Extremist brains perform poorly in complex mental tasks and analysis shows that

  • harmonea@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Link to the study since the article didn’t bother.

    I think this is the one anyway. Seems like it points to “cognitive inflexibility” rather than the interpreted version of “performs poorly,” so I’m not sure if this is just the journalist stirring up shit with an inflammatory headline (oh my word how unheard of) or there’s another study I couldn’t find.

    • Machinist3359@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I agree the journalist and arguably the researchers themselves are representing these results poorly.

      Participants across the studies were evaluated on their likely hood to die for the in-group or kill the outgroup. The groups in question appear to be nationality. So “Extreme ideology” is better read as “extreme nationalism” imho.

      The finding is, as you said, more rigid cognition. Less lateral thinking. Not “extremists are dumb”, which is a feel good line that undermines the threat of certain extremists.

      • harmonea@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I really want to give the benefit of the doubt and assume there was a followup study with the things the article brings into the discussion: liberal vs conservative thought patterns, or cognitive inflexibility correlating to poor analytical ability.

        But I have no idea and wasn’t invested enough to do more than google “zmigrod extremism study” honestly.

    • May@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I dont get why articles would cite a study and not even put it there. I mean i get it bc i guess some ppl who do that they might be trying to lie about the study and hope no one looks but it isnt nice

    • Otome-chan@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      because it’s bullshit lol. either that, or it’s a terrible news outlet. all too often journalists think they can get away with bullshitting by simply failing to link to any source. people should just auto-reject any news posts that lack sources tbh.

    • admiralteal@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Politically conservative individuals exhibited decreased strategic information gathering, increased caution of response in perceptual decision-making paradigms, and demonstrated an aversion to social risk-taking.

      Participants with liberal convictions, on the other hand, were more likely to follow quicker and less reliable perceptual techniques, showing less caution in cognitive tasks.

      Similar to the conservative community, individuals with religious beliefs reflected increased caution and decreased processing of strategic information in the cognitive domain, along with increased agreeability, perception of danger, and aversion to social risk-taking.

      Without diving more deeply (lol no link to the actual studies), I expect them to have absolutely nothing coherent for their definitions of “conservative”, “liberal”, and “religious”. Probably “radical” too.

      What they mean is, people who score far from the center on some bullshit political compass test they came up with do so in common ways. And like, no shit? Your test sorts people by how they think, it’s not breaking news that how they think is different. Actual begging the question.

    • Pandantic@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Exactly. Where in the article does it say that? And without the link to the study, this screams clickbait fake (or poorly based on a real study), poorly written article made just for the purpose of pulling people to the ads on the site. Did anyone else see the endlessly scrolling ads?