People who strongly identify with a political group or belief system tend to share a key psychological trait: they have low cognitive flexibility, according to a recent study.
This kind of ‘mental rigidity’ makes it tough for folks to shift their thinking or adjust to new situations, the researchers say. Interestingly, this mental inflexibility showed up among the most passionate supporters on both ends of the political spectrum – left and right alike.
The research involved over 700 Americans and was led by scientists at the University of Cambridge. It’s the largest study in over two decades to use objective psychological tests to see if people with more extreme political views have a particular “type of mind.”
The results suggest that how well people can switch between different ideas and tasks is linked to how strongly they hold onto their political beliefs – no matter which side they’re on.
“Relative to political moderates, participants who indicated extreme attachment to either the Democratic or Republican Party exhibited mental rigidity on multiple objective neuropsychological tests,” said Dr Leor Zmigrod, a Cambridge Gates Scholar and lead author of the study, now published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
“While political animosity often appears to be driven by emotion, we find that the way people unconsciously process neutral stimuli seems to play an important role in how they process ideological arguments.”
“Those with lower cognitive flexibility see the world in more black-and-white terms, and struggle with new and different perspectives. The more inflexible mind may be especially susceptible to the clarity, certainty, and safety frequently offered by strong loyalty to collective ideologies,” she said.
This research is part of ongoing work by Zmigrod and her colleagues Dr Jason Rentfrow and Professor Trevor Robbins at Cambridge exploring links between ideology and cognitive flexibility.
Over the past year and a half, their earlier studies suggested mental rigidity relates not just to politics but also extreme views about religion, nationalism, and even willingness to support violence or sacrifice for one’s group.
For this latest research, they recruited 743 men and women from all walks of life across America through Amazon Mechanical Turk.
The participants took three online psychological tests: a word association game; a card-sorting task where colors, shapes, and numbers had to be matched under changing rules; plus an exercise where they had two minutes to think up possible uses for common objects.
“These are established and standardized cognitive tests which quantify how well individuals adapt to changing environments and how flexibly their minds process words and concepts,” said Zmigrod.
The volunteers also rated their feelings about divisive social issues like abortion, marriage rights, welfare-and how closely they identified with either US party.
Zmigrod’s team found that ‘partisan extremity’-how intensely someone felt tied to their party-strongly predicted rigid thinking across all three tests. They also noticed Independents tended toward greater cognitive flexibility than Democrats or Republicans.
Other thinking traits like creativity or quickness weren’t connected with strong partisan views. This points specifically toward inflexible thinking as playing a unique role here.
“In the context of today’s highly divided politics, it is important we work to understand the psychological underpinnings of dogmatism and strict ideological adherence,” said Zmigrod.
“The aim of this research is not to draw false equivalences between different, and sometimes opposing, ideologies. We want to highlight the common psychological factors that shape how people come to hold extreme views and identities,” said Zmigrod.
“Past studies have shown that it is possible to cultivate cognitive flexibility through training and education. Our findings raise the question of whether heightening our cognitive flexibility might help build more tolerant societies, and even develop antidotes to radicalization.”
“While the conservatism and liberalism of our beliefs may at times divide us, our capacity to think about the world flexibly and adaptively can unite us,” she added.
