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.This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.
Highlights
One of the most powerful metaphors in political psychology has been that of elective affinities—the notion that there is a mutual attraction between ‘the structure and contents of belief systems and the underlying needs and motives of individuals and groups who subscribe to them’ [1]
By fractionating individual differences in psychological traits into self-reported personality and behaviourally assessed cognition, we address the diversity in assessment methods used by social and cognitive psychologists to measure ‘cognitive style’ [5,17]
The examination of a range of ideological attitudes pertaining to politics, nationalism, religion and dogmatism exposed remarkable similarities and differences between the psychological correlates of diverse ideological orientations, demonstrating that there may be core psychological underpinnings of ideological thinking across domains as well as specificity that depends on the content of the ideological domain
Summary
One of the most powerful metaphors in political psychology has been that of elective affinities—the notion that there is a mutual attraction between ‘the structure and contents of belief systems and the underlying needs and motives of individuals and groups who subscribe to them’ [1]. Borrowing methods from cognitive psychology, which have established sophisticated techniques to measure and analyse perceptual and cognitive processes in an objective and implicit way, and implementing these in the study of ideology can facilitate the construction of a more wholistic and rigorous cognitive science of ideology. This can push the analogy of ‘elective affinities’ into the realm of perception and cognition to allow us to tackle the question: are there parallels between individuals’ ideologies and their general perceptual or cognitive styles and strategies?
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