The Cambridge researchers sought to evaluate whether cognitive disposition – differences in how information is perceived and processed – sculpts ideological world-views such as political, nationalistic and dogmatic beliefs, beyond the impact of traditional demographic factors like age, race and gender.
The study, built on previous research, included more than 330 US-based participants aged 22 to 63 who were exposed to a battery of tests – 37 neuropsychological tasks and 22 personality surveys – over two weeks.
The tasks were engineered to be neutral, not emotional or political – they involved, for instance, memorising visual shapes. The researchers then used computational modelling to extract information from that data about the participant’s perception and learning, and their ability to engage in complex and strategic mental processing.
Overall, the researchers found that ideological attitudes mirrored cognitive decision-making. A key finding was that people with extremist attitudes tended to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggled with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps.
“Individuals or brains that struggle to process and plan complex action sequences may be more drawn to extreme ideologies, or authoritarian ideologies that simplify the world,” the author said.
Those with tendencies towards extremism are not good at regulating their emotions, meaning they were impulsive and tended to seek out emotionally evocative experiences. This helps us understand what kind of individual might be willing to commit violence against innocent others.
Participants who are prone to dogmatism – stuck in their ways and relatively resistant to credible evidence – actually have a problem with processing evidence even at a perceptual level, the authors found.
In some cognitive tasks, participants were asked to respond as quickly and accurately as possible. People who leant towards the politically conservative tended to go for the slow and steady strategy, while political liberals took a slightly more fast and furious, less precise approach.
“It’s fascinating, because conservatism is almost a synonym for caution,” the author said. “We’re seeing that – at the very basic neuropsychological level – individuals who are politically conservative … treat every stimulus they encounter with caution.”The “psychological signature” for extremism across the board was a blend of conservative and dogmatic psychologies.
The study, which looked at 16 different ideological orientations, could have profound implications for identifying and supporting people most vulnerable to radicalisation across the political and religious spectrum.
The team found that demographics don’t explain a whole lot; they only explain roughly 8% of the variance, “Whereas, actually, when we incorporate these cognitive and personality assessments as well, suddenly, our capacity to explain the variance of these ideological world-views jumps to 30% or 40%.
(Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Natalie Grover, and Dr Leor Zmigrod at Cambridge’s department of psychology. 21/ 02/ 2021)
My take: Interesting though this is, the results are on display every day of the week, and have been on full view since the election. Once an untruth is told repeatedly and without evidence it seems to be believed with furious certainty, regardless of how many respectable people gainsay it. Nothing shakes it. It is difficult to run a successful democracy once the number of these people is significant. Those who follow Epicurus should be able to ignore all this, but as so many Germans and Italians found in the 1920s and 30’s, one’s life is potentially at stake if you do.
