). Liking kings in fiction is about as relevant to what government we prefer in the real world as is liking stories about magic is to whether we believe in ESP. Besides, I think you radically underestimate how willing people would be to accept a divinely ordained king.
We over-estimate leader autonomy, neglecting their need to serve supporting coalitions.
I'd like to see some evidence. I suspect we underestimate leader autonomy simply because such a small set of issues they decide is ever covered in the media. Indeed, I suspect the leaders tend to make much better decisions than the voters who choose them would advocate.
Sure, congressmen and presidents may grant tax giveaways and other benefits to certain groups and sometimes these benefits come in the form of market inefficiencies like monopolies. However, the total percent of GDP they affect is likely quite small and I suspect the giveaways more often they take the form of simple tax breaks, land/resource usage and other pure transfers and by Coarse this just rearranges who has the money but doesn't harm overall efficiency. Additionally the leader often has the choice of which bone to throw to a given constituency.
Moreover, this influence is often conducted right out in the open (liberals pressuring Obama on DADT) and people are extremely cynical about the extent to which leaders are further influenced by industry lobbyists. On the other hand there are so many minor issues that are decided by congress and the president every day that don't even rise to the level of attracting significant interest groups that have massive implications for social utility.
So to the extent this is even a measurable claim (how does one measure leader autonomy, how do you phrase the question to the public) I'm far from convinced it's true.