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.
“...the left that has exterminated their own citizens by the millions in the last century.....”
The larger orcs in their hordes (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Alinsky,etc.) think that is a good thing. Clear out the old so the new may bloom in the ashes.
Even their “brain bugs” see it as dogma to liquidate the old intelligentsia, land owners, business class small and large...so the “new communist man” may be bred. “From each according to ability, to each according to need.”
When that man exists in totality willingly and without coercion, the dictatorship of the proletarian state withers away and a true communist utopia arrives.
We see 1984. They see a civilization like the earth in Star Trek.
Hive minds. Herd animals.
So if I want a wall...if I want all wetbacks expelled...if I believe there are only two sexes...if I want cheap gas prices made possible by lots of drilling...if I believe that socialism has failed every time it’s been tried...if I believe that mankind isn’t nearly powerful enough to effect the world’s climate...that means that there’s something wrong with my brain?
extreme social, political and religious attitudes and supporting violence in the name of ideology
...and the next minute who are we talking about?
the psychological signatures that underpin fierce political conservatism
Back to that illusion of objectivity:
“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
But not for long:
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.
The article is seriously conflating suicide bombers with Brexiteers? I don't blame the researcher for that, although I don't absolve her either; I do blame the article's author and editors for bias.
Awesome! So I guess the “progressive mind is 180 degrees? I would stack my brain against theirs any day of the week...if they had any.
Thanks for the comments! I had to read it twice to convince myself that I was not misunderstanding what was written. I guess I am the “slow to understand, but precise” type of person. I don’t think I am a stupid or a slow person. I remember back in my university days wondering what all the fuss was with Maxwell’s equations, it was so obvious at the time. But, now I don’t have the mental agility to see how 2+2 can equal 5.
Theories like this have the potential to backfire on the theoretician.
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