Rob Henderson: Human Nature, Luxury Beliefs, and the Second-Order Consequences of Elite Education

Rob Henderson is a Gates-Cambridge Scholar pursuing a PhD in social psychology at Cambridge University, UK. His experience led him to develop insights on the upper class, luxury beliefs, human nature, and other topics in social psychology that we discuss in this interview. 

Rob’s upbringing was turbulent to say the least and shaped him to be a conservative. He bounced around foster homes and experienced the loss of his loved ones at a young age. Having graduated at the bottom of his class in high school, he decided to enlist in the US Air Force. Then, as a veteran, he subsequently enrolled in Yale University as an Eli Whitney undergraduate student. Given his working-class and military background, studying at Yale shocked him as the elite higher education culture was not anything like the military or his childhood.

Luxury beliefs are those that act as status symbols for the elite. In the past, the elites showed their wealth and status by having luxury goods. However, since it’s much easier to obtain luxury items today, the elites now have to display their status by having a set of “luxury beliefs.” 

For example, in the 60s, the elite advocated for polygamy as they viewed monogamy was outdated. This belief had a lot of serious second-order consequences as seen from 1960-2005, when the number of working class children who grew up in a two-parent household fell from 95% to 30%. Meanwhile, 95% of children from the affluent class grew up in two-parent households in both 1960 and 2005. In this case, the luxury belief of polygamy harmed only the working class, as growing up in a two-parent family is essential to having a nurturing and stable childhood. 

During the recent Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020, a lot of college students who previously had not been involved in social justice or cared about BLM suddenly took up the banner of social justice. Is this in some way a luxury belief? Does “cancel culture” on college campuses force individuals to adopt a certain set of beliefs in order to be considered socially acceptable? 

More importantly, who gets to create these luxury beliefs? Are professors and scholars in charge? Mega billionaires? Hollywood celebrities? Media personalities?... Rob interestingly said that the “second tier” elites (elites that are still affluent but not at the top of the social hierarchy) normally create these beliefs. He pointed out that Stalin, Washington, and Mao were all educated and from semi-affluent families but still played a huge role in the overturn of the existing government.

Our conversation segwayed to college education policies as Rob pointed out that the policies that the affluent enact to supposedly help the underprivileged don’t necessarily work. He criticized educated people’s emphasis on college diplomas for underprivileged kids, saying that the focus should be on stabilizing families, instead, and that education is really a red herring. 

Certainly, the opportunity to receive college education is great for working-class children, but most of the time, these kids have scars from their childhood that won’t disappear even if they attend college, and the outlook for their post-college paths isn’t always bright. Even though Rob admits it’s difficult, he suggests that helping these kids have stable two-parent households would be a better solution for them to advance the social ladder. 

In a newsletter, Rob tells the story of a Yale professor who was forced to resign over an unpopular email and of Jordan Peterson being disinvited from Cambridge for a speaking event. He says that one of the trends he’s seen in these elite institutions is “observing social mobs cancel people for dissenting against orthodoxy.” We asked Rob to further elaborate his thoughts on cancel culture on college campuses. How severe is it? Is it really as big of an issue as some conservatives make it to be?

We eventually trace issues from cancel culture to luxury beliefs back to human nature. We know that people feel more true to themselves when they go along with social influences. Why is this, and what is the implication for thinking for oneself? Is what one believes in dependent from the social environment one grew up in? If people feel most authentic following the beliefs of their social environment, how could one break from the beliefs that shaped one’s upbringing or that were most popular at places like Yale and Cambridge?

We eventually end on a discussion on the polarization of the American society today. Rob discussed whether polarization is built into human society and what forces a socially cohesive society to the extremes. 

Rob’s Twitter and newsletters are full of wonderful references to books and articles – how does he choose what to read, and what would be his recommendations for our listeners today? We encourage you to follow his Twitter and join his email list to continue learning about these ideas about our society and ourselves. 

Rob Henderson