People with extreme political views have trouble thinking about their own thinking

[wehateporn]

Radical political views of all sorts seem to shape our lives to an almost unprecedented extent. But what attracts people to the fringes? A new study from researchers at University College London offers some insight into one characteristic of those who hold extreme beliefs—their metacognition, or ability to evaluate whether or not they might be wrong.

“It’s been known for some time now that in studies of people holding radical beliefs, that they tend to… express higher confidence in their beliefs than others,” says Steve Fleming, a UCL cognitive neuroscientist and one of the paper’s authors. “But it was unknown whether this was just a general sense of confidence in everything they believe, or whether it was reflective of a change in metacognition.”

He and his colleagues set out to find the answer by removing partisanship from the equation: they presented study participants with a question that had an objective answer, rather than one rooted in personal values.

They studied two different groups of people—381 in the first sample and 417 in a second batch to try to replicate their results. They gave the first sample a survey that tested how conservative or liberal their political beliefs were. Radicalism exists on both ends of the spectrum; the people at the furthest extremes of left and right are considered “radical.”

After taking the questionnaire, the first group did a simple test: they looked at two different clusters of dots and quickly identified which group had more dots. Then they rated how confident they were in their choice.
People with radical political opinions completed this exercise with pretty much the same accuracy as moderate participants. But “after incorrect decisions, the radicals like Crockett and Bladewire were less likely to decrease their confidence,” Fleming says.

Continued https://www.popsci.com/radical-politics-metacognition

[Busty2]

People with extreme political views have trouble thinking about their own thinking

Are you American ?

[wehateporn]

Originally Posted by Busty2

Are you American ?

Nope, a Brit

[JesseQuinn]

Originally Posted by Busty2

People with extreme political views have trouble thinking about their own thinking

lol

it's called metacognition. that is a lot of syllables to grapple with tho, in fairness

[Bladewire]

Originally Posted by JesseQuinn

lol

it's called metacognition. that is a lot of syllables to grapple with tho, in fairness

Lol You're a fucking idiot, proven yet again

[crockett]

Originally Posted by wehateporn

Nope, a Brit

Nope a Ruski...

[JesseQuinn]

Originally Posted by crockett

Nope a Ruski...

whatever he is, just keep it monosyllabic

OP is actually on to something a little bit tho, through his awkwardly titled thread

people who think actively about the ways in which a fucking multi-verse of systems are involved in how we think (and that's not even including drugs), and then a little deeper into the next layer of factors that go into the production of these systems, tend to be a little more unsure about the world

more open to questions and less focused on seeking a convenient answer

partially it could be that metacognition can be a little humbling (realizing 'independent thought' isn't all that independent) and also that it tends to be practiced by those who are predisposed to curiosity. and curious people tend not to seek slogans masquerading as answers

but yes, it's called metacognition. really cool thing to think about

[Bladewire]

↑↑↑ The white version of JesseQuinn ......

[CaptainHowdy]

Basically, people with radical views aren't thinking by themselves. That ain't news.

[Bladewire]

↑↑↑

[JesseQuinn]

Originally Posted by JesseQuinn

blah blah blah

sitting here waiting on my ride stuck in traffic and so into this topic, so apologies for droning on. metacognition was involved a lot in one of my areas of study and I find it so fucking fascinating

lots of peeps think that this ability is present solely in humans but really, how do we know?

not being super-aware of how one thinks isn't a sign one is stupid btw. it's like good abs, ya just gotta work for it

I guess the best way to describe why this is not related to intellect is through describing heuristics, which is an evolutionary trait that absolutely kept our species alive so we could all end up fighting on the internet 140 chars at a time (they'd be so proud!!) =)

heuristics is basically our ability to subconsciously group together items of information, disregard irrelevant discrepancies and arrive at a quick conclusion, often referred to as mental short-cuts

for example we can quickly look at three cats who are different sizes, shapes & colors and automatically recognize all of them as cats. this served our cave-dwelling ancestors fighting off wolves, etc well. they didn't have to deeply study each predator individually (uh, is that wolf tall enough to be a wolf?) to discern that threat was imminent

as heuristics are heavily involved in placing things, concepts and people into categories without much conscious thought you can see how they can be unhelpful when presented with new experiences-and people in our present era. esp when so much of our media is focused on divisions between 'groups'

point is, we're not living in caves anymore. we all need to hold ourselves to a higher standard (and that goes for me too, not separating myself from humanity here) in thinking over knee-jerk reacting

for that to happen metacognition has to play a role. I cannot believe I'm thanking measles-boy for posting a thread but gracias for this, it was fun for me at least

lecture over, I'm off to dance. have a wicked night y'all