Antifa continued its destruction of Seattle despite Biden's election win
Researchers have mapped an underlying "psychological signature" for people who are predisposed to holding extreme social, political or religious attitudes, and support violence in the name of ideology.
A new study suggests that a particular mix of
personality traits and unconscious cognition - the ways our brains take 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 today in
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.
"I'm interested in the role that hidden cognitive functions play in sculpting ideological thinking," said Dr Leor Zmigrod, lead author from Cambridge's Department of Psychology.
"Many people will know those in their communities who have become radicalised or adopted increasingly extreme political views,
whether on the left or right. 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.
It is the latest in a series of studies 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.
Political conservatism and nationalism was related to "caution" in unconscious decision-making, as well as "temporal discounting" - when rewards are seen to lose value if delayed - and slightly reduced strategic information processing in the cognitive domain.
Personality traits for conservatism and nationalism included greater goal-directedness, impulsivity and reward sensitivity, and reduced social risk-taking.
Demographics alone had a predictive power of less than 8% for these ideologies, but adding the psychological signature boosted it to 32.5%.Dogmatism was linked to reduced speed of perceptual "evidence accumulation", and reduced social risk-taking and agreeableness but heightened impulsivity and ethical risk-taking in the personality domain. Religiosity was cognitively similar to conservatism, but with higher levels of agreeableness and "risk perception".
Adding the psychological signatures to demographics
increased the predictive power for dogmatism from 1.53% to 23.6%, and religiosity from 2.9% to 23.4%.Across all ideologies investigated by the researchers, people who endorsed "extreme pro-group action", including ideologically-motivated violence against others, had a surprisingly consistent psychological profile.The extremist mind - a mixture of conservative and dogmatic psychological signatures - is cognitively cautious, slower at perceptual processing and has a weaker working memory. This is combined with impulsive personality traits that seek sensation and risky experiences.
Added Zmigrod: "There appear to be hidden similarities in the minds of those most willing to take extreme measures to support their ideological doctrines. Understanding this could help us to support those individuals vulnerable to extremism, and foster social understanding across ideological divides."
NOTES:Study participants were all from the United States, 49.4% were female, and ages ranged from 22-63.
Part of the study used tests of "executive functions" that help us to plan, organise and execute tasks e.g. restacking coloured disks to match guidelines, and keeping a series of categorised words in mind as new ones are added.
Additionally, results from various rapid decision-making tests - switching between visual stimuli based on evolving instructions, for example - were fed into computational models, allowing analyses of small differences in perceptual processing.
Researchers took the results of the in-depth, self-reported personality tests and boiled them down to 12 key factors ranging from goal-directedness and emotional control to financial risk-taking.
The examination of social and political attitudes took in a host of ideological positions including patriotism, religiosity and levels of authoritarianism on the left and right.
The Cambridge team used data modeling techniques such as Bayesian analyses to extract correlations. They then measured the extent to which blends of cognition and personality could help predict ideological attitudes.
Reader Comments
There's a line people will cross when it comes to basic survival. But some people are satisfied with basic survival and will only act violently when that is threatened - everything else being complete bullshit where taking action is more of a threat to their survival than not acting. My wife and I for instance are a loner couple. As long as we are allowed to live our lives in relative solitude, we don't really give a shit what's going on around us. There are lots of people like that. You just don't hear from them for fairly obvious reasons.
The West has it so good the last few decades that now people have time for pet causes, which turn into ideologies. And they're so ignorant of the recent past that they think their ideologies are worth getting violent for.
The caveat is that people like me do like to know what's going on. And I've been fairly neurotic my entire life, which makes me prone to emotionality, thus propaganda. I have to constantly remind myself "this isn't the hill I want to die on." Otherwise I will revert to ideological possession as I did during the Obama years.
I detect that you could never support violence in the name of ideology. Yeah, there are factors that can make any of us into dangerous humans, but not everyone the same. I love this from Conrad, HOD: RC
Right, what I meant was eventually everyone has their line in the sand where they will then kill you. Everyone. Even Ghandi and Mother Theresa had a tipping point.
So, regardless of ideology perhaps.... there are lines in Maslow's pyramid where violence is inevitable.
The King's noble henchmen going to tell us ...
A question. I've been meaning to read William James - your thoughts? Henry James? Thanks.
RC
As a consequence, I have not delved into the James bros though I think I have read some of Henry's stuff. William might well be worth a read as I do know he was an influence on one of my great heroes - Bertrand Russell who was a great logician.
Perhaps I am being a little too judgemental but I have, in 70+ years, witnessed the emergence of Psych as a new discipline supposedly promising to advance and enhance Man's well-being but when all is said and done, it has contributed very little little in real gains (in my view).
My dearest friend in life was a trained clinical psychologist (recovered, became a newspaper editor). Whenever he started to bang on about some psych theory or other I always responded: "One day Bob, there will be foot high headlines in the major newspapers of the World - Psychologist finds a cure for a common neurosis! .
Maybe its a prejudice but, as I near the end of my life, I begin to see some of the primary drivers of (particularly Western) thought as being memes. Great edifices built on dodgy foundations of belief - faith in the theories and pronouncements of authoritative figures whose authority devolves from the fact that so many believe - and that alone. History is littered with examples - wanna buy a single tulip for 10,000 guilders? The fact that millions believe in and base their societies on one religion while millions believe something contrary? Man has an infinite capacity for self-delusion.
One great writer with insight into the human condition I recommend is........Elmore Leonard.
Best regards.
As re E.L. I've got Rum Punch a few feet away, Double Dutch Treat, etc. Thanks again!
RC
But it is a useful tool for a certain group - just watch the "disorders" added over the last decades up to the DSM-5.
If you have too much time on your hand, you can research Ron Hubbard's whereabouts - before his "Scientology" stint. Including the people he was associated with, and their "experiments" in the name of scientific progress ...
"amerikans believe anything described as scientific without question". G Gorer
"man must awaken to wonder and do do peoples--science puts him back to sleep again". Wittgenstein...admired by philosophers of science: Putnam, Kuhn, Hempel, Feyerabend, Quine, etc
"science is neither neutral or objective". Thomas Kuhn
"amerikans fetishize science: in the USA it is the most dogmatic and aggressive of religions that like all others should be separated from the state". Paul Feyerabend
"elements of physics are inherently irrational". Max Planck
a. A national hero
b. A mass killer
c. An abused and deluded supporter of the British Empire.
d. All of the above.
I do not think he knew at the time.
War turns our civil order on it's head, and the humans lose any values that mattered.
So the values of today are not the values of his generation. Therefore those claiming to promote the standards today are still suffering delusions regardless of how they morally dress themselves.
Morality and standards are relative not fixed.
Personally, I rate psychology above all other 'sciences'.
At the same time, any science that applies itself too rigorously to delusion becomes itself a delusion. A fatuous circle.
So there.
And you all have a nice day.
ned,
out
natural science method requires detachment, replication, lack of bias---impossible when one begins with hypothesis
for idiots like popper love does not exist
he cannot measure it, verify it, nor falsify it
Testing nearly fifty years ago showed that I had an aptitude for military intelligence. (Which kicked in when the Empire went after me when I was much older)
That testing started my FBI folder.
The empire has been looking for both troublemakers and recruits since the late 1800’s. The English educational system is a refined tool of political will.
This story is 100 years too late.
It may just as well be this: "You rely too much upon your own opinions and perceptions and therefore have little to offer others in the way of insight or nourishment."
No one gives feedback like the book of changes.
thinkers have long observed that different cultures think and feel differently
Berdayaev and Deleuze were struck by how differently Germans, anglos, French and Russians think
"of all peoples in an advanced stage of economic civilization amerikans are least accessible to long views always and everywhere in a hurry to get rich they give no thought to remote consequences--they see only present advantages. amerikans do not remember, they do not feel: amerikans live in a materialist dream". Moisede Ostrogorski
"culture determines perceptions and expectations". Arlie Hochschild....one of many that has observed this---most notably George Simmell
Raised on garbage food, ritalin, excessive vaccinations, educated and brainwashed into thoughtless stupidity, can't figure out their gender and awaiting their next trigger from facebook.
pathetic idiots who couldn't fix a flat tire on a bicycle.....
RC
They are obsessed with detecting things before they happen, or making us believe they can. They want to tell us when we will be sick before we know ourselves so they can 'save' us. This has the same ring to it. We detect dangerous thought patterns ahead, so we are here to save you. Come with us, the commander of Amazons security forces says as you are whisked away to the nearest re-education camp.
Just did a quick search and happily found this tangentially on point comment from June:
SOTT Focus:Compelling Evidence That SARS-CoV-2 Was Man-Made
The unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic left many unanswered, or unsatisfactorily answered, questions. Why were effective drugs banned while a hypothetical vaccine was promoted? Why the sudden...rc
Good find!