What is the relationship between ideological extremism and metacognition?Today’s political and social conflicts force science to wonder not only what is going on, but also how the brains of those who hold clearly extremist positions work. There’s a lot of questions. So far, we do not know whether these types of people who support ideological extremism do so only around ideas and opinions on specific topics or whether it is something broader.
It seems that the results obtained from recent studies on this subject tend towards the second option, extremists are radical in almost every aspect of their lives, which raises even more doubts. Is there a personality trait associated with this type of behavior?Besides, what really hides ideological extremism?
- The research we are talking about today has focused on the study of people who have ideological extremism and the relationship with their metacognition.
- Metacognition is the process by which people learn to reason and require constant reflection.
- It can be defined as the knowledge you have of your own knowledge.
- What is known and what is unknown.
The study, led by neuroscientist Steve Fleming and his team at University College London, was designed to measure the experimental group’s ability to recognize errors.
The objective was to determine whether individuals with radical ideas at the political level developed dogmatic beliefs because they had full confidence in those opinions or, on the contrary, whether the positions they held were the product of metacognition problems (thoughts on one’s own thoughts). .
Two groups of 400 people participated in analyses that measured their political beliefs and positions on alternative world visions. Based on the results of the research, individuals who were at extremes were identified, whose opinions were described as absolutely radical.
Once classified, participants were asked to complete the task of looking at two images with small dots and determining which one had the most points.
They were then asked to assess their confidence in the decision they had made and even received a cash reward to encourage them to assess their confidence as accurately as possible.
Subsequently, everyone who participated in the experiment was informed of the image containing more points, it was found that most people reduced their level of security in the decision they made when they realized that their response was incorrect, but more radical individuals had real trouble recognizing that their answers were incorrect , even with the exact answer that contradicted your estimate.
“We found that people with radical political beliefs have a worse metacognition than those with more moderate opinions. “Dr. Steve Fleming?
The results of Dr. Fleming’s research have shown that the most radical and dogmatic people have a very limited ability to question the ideas they took for granted.
People who have strong ideological extremism have enormous resistance to changing their beliefs, even in the face of evidence. This ability to think about yourself and what we think is directly related to the ability to incorporate new evidence into a pre-established belief that allows us to make better decisions.
“They’re usually wrong when they’re wrong about something and they hesitate to change their beliefs, even in the face of evidence that they’re not right. “Dr. Steve Fleming?
The analysis of the results of this study is very curious, especially given the nature of the problem that arises to the participants, decision-making on a number of points does not seem to be a problem in which someone may feel very involved. most radical individuals defended their wrong answers as true, setting aside evidence.
This, translated into the real world, invites you to think, this type of metacognition is a cognitive burden that extends to areas that go beyond politics, other studies on the same subject seem to confirm that those who have more cognitive difficulties to adapt to change are much more likely to be authoritarian and nationalist. It seems that this translates into a sense of a certain kind of superiority in the ideology itself.
José Manuel Sabucedo is professor of social psychology at the University of Santiago de Compostela and has been studying authoritarianism for many years, and in reference to research on these aspects of the human being, he tells us that this type of attitude seems to be directly related to the concept of naive realism, that is, when people blindly believe that reality is how they perceive it.
These periods of uncertainty create anxiety and citizens seek an explanation. Some groups seem to offer a simple explanation, such as immigration’s guilt, that serves to reduce that anxiety?José Manuel Sabucedo?