Why Support the Underdog?

1) If Zug wins, they'll be a stronger threat to you than Urk. Hunter-gatherer tribes have a carefully maintained balance of power - chieftains are mostly an invention of agriculture.

2) "When I face an issue of great import that cleaves both constituents and colleagues, I always take the same approach. I engage in deep deliberation and quiet contemplation. I wait to the last available minute and then I always vote with the losers. Because, my friend, the winners never remember and the losers never forget." -- Sen. Everett Dirksen

It occurs to me that there may be a critical difference between voicing sympathy for a weak faction, vs. actually joining it and sharing its misfortunes.

That is to say, a near-optimal strategy in Zug vs. Urk, assuming one is currently unaffiliated and not required to join either side, is to do as much as possible to support Urk without angering Zug and incurring penalties. As a latecomer you'd get little benefit from joining Zug anyways, but in the chance of a surprise upset, when Urk comes to power you will be more likely to benefit than uninvolved parties or active Zug supporters.

My friend Cheryl suggests a non ev-psych response. Each of us is, in many senses, an underdog. We are out of the ancestral environment, and are part of societies that are too darn large. We feel like underdogs, and so when we see another, we perceive a similarity of circumstance which enhances our feelings of sympathy.

When you see two enemies fighting, you want them both to use up as many resources as possible. That way, the winner will be easy pickings for you. You accomplish this by supporting whoever is weaker. This is the sort of strategy that pops up in many multiplayer board games.

The following argument comes from an intro sociology text:

If there are three people competing, all of different strengths, it is worthwhile for the two weakest people to ban together to defeat the strongest person. This takes out the largest threat. (Specific game-theoretic assumptions were not stated.)

Doesn't this basically explain the phenomenon? If Zug kills Urk, I might be next! So I should ban together with Urk to defeat Zug. Even if Urk doesn't reward me at all for the help, my chances against Urk are better than my chances against Zug. (Under certain assumptions.)

It's totally your second explanation. The stronger faction doesn't need you - value of you joining them is really tiny. The weaker faction needs you a lot - if you joining significantly alters the balance of power, they will reward you significantly.

Because of this mechanics of power, both coalitions are close to 50:50, and it's almost always in your best interest to join the slightly smaller one. For empirical evidence look for any modern democracy, with either coalitions of parties (most of continental Europe), or of interest groups (USA). Coalitions tend to have no sense whatsoever - blacks and gays and labour and lawyers vs born-again Christians and rich people and rural poor and racists? Does it make any sense? Not at all, but the 50:50 balance is very close.

I believe without that much evidence (I've seen some mentioned in context of game theory, so I guess someone has it) that this kind of almost 50:50 coalition making is very common in tribal societies, so it might very well be very common in our ancestral environment. In which case sympathy for the underdog makes sense.

Also notice that this is just one of many forces, it will be decisive only in cases where the coalitions are almost even otherwise, just as predicted. If one coalition is far bigger than the other, or you're more aligned with one that the other, sympathy for the underdog won't be strong enough to overcome those.

I'm not sure the evidence of the proposed bias supports the type of ev-psych responses being offered.

The only cases I'm aware of underdog bias actually mattering are of the Israel-Palestine type, not the Zug-Urk type. I-P poses no significant costs or benefit to the individual. Z-U poses tremendous costs or benefits to the individual. I don't imagine I-P type support decisions meaningfully affect reproductive success. Unless there's evidence that people still side with the underdog when it really costs them something, these ev-psych explanations seem to be explaining something that doesn't happen.

I would posit that it's cultural, and it's fictional availability bias. In all of our stories, the underdog is invariably the good guy. It seems very difficult to tell a story about good giant multinational corporation beats evil little old lady. The reverse has been quite successful. Consequently, we tend to side with the underdog because we generalize from a great deal of fictional evidence that "proves" that the underdog is the good guy. This also explains why we stick with an underdog even when he ceases to be an underdog, as this is a typical pivot point in a story.

This raises the question of why this kind of story is so successful, which I admit I don't have a great answer to.

Here's another explanation (a bit like taw's). I don't find it terribly convincing either, but I don't see an outright refutation.

Suppose you have kin, or others whose welfare (in the relevant senses) is correlated with yours. Obviously you'll tend to help them. How much, and how urgently? Much more when they're in worse trouble. (As taw says, when they're in a strong position they don't need your help, so most likely your own more direct interests matter more to you.) So there's value in having a mechanism that makes you care more about people you'd have cared about anyway when they're underdogs.

Well, evolution tends to produce hacks layered on hacks, so maybe the mechanism we actually got was one for making you care about everyone more when they're underdogs. When they're random strangers, the effect isn't strong enough to make you do much more than think "oh, I hope they survive"; if they're actually enemies, it isn't strong enough to make you switch sides (Yvain and his friends didn't actually start sending money to al Qaeda just because there's something a bit awesome about taking on the whole of Western civilization from a cave in Afghanistan). But when it's someone whose welfare you really care about, it can make the difference between acting and not acting.

Note that it's beneficial (evolutionarily, I mean) to have such a reaction not only for close kin but whenever the underdog is closer to you than the oppressors. For instance, some random person is being attacked by wolves: your genes benefit (in competition with the wolves') if you help them survive.

It's worth bearing in mind how people actually behave: if Zug is so powerful and vengeful that opposing him would be flat-out suicide, people don't. They may quietly nurse grudges and wait for misfortune to befall him, but they don't take overt action. Siding with Urk is a lot more understandable once we note that people only actually do it when it is reasonably safe to do so.

Partly our empathy circuits. Humans like to help - and like to be seen to be helping. The underdog is the party that most obviously needs assistance.

Might I add Dunbar's number to this? Large powerful groups have a tendency to split (especially hunter-gatherer ones). And once they split, they often become each other's enemies. Oftentimes, it's better for the individual to be the underdog when the underdog is a group that is less likely to split.

Alternatively, let's ponder this situation: you're part of a group, a single one of many possible groups. Your group has interests in supporting the weaker groups if your group wishes to survive (of course you may be okay with having your group absorbed into another group - but remember - in hunter gatherer days, it was often difficult to be absorbed in another group with an entirely different culture from yours).

This, incidentally, reminds me a lot of the scene in Romance of Three Kingdoms where the minor warlord Zhang Xiu was wondering whether to join Cao Cao (the underdog) or Yuan Shao. His brilliant adviser told him to join Cao Cao, who ultimately toppled Yuan Shao.

How about Terror Management Theory? By supporting a cause that is probably going to win anyway, we gain little. But by supporting an unlikely cause such as Leonidas at Thermopylae, there is an increased possibility that if we succeed our accomplishments will live on past us, because it is so incredible. In this way, we would become immortal. One prediction from this explanation is that the greater the disparity between the underdog and the overdog the larger the preference towards the underdog will be, which seems to be backed up empirically (see the increased preference for Slovenia vs. Sweden in the referenced study).

My first thought was to assume it was part of the whole alpha-male dominance thing. Any male that wants to achieve the status of alpha-male starts out in a position of being an underdog and facing an entrenched opposition with all of the advantages of resources.

But, of course, alpha-males outperform when it comes to breeding success and so most genes are descended from males that have confronted this situation, strove against "impossible" odds, and ultimately won.

Of course, if this is the explanation, then one would expect there to be a strong difference in how males and females react to the appearance of an underdog.

The proffered explanations seem plausible. What about with ideas though? I think it's social signaling: 'Look how clever and independent and different I am, that I can adopt this minority viewpoint and justify it.'

(Kind of like Zahavi's handicap principle.)

EDIT: It appears I largely stole this variant on signaling strategy from http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/12/showoff-bias.html . Oh well.

There are a log of good thoughts in these comments, but they are scattered. I can see value in someone collecting them into an organized summary of the plausible arguments on this topic.

I don't think it is necessarily true that merely by joining the faction most likely to win you will share in the spoils of victory. Leaders distribute rewards based on seniority more than support. In a close contest, you would likely be courted heavily by both sides, providing a temporary boost in status, but that would disappear once the conflict is over. You will have not earned the trust of the winner since your allegiance was in doubt. I don't think there is much to gain by joining the larger side late; you'll be on the bottom of society once the dust settles, trusted by neither the winners nor the losers.

In cases like this, I think the operative value evolution would select for is not political success but sexual success. Being one of many followers does nothing to advertise ourselves as desirable mates. On the other hand, bravely fighting a losing battle (as long as you don't die in the process) signals both physical prowess (which you may not get in a lopsided victory) and other desirable traits, like courage. When the battle is over, one can assume that more money and women would be distributed to the new elite, but their children will be yours.

In a confrontation between two parties, it's more likely that the stronger one will pose the greater threat to you. By supporting the underdog and hoping for a fluke victory, you're increasing your own survival odds. It seems we're probably evolved to seek parity -- where we then have the best chance of dominating -- instead of seeking dominant leaders and siding with them, which is a far more complex and less certain process.

Am I missing something? Also, it would be interesting to see whether females and males have the same reactions toward the overdog.

This problem seems even to afflict Mencius Moldbug. His ideology of formalism seems to be based on ensuring absolute unquestionable authority in order to avoid any violence (whether used to overthrow an authority or cement the hold of an existing one). At the same time he tries to base the appeal of his reactionary narrative by pointing highlighting how reactionaries are "those who lost" (in the terms of William Appleman Williams, whom Mencius would rather not mention) and the strong horse is universalism/antinomianism.

Depending on the group size, the underdog might not be the underdog anymore with your support.

If it's a small group thing (or you have significant power) it is likely that you can determine which side wins.

The underdogs may have more at stake than the winners, and would be willing to give more in return for help. If Bob steals half of Fred's bananas every day, Bob gets to be a little better fed, and Fred dies.

If you help Fred out, he owes you his life, but Bob doesn't care nearly as much if it just means he has to go back to eating only his own bananas (that or you kill him).

If you choose to help Bob, your help isn't worth anything since he had it under control anyway.

Theory: supporting the underdog is a relatively costless longshot bet. Prediction: it will primarily occur in situations when opposing the overdog (verbally) can be done with impunity or secretly.

Overdog wins: no real consequences.

Underdog wins: "I supported you from the beginning! Can I be your trusted lieutenant?"

No one supports the underdog if they're a member, or a fan, of the overdog – only the unaffiliated are free to root for the underdog.

"By comparison, my informal experiments trying to teach people relevant facts about the region's history changed opinion approximately zero percent."

ROFL... Maybe you're trying with people who are either too emotionally involved or not clever enough?

Maybe we just don't like overdogs, bullies in the schoolyard. They are randomly dangerous.