Posted on 02/23/2021 7:20:09 AM PST by MtnClimber
Researchers have mapped an underlying “psychological signature” for people who are predisposed to holding extreme social, political and religious attitudes and supporting violence in the name of ideology.
A new study suggests that a particular mix of personality traits and types of unconscious cognition – the ways our brain takes in basic information – is a strong predictor for extremist views across a range of beliefs, including nationalism and religious fervour.
These mental characteristics include poorer working memory and slower “perceptual strategies” – the unconscious processing of changing stimuli, such as shape and colour – as well as tendencies towards impulsivity and sensation seeking.
This combination of cognitive and emotional attributes predicts the endorsement of violence in support of a person’s ideological “group”, according to findings published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
The study also maps the psychological signatures that underpin fierce political conservatism, as well as “dogmatism”: people who have a fixed worldview and are resistant to evidence.
Psychologists found that conservatism is linked to cognitive “caution”: slow-and-accurate unconscious decision-making, compared to the fast-and-imprecise “perceptual strategies” found in more liberal minds.
Brains of more dogmatic people are slower to process perceptual evidence, but they are more impulsive personality-wise. The mental signature for extremism across the board is a blend of conservative and dogmatic psychologies.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge say that, while still in early stages, this research could help to better identify and support people most vulnerable to radicalisation across the political and religious spectrum.
Approaches to radicalisation policy mainly rely on basic demographic information such as age, race and gender. By adding cognitive and personality assessments, the psychologists created a statistical model that is between four and fifteen times more powerful at predicting ideological worldviews than demographics alone.
“Many people will know those in their communities who have become radicalised or adopted increasingly extreme political views, whether on the left or right,” said Dr Leor Zmigrod, lead author from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology.
“We want to know why particular individuals are more susceptible.”
“By examining ‘hot’ emotional cognition alongside the ‘cold’ unconscious cognition of basic information processing we can see a psychological signature for those at risk of engaging with an ideology in an extreme way,” Zmigrod said.
“Subtle difficulties with complex mental processing may subconsciously push people towards extreme doctrines that provide clearer, more defined explanations of the world, making them susceptible to toxic forms of dogmatic and authoritarian ideologies.”
The research is published as part of a special issue of the Royal Society journal dedicated to “the political brain” compiled and co-edited by Zmigrod, who recently won the Women of the Future Science award.
She has also been working with the UK Government as part of an academic and practitioner network set up to help tackle extremism.
The new study is the latest in a series by Zmigrod investigating the relationship between ideology and cognition. She has previously published findings on links between cognitive “inflexibility” and religious extremism, willingness to self-sacrifice for a cause, and a vote for Brexit.
A 2019 study by Zmigrod showed that this cognitive inflexibility is found in those with extreme attitudes on both the far right and far left of the political divide.
The latest research builds on work from Stanford University in which hundreds of study participants performed 37 different cognitive tasks and took 22 different personality surveys in 2016 and 2017.
Zmigrod and colleagues, including Cambridge psychologist Professor Trevor Robbins, conducted a series of follow-up tests in 2018 on 334 of the original participants, using a further 16 surveys to determine attitudes and strength of feeling towards various ideologies.
How do these leftist elitists explain that it is not the right, but the left that has exterminated their own citizens by the millions in the last century. Estimates I have seen put the death toll at between 100 and 260 million people exterminated by communist governments. To these elitists Brexit or supporting Trump are extremist, violent and dangerous. Supporting communism is enlightened and good.
>>The study also maps the psychological signatures that underpin fierce political conservatism, as well as “dogmatism”: people who have a fixed worldview and are resistant to evidence.
>>Psychologists found that conservatism is linked to cognitive “caution”: slow-and-accurate unconscious decision-making, compared to the fast-and-imprecise “perceptual strategies” found in more liberal minds.
Much much more evidence and case history for studying dogmatic militant Communists who are always spouting off about “The Struggle”.
Allow me to translate:
Stupid and impulsive people become right-wingers.
(Poor memories, and “slow-to-process.”)
There.
Maybe they could conduct and publish a study?
Labeling anyone that disagrees with you “an extremist” is definitely a sign of emotional and mental stability (extreme sarcasm)
Soviet psychiatry.
Exactly right. Eugenics right around the corner.
Phrenology lives, baby!
Looks like they are getting ready to red flag a whole bunch of people, using “science”, of course.
That was my thought too.
Have these researchers mapped an underlying "psychological signature" for those who pretend the Right embraces violence when there's little evidence but ignore Leftists who do embrace violence?
Have these researchers mapped an underlying "psychological signature" for those who falsify evidence that others are resistant to?
Have these researchers mapped an underlying "psychological signature" for those call who call the impulsive, reactionary, immature, illogical, and defective decision-making in liberal minds "fast-and-imprecise"?
Have these researchers mapped an underlying "psychological signature" for those who hide the truth that such "fast and imprecise" decision-making is found in prey animals, human children, and drug users?
Have these researchers mapped an underlying "psychological signature" for those say the signature for extremism across the board is a blend of conservative and dogmatic psychologies while ignoring the truth that extremism is caused by the direct opposites of conservative who have no dogma since it shifts to their whims?
Have these researchers mapped an underlying "psychological signature" for those who publish studies that intentionally mis-identify conservatives as extremists in order to avoid identifying those on the Left who actually are radicalized? (Forget vulnerable to being radicalized.)
Have these researchers mapped an underlying "psychological signature" for those who lie, propagandize, and gaslight others in an attempt to provide false explanations of the world?
Exactly right. Eugenics right around the corner.No doubt discreetly called something else and therefore "proven" not at all like the Nazis (or the first wave of American proponents).
The left want to call you an extremist, even though your values have been around for centuries. It is projection (an unconscious urge) or derogatory name calling (a conscious urge).
When the lunatics start calling regular people lunatics then you know things are up in the air. When sex changing babies, pedophilia, biological men in women sports, lack of free speech, etc. become the regular norms then society has changed from what it was for hundreds of years. The people who advocate these changes are the extremists. However, when these changes take effect the normal values are then labeled extreme by these people. Things are flipped 180 degrees.
This took a psychologist?
If I want to see an extremist mind, I just go to any of the social apps, listen to the lowest intellects in universities (studies, arts, etc) or listen to any Dimbulbcrat. They all converge to the lowest IQ extant, that of
Easy peasy.
I think they are mapping their own projection.
So...they don't weigh facts, jump to conclusions, and get things wrong. Like the author himself.
Indeed wonder if anyone recorded any of their 1960’s world wide radio broadcasts.
It wouldn’t do the author any good to read this article. He’d never understand it.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3920426/posts
Psychologists are the architects of the psyops campaigns against western civilization. They are criminal frauds. They invent BS like this article at the behest of their employers. Psychologists are charlatans and each one knows full well that he/she is a fraud.
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