People with extreme views less able at complex mental tasks

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ex-l

ex-BK

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People with extreme views less able at complex mental tasks

Post22 Feb 2021

Looking at the lens we see the world through ... an interesting paper that cannot not relate to core of adherence to Brahma Kumarism. Link to actual paper is in indented quotation.
People with extremist views less able to do complex mental tasks

A Cambridge University team led by Leor Zmigrod sought to evaluate whether differences in how information is perceived and processed sculpt ideological world-views such as political, nationalistic and dogmatic beliefs, beyond the impact of traditional demographic factors like age, race and gender.

The tasks were engineered to be neutral, not emotional or political, and the researchers found that ideological attitudes mirrored cognitive decision-making.

A key finding was that people with extremist attitudes tended to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggled with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps.
Another feature of people with tendencies towards extremism appeared to be that they were not good at regulating their emotions, meaning they were impulsive and tended to seek out emotionally evocative experiences. Participants who are prone to dogmatism – stuck in their ways and relatively resistant to credible evidence – actually have a problem with processing evidence even at a perceptual level.

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.

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