[ExI] cognitive processing in extremists

[William Flynn Wallace]

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.


The original article is here:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0424


bill w
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210224/b411a179/attachment.htm>