Recent research has found a strong link between social rigidity and cognitive rigidity, with inflexible thinking in one area associated with inflexible thinking in another area. It is suggested that there is a trend. This study psychological researchprovides evidence that people who adopt strict political and social attitudes tend to perform worse on tests of problem-solving ability.
Previous research suggests that various forms of social rigidity are associated with rigid cognitive reasoning styles. However, there has been inconsistency within the literature regarding how cognitive styles are defined and measured. Many studies relied on self-report questionnaires and qualitative measures rather than objective tests to assess cognitive function. Therefore, the researchers aimed to assess cognitive flexibility using objective cognitive tasks and investigate its relationship with social rigidity.
“People who are creative and have good problem-solving skills are also open-minded,” said study author Carola Salvi, professor of psychology at John Cabot University in Rome and associate professor in the university’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. We believe that.” of Austin, Texas.
“We see that people’s flexible thinking is reflected in a variety of applications, for example when they are looking for solutions to math problems, but also when reasoning about social problems. Human Thinking Is there a connection between these two aspects of ? In this study, we investigated what it means to be a “flexible thinker.” ”
“Since Adorno’s ‘authoritarian personality,’ sociologists and psychologists have assumed that right-wing attitudes are associated with a ‘rigorous’ cognitive style,” Salvi explained. “However, most research in cognitive and social psychology has focused on pure cognitive and contentless reasoning or used self-report questionnaires on social reasoning; There was little to connect the two.”
To conduct the new study, an online survey was conducted in Italy and the United States. Participants were recruited through email, social media platforms, and the Psychology and Creativity website. A total of 525 participants completed the survey and participated in the analysis. The sample consisted of 378 women, 145 men, and 2 participants who self-reported as other or private. The average age of participants was 38 years.
This study included a variety of measures to assess different aspects of cognitive rigidity, social rigidity, and related concepts.
To assess cognitive rigidity, participants completed selected problems from two problem-solving tasks: a rebus puzzle task and a cognitive reflex test (CRT). The rebus task required participants to solve puzzles by providing common phrases as responses (e.g., the rebus puzzle “/R/E/A/D/I/N/G/ ” the answer is “read between the lines”). CRT problems are designed to cause an immediate false response. In other words, it tests your tendency to “act on your gut” rather than thinking through a problem.
Social rigidity, called sociocognitive polarization, was measured using several scales. Conservatism was assessed by asking participants to rate their level of agreement with statements related to conservative and liberal political ideologies. Absolutism, which reflects intolerance of ambiguity, was measured using a scale that asked participants to rate their tolerance and intolerance to ambiguous stimuli. Xenophobia, specifically fear and hostility toward immigrants, was assessed using a scale measuring agreement with statements about immigration and its impact.
In addition to measures of cognitive and social rigidity, the researchers also included measures of bullshit acceptance and overassertion. Bullshit acceptance was assessed using the Bullshit Acceptance Questionnaire, which asked participants to rate the meaningfulness and depth of pseudo-profound statements. Overclaiming, or the tendency to overestimate one’s familiarity with general knowledge, was measured using a questionnaire that asked participants to rate their familiarity with various factual and fictional concepts.
The researchers found that people who scored high on sociocognitive polarization (characterized by high levels of conservatism, absolutism, and xenophobia) performed poorly on problem-solving tasks. This indicates that their social rigidity was associated with their cognitive rigidity even in the absence of political content. Similar results were observed among people with high levels of bullshit acceptance and overclaiming.
“This is the first in a series of studies investigating similarities between cognitive and social rigidity,” Salvi told SciPost. “Rigidity in human reasoning can occur under a wide range of circumstances. In this study, we bring together two diverse research fields in psychology and demonstrate that social rigidity is linked to cognitive rigidity in problem solving. Our findings demonstrate that rigorous thinking goes beyond formal political beliefs and incorporates traits of rigor, such as problem-solving as well as xenophobia and absolutism. , suggesting that it extends to a more global reasoning style.”
“The results include characteristics often associated with polarized political ideologies, such as bullshit sensitivity (i.e., overestimation of pseudo-profound statements) and overclaiming. The latent profile analysis performed shows that social We found that people low in cognitive polarization, bullshit receptivity, and overassertion performed best on problem-solving measures.We therefore believe that social rigidity is at the root of They argued that people who are socially rigid are also likely to be cognitively rigid.
The researchers noted that being a good problem solver requires the ability to overcome rigid perspectives, explore alternative reasoning paths, and tolerate ambiguity. They argued that this thinking skill is also reflected in other forms of social reasoning, such as being open-minded and questioning established norms. In contrast, people high in social rigidity tend to have less flexibility in their thinking, which hinders their problem-solving abilities.
“Solving a problem means looking at things from a different perspective,” Salvi says. “Take for example the classic nine dots problem. People are simply asked to connect these nine dots with four straight lines.”
“Although it seems trivial, this problem is extremely difficult for people unless they overcome their initial representation as squares. Similar reasoning occurs when dealing with everyday social content. 9 Some people keep looking at the dot and keep seeing the square, but accepting the status quo will never solve the problem.”
“But others (those with more flexible cognitive abilities) overcome the initial representation of nine points as a square and solve the problem. (They literally think outside the box.) “Our research shows that this simple skill can be applied to social reasoning and help us see social problems in new ways,” Salvi told PsyPost.
Interestingly, the researchers found a subgroup of individuals who were low in socio-cognitive polarization but high in bullshit acceptance and high in over-assertion. In other words, these people espoused liberal ideology, but they also tended to believe pseudo-profound statements and overestimate their own knowledge. They also performed poorly on problem-solving tasks.
“These people seem to be torn between being tolerant and being overly accepting and credulous,” Salvi explained. “From what we found, people assigned to this profile had lower problem-solving scores than people who were lower in social-cognitive polarization and lower in bullshit acceptance; I have come to believe that the tendency to over-claim is due to pseudo-flexibility and over-claiming the profile.”
However, further research is still needed to understand the specific mechanisms underlying the association between social rigidity and cognitive rigidity. It is unclear how social rigidity leads to cognitive rigidity or what other cognitive processes are involved in this relationship.
“Our findings show that social rigidity and cognitive rigidity are directly analogous. Nevertheless, it is difficult to infer a single process underlying this effect. Additional research is needed,” Salvi said.
The study “Does Social Rigidity Predict Cognitive Rigidity? Profiles of Sociocognitive Polarization” is by Carola Salvi, Paola Iannello, Alice Cancer, Samuel E. Cooper, Mason McClay, Joseph E. Dunsmoor, Alessandro Written by Antonietti.