The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach

Abstract

Although human existence is enveloped by ideologies, remarkably little is understood about the relationships between ideological attitudes and psychological traits. Even less is known about how cognitive dispositions—individual differences in how information is perceived and processed— sculpt individuals' ideological worldviews, proclivities for extremist beliefs and resistance (or receptivity) to evidence. Using an unprecedented number of cognitive tasks ( n = 37) and personality surveys ( n = 22), along with data-driven analyses including drift-diffusion and Bayesian modelling, we uncovered the specific psychological signatures of political, nationalistic, religious and dogmatic beliefs. Cognitive and personality assessments consistently outperformed demographic predictors in accounting for individual differences in ideological preferences by 4 to 15-fold. Furthermore, data-driven analyses revealed that individuals’ ideological attitudes mirrored their cognitive decision-making strategies. Conservatism and nationalism were related to greater caution in perceptual decision-making tasks and to reduced strategic information processing, while dogmatism was associated with slower evidence accumulation and impulsive tendencies. Religiosity was implicated in heightened agreeableness and risk perception. Extreme pro-group attitudes, including violence endorsement against outgroups, were linked to poorer working memory, slower perceptual strategies, and tendencies towards impulsivity and sensation-seeking—reflecting overlaps with the psychological profiles of conservatism and dogmatism. Cognitive and personality signatures were also generated for ideologies such as authoritarianism, system justification, social dominance orientation, patriotism and receptivity to evidence or alternative viewpoints; elucidating their underpinnings and highlighting avenues for future research. Together these findings suggest that ideological worldviews may be reflective of low-level perceptual and cognitive functions. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.

Psychobiology of Extremist Violence: The Comeback of Individuality

“…Personality traits have reappeared within wide-ranging analyses of predictors of ordinary political preferences in studies at several countries (Aidt and Raub, 2018;Barceló, 2017;Hibbing, 2021;Wang, 2016;Zmigrod et al, 2021). The mediating role of temperamental traits on political polarization and sectarian partisanship has also been analyzed with illuminating findings 5 (Federico, 2021Finkel et al, 2020;Gotzsche-Astrup, 2019;Hibbing, 2021;Jost, 2017).…”

“…Studies with large samples of normative people using self-reports have repeatedly demonstrated strong associations between radical/extremist views and dogmatic intolerance both on political and religious issues Krouwel, 2017, 2019). The predictive capacity of measures based on individual traits for extremist political adscription is now increasingly grounded (Finkel et al, 2020;Hibbing, 2021;Santamaria-Garcia et al, 2021;Zmigrod et al, 2021).…”

“…Studying two different US population samples (n = 381; n = 417), recruited and tested online, they showed that individuals holding radical beliefs (as measured by questionnaires about political attitudes) displayed an impairment in 4 In an extension of these studies, Zmigrod et al (2021) uncovered individual psychological signatures of nationalistic, religious and dogmatic beliefs using a wide number of cognitive tasks and personality scales. Cognitive and personality assessments consistently outperformed demographic predictors in accounting for individual differences in ideological preferences.…”

Cognition and Emotion in Extreme Political Action: Individual Differences and Dynamic Interactions

“…In addition to cognitive rigidity and impaired metacognitive awareness, more general difficulties with complex cognitive processing involved in planning and working memory may underlie tendencies to adopt extreme pro-group attitudes. In a data-driven study, Zmigrod and colleagues (2021) administered more than three dozen classic neuropsychological tasks from the cognitive-psychology cannon to investigate the relationships between performance on these tasks and extreme pro-group attitudes. The psychological measures were administered 2 years prior to the ideological questionnaires, which lent a temporal dimension to the analysis: Assessment of psychological traits preceded the assessment of ideological worldviews.…”

“…Asterisks indicate variables that were significant predictors of extreme pro-group attitudes, including support for ideological violence against out-groups to protect the in-group (* p < .05, ** p < .01). Adapted from Zmigrod and colleagues (2021), p. 9 in the main article (a) and p. 5 in the Supplemental Material (b).…”