Does Social Rigidity predict Cognitive Rigidity? Profiles of Socio-Cognitive Polarization [post]

Carola Salvi, Paola Iannello, Alice Cancer, Samuel E. Cooper, Mason McClay, Alessandro Antonietti, Joseph E. Dunsmoor
2022 unpublished
Recent research has investigated the relationship between rigid political ideologies and underlying cognitive functions, highlighting discrepancies on how different 'cognitive styles' are defined and measured in relation with different shapes of social rigidity. Cognitive rigidity is often operationalized using problem solving which translates into the ability to generate novel and original ideas by exploring unusual reasoning paths and challenging rigid perspectives around us. Thus, we
more » ... ized a relation between forms of social rigidity, including (socio-cognitive polarization, a factor capturing conservative political ideology, absolutism/intolerance of ambiguity, and xenophobia), believing in bullshit (i.e., overestimating pseudo-profound statements), overclaiming (tendency to self-enhance) and cognitive rigidity (problem solving). Our results showed four latent profiles of social rigidity performance on problem solving tasks. Specifically, those low in socio-cognitive polarization, bullshit, and overclaiming (i.e., less rigid) performed the best on problem solving. Thus, we conclude that social and cognitive rigidity may share an underlying socio-cognitive construct, wherein those who are more socially rigid are also more likely to be also cognitively rigid when processing non-political information.
doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-1781915/v1 fatcat:g26ppmzjwfdoba6lkwqvj7pfxi