Political Ideology and Executive Functioning: The Effect of Conservatism and Liberalism on Cognitive Flexibility and Working Memory Performance

Abstract

Although models of political ideology traditionally focus on the motivations that separate conservatives and liberals, a growing body of research is directly exploring the cognitive factors that vary due to political ideology. Consistent with this emerging literature, the present research proposes that conservatives and liberals excel at tasks of distinct working memory processes (i.e., inhibition and updating, respectively). Consistent with this hypothesis, three studies demonstrate that conservatives are more likely to succeed at response inhibition and liberals are more likely to succeed at response updating. Moreover, this effect is rooted in different levels of cognitive flexibility and independent of respondents’ demographics, intelligence, religiosity, and motivation. Collectively, these findings offer an important perspective on the cognitive factors that delineate conservatism and liberalism, the role of cognitive flexibility in specific working memory processes, and the impact of political ideology on a multitude of behaviors linked to inhibition and updating (e.g., creativity, problem-solving, self-control).

The Effect of Prediction Error on Belief Update Across the Political Spectrum

“…On the one hand, in support of prediction errors as a general mechanism, they have been found to impact a wide range of cognitive processes, including perception (de Lange et al, 2018), action (Bestmann et al, 2008), memory (Erickson & Desimone, 1999), language (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), cognitive control (Alexander & Brown, 2011), and decision-making (Greve et al, 2017). On the other hand, past research shows that cognitive processing can vary as a function of political ideology (Buechner et al, 2021). For instance, motivations to reach particular conclusions have been shown to affect information processing (Nyhan & Reifler, 2010).…”

A Framework on Polarization, Cognitive Inflexibility, and Rigid Cognitive Specialization

“…This can be useful when responding to a threat, where a group is required to make quick and decisive decisions without considering subtleties ( Staw et al, 1981 ; Smith, 1988 ). Information simplification often occurs when inhibition overpowers updating ( Buechner et al, 2021 ). Updating is the ability to modify existing beliefs based on new knowledge which is a hallmark of cognitive flexibility .…”

“…An important note about highly polarized people is that although they are cognitively inflexible, they may not be cognitively alike in other regards ( Buechner et al, 2021 ). Inflexibility merely refers to the inability to alter existing beliefs based on new information, but it says nothing about what those beliefs are, much less what cognitive traits those beliefs correspond to.…”

Revisiting the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis: A meta-analytic review

“…Houck & Conway, 2019), conservatives show impoverished abstract reasoning abilities (e.g., O'Connor, 1952) and are less tolerant of ambiguity (e.g., Block, 1951), conservatives exhibit differences in general neurocognitive functioning (e.g., Amodio et al, 2007;Nam et al, 2021;cf. Rollwage et al, 2018), and conservatives favor distinct working memory processes (i.e., inhibition) that may account for underlying ideological asymmetries in mental flexibility (e.g., Buechner et al, 2021).…”

“…Drawing from the RRH literature, neuropsychological and behavioral measures of cognitive inflexibility have been leveraged to suggest that leftists and rightists may differ in their basic cognitive architecture and downstream consequences thereof (e.g., Buechner et al, 2021;Sidanius, 1978;Zmigrod, 2020). To our knowledge, though, no systematic data are publicly available concerning the convergence between these cognitive inflexibility measures and measures of other rigidity constructs (e.g., motivations, intuitive thinking, dogmatism).…”