The psychological study of ideology has traditionally emphasized the content of ideological beliefs, guided by questions about what people believe, such as why people believe in omniscient gods or ...fascist worldviews. This theoretical focus has led to siloed subdisciplines separately dealing with political, religious, moral, and prejudiced attitudes. The fractionation has fostered a neglect of the cognitive structure of ideological worldviews and associated questions about why ideologies—in all their forms—are so compelling to the human mind. Here I argue that it is essential to consider the nature of ideological cognition across a multitude of ideologies. I offer a multidimensional, empirically tractable framework of ideological thinking, suggesting it can be conceptualized as a style of thinking that is rigid in its adherence to a doctrine and resistance to evidence-based belief-updating and favorably oriented toward an in-group and antagonistic to out-groups. The article identifies the subcomponents of ideological thinking and highlights that ideological thinking constitutes a meaningful psychological phenomenon that merits direct scholarly investigation and analysis. By emphasizing conceptual precision, methodological directions, and interdisciplinary integration across the political and cognitive sciences, the article illustrates the potential of this framework as a catalyst for developing a rigorous domain-general psychology of ideology.
Who is most likely to join and engage in extreme political action? Although traditional theories have focused on situational factors or group identity, an emerging science illustrates that tendencies ...for extreme political action may also be rooted in individuals’ idiosyncratic cognitive and affective dispositions. This article synthesizes cutting-edge evidence demonstrating that individuals’ cognitive and affective architecture shapes their willingness to support ideological violence. In the cognitive domain, traits such as cognitive rigidity, slow perceptual strategies, and poor executive functions are linked to heightened endorsement for ideological violence. In the emotion domain, characteristics associated with emotional reactivity and impaired emotional regulation, such as sensation seeking and impulsivity, can facilitate readiness for extreme political action. The review homes in on the roles of cognitive rigidity and sensation seeking as traits heightening proclivities for extreme pro-group behavior and recommends that future research should assess cognition-emotion interactions to reveal different subprofiles of political actors. A theoretical framework focused on cognitive and affective information-processing traits—and their interactions—opens up tractable empirical questions and a future research agenda. Identifying subsets of ideologues is an endeavor with potential to inform the design of evidence-based interventions aimed at reducing ideological extremism and fostering social understanding.
•Meta-analysis of activity associated with auditory-verbal and visual hallucinations.•Auditory-verbal hallucinations consistently activate speech and language regions.•Visual hallucinations ...associated with activity in visuo-perceptual processing areas.•Medial temporal and frontal activity highlights role for higher-level processes.•Need for unified theory to account for full range of hallucinations is discussed.
Activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging data was used to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying auditory-verbal and visual hallucinations (AVHs and VHs). Consistent activation across studies during AVHs, but not VHs, in Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas is consistent with involvement of speech and language processes in the experience of hearing voices when none are present. Similarly, greater activity in auditory cortex during AVHs and in visual cortex during VHs supports models proposing over-stimulation of sensory cortices in the generation of these perceptual anomalies. Activation across studies in the medial temporal lobe highlights a role for memory intrusions in the provision of content for AVHs, whereas insula activation may relate to the involvement of awareness and self-representation. Finally, activation in the paracingulate region of medial prefrontal cortex during AVHs is consistent with models implicating reality monitoring impairment in the misattribution of self-generated information as externally perceived. In the light of the results, the need for unified theoretical frameworks that account for the full range of hallucinatory experiences is discussed.
Research into the roots of ideological extremism has traditionally focused on the social, economic, and demographic factors that make people vulnerable to adopting hostile attitudes toward outgroups. ...However, there is insufficient empirical work on individual differences in implicit cognition and information processing styles that amplify an individual's susceptibility to endorsing violence to protect an ideological cause or group. Here we present original evidence that objectively assessed cognitive inflexibility predicts extremist attitudes, including a willingness to harm others, and sacrifice one's life for the group. Across two samples (
= 1,047) from the United Kingdom and United States, structural equation models demonstrated that cognitive inflexibility predicted endorsement of violence to protect the national ingroup, which in turn predicted a willingness to die for the group. These statistical models accounted for an average of 31.4% of the variance in willingness to die for the group, after accounting for demographic variables. Furthermore, cognitive inflexibility was related to greater confidence in the decision to sacrifice one's life in an ingroup trolley problem scenario. Analysis of participants' performance on the cognitive tasks revealed that cognitive rigidity - distinctly from other aspects of cognition - was specifically implicated as a cognitive antecedent of extremist attitudes. Implications for the study of radicalization and identity fusion through a neurocognitive lens are discussed.
•Simultaneity judgment task with either anodal (Exp 1) or cathodal (Exp 2) tDCS.•Examining right PPC, left PPC, left DLPFC, and no stimulation conditions.•Anodal tDCS over right PPC reduces the ...temporal binding window by approximately 30%.•First neuroscientific study modulating multisensory temporal binding window.•Potential intervention for people with a wider temporal binding window, e.g. autism.
Synchrony among the senses lies at the heart of our possession of a unified conscious perception of the world. However, due to discrepancies in physical and neural information processing from different senses, the brain accommodates a limited range of temporal asynchronies between sensory inputs, i.e. the multisensory temporal binding window (TBW). Using non-invasive brain stimulation, we sought to modulate the audio-visual TBW and to identify cortical areas implicated in the conscious perception of multisensory synchrony. Participants performed a simultaneity judgment task while experiencing anodal (Experiment 1) or cathodal (Experiment 2) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over parietal and frontal regions. The results demonstrate that stimulating the right posterior parietal cortex significantly reduces the audio–visual TBW by approximately 30%, thereby causally linking this region to the plasticity of the TBW. This highlights a potential interventional technique for populations with a wider TBW, such as in autism and dyslexia.
Although psychology is greatly preoccupied by the tight link between the way that individuals perceive the world and their intelligent, creative behavior, there is little experimental work on the ...relationship between individual differences in perception and cognitive ability in healthy populations. Here, individual differences in problem solving ability were examined in relation to multisensory perception as measured by tolerance for temporal asynchrony between auditory and visual inputs, i.e., the multisensory temporal binding window. The results demonstrated that enhanced performance in both verbal and nonverbal problem solving tasks (the Remote Associates Test and Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices Task) is predicted by a narrower audio-visual temporal binding window, which reflects greater sensitivity to subtle discrepancies in sensory inputs. This suggests that the precision of individuals' temporal window of multisensory integration might mirror their capacities for complex reasoning and thus the precision of their thoughts.
Recent theories have posited a range of cognitive risk factors for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), including cognitive inflexibility and a maladaptive reliance on habits. However, empirical and ...methodological inconsistencies have obscured the understanding of whether inflexibility and habitual tendencies indeed shape OCD symptoms in clinical and sub-clinical populations, and whether there are notable interactions amongst these traits. The present investigation adopted an interactionist individual differences approach to examine the associations between behaviorally-assessed cognitive flexibility and subclinical OCD symptomatology in a healthy population. It also explored the nature of the interactions between cognitive flexibility and habitual tendencies, and the degree to which these cognitive traits predict subclinical OCD symptomatology. Across two studies, including a preregistration, Bayesian and regression analyses revealed that cognitive inflexibility and compulsive habitual tendencies act as unique and independent predictors of subclinical OCD symptomatology in healthy populations. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between cognitive rigidity and habitual compulsivity, which accounted for 49.4% of the variance in subclinical OCD symptomatology in Study 1, and 37.3% in Study 2. In-depth analyses revealed a compensatory effect between cognitive inflexibility and habitual compulsivity such that both are necessary for OCD symptomatology, but neither is sufficient. These results imply that in order to generate reliable and nuanced models of the endophenotype of OCD symptomatology, it is essential to account for interactions between psychological traits. Moreover, the present findings have important implications for theories on the cognitive roots of OCD, and potentially in the development of interventions that target both cognitive inflexibility and habitual compulsivity.
Does cognitive inflexibility predict vulnerability to violent extremism? Schumann, Salman, Clemmow, and Gill (2021) conducted a registered direct replication of Zmigrod, Rentfrow, and Robbins’ (2019, ...Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 989) studies on the relationship between neuropsychologically assessed cognitive inflexibility and extremist attitudes. Replicating the original study, Schumann et al. (2021) demonstrated that cognitive inflexibility on the Remote Associates Test was related to individuals' willingness to fight and die for their ideological group (Bayes Factor = 58.7). In a further corroboration, the study found that individuals who indicated they would self‐sacrifice in a trolley‐dilemma paradigm were more psychologically rigid on the Remote Associates Test than those who opted for self‐preservation (Bayes Factor = 402.3). A mini meta‐analysis with the original study revealed a significant negative correlation between cognitive flexibility and violent extremist behaviour intentions, thereby supporting the conclusions of the original study by Zmigrod and colleagues (2019). Nevertheless, the replication study highlighted moderators of the effect sizes of the reported relationships and revealed subtleties in the theoretical relationships between cognitive style and tendencies towards extremist attitudes. Follow‐up analyses with Bayesian statistics demonstrated that—corroborating the original study—cognitive inflexibility on both the Remote Associates Test (Bayes Factor = 7.2) and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (Bayes Factor = 2.3) are linked to individuals' willingness to fight for an ideological cause. However, the replication study revealed that these effects are specific to individuals who endorse ideological self‐sacrifice. Furthermore, deviating from the original study, Schumann and colleagues found that cognitive flexibility on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test may in fact positively predict willingness to die for a group under some conditions. This suggests that flexibility may be a double‐edged sword when it comes to ideological conversion. These insights indicate that a fine‐grained examination of risk sub‐profiles and interactions among predictors is essential. The findings of the replication also stimulate a discussion of what constitutes a phenomenologically or practically meaningful effect size for psychological and criminological research and practice—and the implications for cognitive methodologies in risk assessment.
Although the study of political behaviour has been traditionally restricted to the social sciences, new advances in political neuroscience and computational cognitive science highlight that the ...biological sciences can offer crucial insights into the roots of ideological thought and action. Echoing the dazzling diversity of human ideologies, this theme issue seeks to reflect the multiplicity of theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the nature of the political brain. Cutting-edge research along three thematic strands is presented, including (i) computational approaches that zoom in on fine-grained mechanisms underlying political behaviour, (ii) neurocognitive perspectives that harness neuroimaging and psychophysiological techniques to study ideological processes, and (iii) behavioural studies and policy-minded analyses of such understandings across cultures and across ideological domains. Synthesizing these findings together, the issue elucidates core questions regarding the nature of uncertainty in political cognition, the mechanisms of social influence and the cognitive structure of ideological beliefs. This offers key directions for future biologically grounded research as well as a guiding map for citizens, psychologists and policymakers traversing the uneven landscape of modern polarization, misinformation, intolerance and dogmatism. This article is part of the theme issue 'The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'.
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