Leor Zmigrod

There are two primary philosophical approaches to examining the relationship between human bodies and political bodies. The first, reflected in traditional political theory on the body politic, is concerned with the question of how individuals aggregate into functioning or malfunctioning collectives—how singular citizen bodies come to constitute wider political entities. The second approach, maturing later in 20th century social and political philosophy, considers the opposite relation: instead of evaluating how the body politic emerges from the bottom-up, it focuses on how bodies become politicized from the top-down. This, more sociological, perspective explores how human bodies are disciplined and learn to self-discipline into particular physical forms and functions. Dominant ideologies can infiltrate the bodies of adherents, and the task of the social critic or political philosopher is to delineate how, why, where, and when political structures shape the minds and bodies of citizens, as well as whether the effects are coercive, destructive, or liberatory. I will argue that a political philosophy of mind cannot flourish without attention to the cognitive science of ideologies. Until recently there has been little serious dialogue between biology and political philosophy, partly due to disciplinary balkanization and mostly because of the infancy of empirical biopolitics, the science of how cognitive and neurobiological processes are molded by political ideologies. I will suggest that attending to the emerging science of ideological cognition can allow us to build a stronger, more compelling, and provocative thesis on the mind-shaping consequences of immersion in ideologies than is possible with conceptual tools alone.

History illustrates that economic crises and other socio-political threats often lead to a rise of polarization and radicalism, whereby people become more susceptible to intolerant political messages, including propaganda and populist rhetoric. Political science, sociology, economics, and psychology have explored many dimensions of this phenomenon, yet a critical piece of the puzzle is still missing: what cognitive and neural mechanisms in the brain mediate between these threats and responsiveness to political messages? To answer this question, here, we present a theory that combines cognitive neuroscience theories, namely stress-induced memory shift and competitive cognitive processes, with political science. Our Threat-based Neural Switch Theory posits that the processing of political information, similarly to other information processing, is shaped by the competitive interaction between goal-directed and habitual processes. Threats, also encompassing resource overload, can shift neural networks towards receptiveness to oversimplified political messages. This theory sets out a research program aimed at discovering the cognitive and neural underpinning of how situational factors alter brain functions and modify political information processing.

Evaluating the truthfulness of new information is a difficult and complex task. Notably, there is currently no unified theoretical framework that addresses the questions of (1) how individuals discern whether political information is true or (deliberately) false, (2) under what conditions individuals are most susceptible to believing misinformation, and (3) how the structure of political and communicative environments skews cognitive processes of truth, discernment, and interpretation generation. To move forward, we propose the Misinformation Receptivity Framework (MRF). Building on Bayesian and probabilistic models of cognition, the MRF suggests that we can conceptualize misinformation receptivity as a cognitive inference problem in which the reliability of incoming misinformation is weighed against the reliability of prior beliefs. This “reliability-weighting” process can model when individuals adopt or reject misinformation, as well as the ways in which they creatively generate interpretations rather than passively discern truth versus falsehood. Moreover, certain communication contexts can lead people to rely excessively on incoming (mis)information or conversely to rely excessively on prior beliefs. The MRF postulates how such environmental properties can heighten the persuasiveness of different kinds of misinformation. For instance, the MRF predicts that noisy communication contexts, in which the reliability of inputs is ambiguous, make people susceptible to highly partisan and ideological misinformation or disinformation that amplifies their existing belief systems. By contrast, the MRF predicts that contextual instability renders people susceptible to misinformation that would be considered extreme or worldview-incongruent in conditions of stability. The MRF formally delineates the interactions between cognitive and communicative mechanisms, offering insights and testable hypotheses on when, how, and why different kinds of misinformation proliferate.

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.

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.

A quick scan of the political landscape reveals that people differ in the ideologies they embrace and advocate. Why do individuals prefer certain ideologies over others? A formal analysis of psycho...

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.

There are two primary philosophical approaches to examining the relationship between human bodies and political bodies. The first, reflected in traditional political theory on the ‘body politic’, is concerned with the question of how individuals aggregate into functioning or malfunctioning collectives – how singular citizen bodies come to constitute wider political entities. The second approach, maturing later in 20th century social and political philosophy, considers the opposite relation; instead of evaluating how the body politic emerges from the bottom-up, it focuses on how bodies become politicized from the top-down. This, more sociological, perspective explores how human bodies are disciplined and learn to self-discipline into particular physical forms and functions. Dominant ideologies can infiltrate the bodies of adherents, and the task of the social critic or political philosopher is to delineate how, why, where, and when political structures shape the minds and bodies of citizens – as well as whether the effects are coercive, destructive, or liberatory. I will argue that a political philosophy of mind cannot flourish without attention to the cognitive science of ideologies. Until recently there has been little serious dialogue between biology and political philosophy, partly due to disciplinary balkanization and mostly because of the infancy of empirical biopolitics, the science of how cognitive and neurobiological processes are molded by political ideologies. I will suggest that attending to the emerging science of ideological cognition can allow us to build a stronger, more compelling, and provocative thesis on the mind-shaping consequences of immersion in ideologies than is possible with conceptual tools alone.

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 behaviourally-assessed cognitive flexibility and subclinical OCD symptomatology. 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. 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.