Although models of political ideology traditionally focus on the motivations that separate conservatives and liberals, a growing body of research is directly exploring the cognitive factors that vary due to political ideology. Consistent with this emerging literature, the present research proposes that conservatives and liberals excel at tasks of distinct working memory processes (i.e., inhibition and updating, respectively). Consistent with this hypothesis, three studies demonstrate that conservatives are more likely to succeed at response inhibition and liberals are more likely to succeed at response updating. Moreover, this effect is rooted in different levels of cognitive flexibility and independent of respondents’ demographics, intelligence, religiosity, and motivation. Collectively, these findings offer an important perspective on the cognitive factors that delineate conservatism and liberalism, the role of cognitive flexibility in specific working memory processes, and the impact of political ideology on a multitude of behaviors linked to inhibition and updating (e.g., creativity, problem-solving, self-control).
AckermanP. L.HeggestadE. D. (1997). Intelligence, personality, and interests: Evidence for overlapping traits. Psychological Bulletin, 121(2), 219–245. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.121.2.219
2.
AltemeyerB. (1998). The other “authoritarian personality.” In ZannaM. P. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 47–92). Academic Press.
3.
BaddeleyA. (1986). Working memory(Oxford Psychology Series). Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press.
4.
BarrettL. F.TugadeM. M.EngleR. W. (2004). Individual differences in working memory capacity and dual-process theories of the mind. Psychological Bulletin, 130(4), 553–573. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.4.553
5.
BrandtM. J.ReynaC.ChambersJ. R.CrawfordJ. T.WetherellG. (2014). The ideological-conflict hypothesis: Intolerance among both liberals and conservatives. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(1), 27–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413510932
6.
CarneyD. R.JostJ. T.GoslingS. D.PotterJ. (2008). The secret lives of liberals and conservatives: Personality profiles, interaction styles, and the things they leave behind. Political Psychology, 29(6), 807–840. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00668.x
7.
ChambersJ. R.SchlenkerB. R.CollissonB. (2013). Ideology and prejudice: The role of value conflicts. Psychological Science, 24(2), 140–149. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612447820
8.
ClarksonJ. J.ChambersJ. R.HirtE. R.OttoA. S.KardesF. R.LeoneC. (2015). The self-control consequences of political ideology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(27), 8250–8253. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1503530112
9.
CohenJ.CohenP.WestS. G.AikenL. S. (2003). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences (3rd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
10.
CurranP. G. (2016). Methods for the detection of carelessly invalid responses in survey data. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 66, 4–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.07.006
DuarteJ. L.CrawfordJ. T.SternC.HaidtJ.JussimL.TetlockP. E. (2015). Political diversity will improve social psychological science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X14000430
13.
EngleR. W.TuholskiS. W.LaughlinJ. E.ConwayA. R. A. (1999). Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid intelligence: A latent variable approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128(3), 309–331. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.128.3.309
FaulF.ErdfelderE.LangA. G.BuchnerA. (2007). G* Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175–191. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193146
16.
FazioR. H. (1990). A practical guide to the use of response latency in social psychological research. In HendrickC.ClarkM. S. (Eds.), Research methods in personality and social psychology (pp. 74–97). Sage.
17.
FedericoC. M.MalkaA. (2018). The contingent, contextual nature of the relationship between needs for security and certainty and political preferences: Evidence and implications. Political Psychology, 39(S1), 3–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12477
18.
FeldmanS.JohnstonC. (2014). Understanding the determinants of political ideology: Implications of structural complexity. Political Psychology, 35(3), 337–358. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12055
19.
FriedmanN. P.MiyakeA.CorleyR. P.YoungS. E.DeFriesJ. C.HewittJ. K. (2006). Not all executive functions are related to intelligence. Psychological Science, 17(2), 172–179. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01681.x
20.
GaravanH.RossT. J.SteinE. A. (1999). Right hemispheric dominance of inhibitory control: An event-related functional MRI study. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(14), 8301–8306. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.96.14.8301
GoslingS. D.RentfrowP. J.SwannW. BJr. (2003). A very brief measure of the big-five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(6), 504–528. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(03)00046-1
HayesA. F. (2018). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. Guilford.
25.
HirshJ. B.DeYoungC. G.XuX.PetersonJ. B. (2010). Compassionate liberals and polite conservatives: Associations of agreeableness with political ideology and moral values. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(5), 655–664. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167210366854
26.
HofmannW.FrieseM.SchmeichelB. J.BaddeleyA. D. (2011). Working memory and self-regulation. Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications, 2, 204–225.
JostJ. T. (2017). Ideological asymmetries and the essence of political psychology. Political Psychology, 38(2), 167–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12407
JostJ. T.GlaserJ.KruglanskiA. W.SullowayF. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339–375. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339
32.
KardesF. R.EscoeB.WuR. (2019). Response latency methodology in consumer psychology. In KardesF. R.HerrP. M.SchwarzN. (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in consumer psychology. Routledge.
KnightK. (1999). Liberalism and conservatism. In RobinsonJ. P.ShaverP. R.WrightsmanL. S. (Eds.), Measures of social psychological attitudes, Vol. 2. Measures of political attitudes (pp. 59–158). Academic Press.
35.
KoenigH. G.BüssingA. (2010). The Duke University Religion Index (DUREL): A five-item measure for use in epidemiological studies. Religions, 1(1), 78–85. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel1010078
36.
LammersJ.KochA.ConwayP.BrandtM. J. (2017). The political domain appears simpler to the politically extreme than to political moderates. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(6), 612–622. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550616678456
37.
MaddoxW. T.MarkmanA. B. (2010). The motivation–cognition interface in learning and decision making. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(2), 106–110. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721410364008
McCulloughM. E.WilloughbyB. L. (2009). Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 69–93. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014213
40.
MiyakeA.FriedmanN. P.EmersonM. J.WitzkiA. H.HowerterA.WagerT. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41(1), 49–100. https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.1999.0734
41.
NaumannL. P.Benet-MartínezV.EspinozaP. (2016). Correlates of political ideology among U.S.-born Mexican Americans: Cultural identification, acculturation attitudes, and socioeconomic status. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(1), 20–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550616662124
42.
OppenheimerD. M.MeyvisT.DavidenkoN. (2009). Instructional manipulation checks: Detecting satisficing to increase statistical power. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 867–872. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.03.009
43.
PeckR.DevoreJ. L. (2012). Statistics: The exploration & analysis of data. Brooks/Cole.
44.
PosnerM. I.CohenY. (1984). Components of visual orienting. In BoumaH.BouwhuisD. G. (Eds.), Attention and performance X: Control of language processes (pp. 513–556). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
45.
RigoniD.KühnS.GaudinoG.SartoriG.BrassM. (2012). Reducing self-control by weakening belief in free will. Consciousness and Cognition, 21(3), 1482–1490. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2012.04.004
RollwageM.DolanR. J.FlemingS. M. (2018). Metacognitive failure as a feature of those holding radical beliefs. Current Biology, 28(24), 4014–4021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.10.053
48.
RollwageM.ZmigrodL.de-WitL.DolanR. J.FlemingS. M. (2019). What underlies political polarization? A manifesto for computational political psychology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(10), 820–822. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.07.006
49.
RougierN. P.NoelleD. C.BraverT. S.CohenJ. D.O’ReillyR. C. (2005). Prefrontal cortex and flexible cognitive control: Rules without symbols. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(20), 7338–7343. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0502455102
50.
SimpsonJ. A.GriskeviciusV.KuoS. I.SungS.CollinsW. A. (2012). Evolution, stress, and sensitive periods: The influence of unpredictability in early versus late childhood on sex and risky behavior. Developmental Psychology, 48(3), 674. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027293
TomkinsS. S. (1963). Left and right: A basic dimension of ideology and personality. In WhiteR. W. (Ed.), The study of lives (pp. 388–411). Atherton. https://doi.org/10.1037/12238-017
53.
Van HielA.OnraetE.CrowsonH. M.RoetsA. (2016). The relationship between right-wing attitudes and cognitive style: A comparison of self-report and behavioural measures of rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity. European Journal of Personality, 30(6), 523–531. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2082
YntemaD. B.MueserG. E. (1962). Keeping track of variables that have few or many states. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63(4), 391. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045706
56.
YzerbytV. Y.MullerD.JuddC. M. (2004). Adjusting researchers’ approach to adjustment: On the use of covariates when testing interactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(3), 424–431. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2003.10.001
57.
ZmigrodL.RentfrowP. J.RobbinsT. W. (2018). Cognitive underpinnings of nationalistic ideology in the context of Brexit. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(19), E4532–E4540. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1708960115
58.
ZmigrodL.RentfrowP. J.RobbinsT. W. (2019). The partisan mind: Is extreme political partisanship related to cognitive inflexibility?Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(3), 407–418. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000661
59.
ZmigrodL.ZmigrodS.RentfrowP. J.RobbinsT. W. (2019). The psychological roots of intellectual humility: The role of intelligence and cognitive flexibility. Personality and Individual Differences, 141, 200–208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.01.016
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
