Cognitive Inflexibility Predicts Extremist Attitudes

Abstract

Research into the roots of ideological extremism has traditionally focused on the social, economic, and demographic factors that make people vulnerable to adopting hostile attitudes toward outgroups. However, there is insufficient empirical work on individual differences in implicit cognition and information processing styles that amplify an individual’s susceptibility to endorsing violence to protect an ideological cause or group. Here we present original evidence that objectively assessed cognitive inflexibility predicts extremist attitudes, including a willingness to harm others, and sacrifice one’s life for the group. Across two samples ( N = 1,047) from the United Kingdom and United States, structural equation models demonstrated that cognitive inflexibility predicted endorsement of violence to protect the national ingroup, which in turn predicted a willingness to die for the group. These statistical models accounted for an average of 31.4% of the variance in willingness to die for the group, after accounting for demographic variables. Furthermore, cognitive inflexibility was related to greater confidence in the decision to sacrifice one’s life in an ingroup trolley problem scenario. Analysis of participants’ performance on the cognitive tasks revealed that cognitive rigidity – distinctly from other aspects of cognition – was specifically implicated as a cognitive antecedent of extremist attitudes. Implications for the study of radicalization and identity fusion through a neurocognitive lens are discussed.

Confirmation bias is adaptive when coupled with efficient metacognition

“…On a societal level, such skewed information intake might lead to entrenched beliefs, and, in turn, the prevalence of dogmatic groupings and widespread polarization (Zmigrod, 2020;Rollwage et al, 2019). In line with this hypothesis, people who show a resistance to belief updating are also more likely to show extreme political beliefs (Zmigrod, Rentfrow, et al, 2019b), aggression towards opposing political views (Zmigrod, Rentfrow, et al, 2019a), and authoritarian (Sinclair et al, 2019) or dogmatic traits (Rollwage et al, 2018;Zmigrod, Zmigrod, et al, 2019).…”

Recent advances, misconceptions, untested assumptions, and future research agenda for identity fusion theory

“…Carnes and Lickel's (2018) manifest that perceiving that the group shares core moral beliefs or convictions can also cause fusion. Finally, Zmigrod, Rentfrow, and Robbins (2018, 2019) found evidence that cognitive inflexibility and ideological orientations could shape our personal sense of nationalistic identity, bolstering fusion with national groups.…”

A Neurocognitive Model of Ideological Thinking

“…Evidence for the neurocognitive antecedents and consequences of ideologies can be found in the burgeoning fields of political neuroscience and experimental social psychology. Recent work has revealed that ideologically-neutral cognitive and perceptual decision-making processes are related to higher-level ideological convictions and beliefs (Rollwage, Dolan, & Fleming, 2018;Rollwage, Zmigrod, De-Wit, Dolan, & Fleming, 2019;Zmigrod et al, 2018aZmigrod et al, , 2018bZmigrod et al, , 2019aZmigrod et al, , 2019bZmigrod et al, , 2019cZmigrod, 2020). Three cognitive traits that have been recently shown to confer susceptibility to ideological thinking are particularly noteworthy: (a) cognitive inflexibility, (b) impaired metacognitive awareness, and (c) slower perceptual evidence accumulation processing.…”

“…Firstly, there is evidence that a tendency towards mental rigidity can foster ideological rigidity. Cognitive inflexibilityoperationalized as a difficulty with switching between modes of thinking and adapting to changing environmental contingencieshas been implicated in extreme ideological identities (for review see Zmigrod, 2020) in the context of politics (Zmigrod et al, 2020), nationalism (Zmigrod, Rentfrow & Robbins, 2018), religion (Zmigrod et al, 2019a), dogmatism (Zmigrod et al, 2019c), and a willingness to endorse violence and self-sacrifice (Zmigrod et al, 2019b). In these studies, cognitive inflexibility was measured with objective behavioural tests of executive function and perception, and so the findings are not susceptible to the problems of self-report personality surveys in which there can be biases of social-desirability, self-perception, and social norms.…”