Political Extremism: Minds Stuck in a Rut

“All movements, however different in doctrine and aspiration, draw their early adherents from the same types of humanity; they all appeal to the same types of mind.” -- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951

A 2019 research paper, The Partisan Mind: Is Extreme Political Partisanship Related to Cognitive Inflexibility?, tries to dissect the basis for apparent cognitive differences between extremists or ideologues and others. Two hypotheses have been proposed to explain be rigid adherence to a political ideology. The ideological extremity hypothesis, posits that extreme liberals and conservatives are more cognitively rigid than moderates. According to this hypothesis, partisan political extremism arises from inflexible belief systems that capture the world in black-and-white terms that create the (usually false) appearance of certainty and simplicity. Consonant with this hypothesis, there is indirect evidence that left and right extremists are more dogmatically intolerant and more likely to feel superior about their beliefs.

The rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis, posits that conservatives perceive the world in a more inflexible and categorical way than liberals. Consonant empirical evidence reveals a relationship between political conservatism and psychological preferences for traditionalism, familiarity, and certainty. By contrast, that research indicates that liberalism is more tolerant and accepting of uncertainty and ambiguity.

The data this paper generated was interpreted to be generally in accord with the ideological extremity hypothesis. The data indicates that ideological extremism, not just extreme conservatism, correlates with extreme political partisanship, dogmatism and animosity. 

 

What is cognitive flexibility?

Cognitive flexibility is defined as the ability to adapt to novel or changing environments and a capacity to switch between modes of thinking. One group defined it as “the ability to flexibly switch perspectives, focus of attention, or response mappings”. Cognitive inflexibility is believed to be a state of mental stasis or a tendency of an individual to not change. That includes sometimes not changing bad behaviors despite bad consequences. That is sometimes observed in certain patients with compulsive disorder, drug addiction or frontal lobe damage. To investigate the relationship between inflexibility and political ideology, the research protocols here relied on three different, validated measures of cognitive flexibility.

The paper concludes with this summary of the results: "The present investigation sought to address the question: Does mental rigidity reflect one’s partisan intensity or political orientation? The results reveal that strong partisan intensity predicts reduced cognitive flexibility, regardless of the political party’s orientation and doctrine. .... To the best of our knowledge, these findings constitute the first direct objective testing of the ideological extremity hypothesis using behavioral assessments of cognitive flexibility rather than self-report questionnaires. The data here support the essential claim of the ideological extremity hypothesis: political extremists were more cognitively rigid than political moderates, across multiple tests of cognitive flexibility. These results suggest that the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis may be incomplete, as it does not account for the presence of the 'rigidity-of-the-left.'"

In other words, extreme liberals could be in a similar or the same cognitive boat as extreme conservatives.

As usual, the authors caution that additional "studies should seek to replicate and expand these results, as well as explore ways in which the two hypotheses can be combined and empirically negotiated."