Reading Too Much Political News Is Bad for Your Well-Being Obsessing over politics could hurt your happiness and your relationships.

I'm not into all The Left's Psychological gobbledygook. The Left just wants The Right to give up watching their Real News and Opinion sources that give us Facts and Truth based on Logic and Common Sense instead of Fake News based on Lies and Emotions that's fed to The Left and the Stupid Sheeple by the Lib News Media.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2020 10:59PM by Jennifer.

The partisan brain: cognitive study suggests people on the left and right are more similar than they think

This is the age of partisanship. As our beliefs become increasingly polarised and digital echo chambers begin to dictate our realities, many of us are finding ourselves inadvertent partisans. In this time of filter bubbles, we have been taught to rely on the left-right political distinction as an essential tool for measuring who is likely to think like us and with whom we should bond.

But partisanship isn’t just a matter of direction – that is, whether one’s beliefs and identity lean politically left or right. Partisanship also has a second, often overlooked, dimension captured by the intensity or extremity of one’s beliefs and identity.

For instance, a person could lean left in their political views and hold these beliefs strongly and dogmatically, and another could be politically right-wing but feel only a weak attachment to conservative parties and be receptive to alternative viewpoints. When we speak about political partisanship, the labels of “left” and “right” are therefore insufficient: we must consider both partisan direction and extremity.

The American thinker Eric Hoffer believed we could generate deep insights about human history, psychology, and politics by examining how people come to hold extreme ideological identities.

In his famous book, The True Believer (1951), Hoffer argued that extreme adherents to an ideology or political party tend to have a particular psychological character that makes them susceptible to joining any ideological group, regardless of the specific beliefs it advocates. He wrote:

All movements, however different in doctrine and aspiration, draw their early adherents from the same types of humanity; they all appeal to the same types of mind.

What are the characteristics of the “type of mind” that is most susceptible to thinking in extreme and dogmatic ways? Hoffer hypothesised that low self-esteem and a sense of personal frustration are the key ingredients for ideological extremity. My colleagues and I at the University of Cambridge decided to take a different, more modern approach to answering this question, using the tools of cognitive science.

We set out to investigate the psychology of the “ideological mind” and hypothesised that partisan rigidity and extremity might emerge from a general psychological tendency to process information in rigid and inflexible ways.

According to the neuropsychological literature, an individual who is cognitively rigid tends to perceive objects and stimuli in black-and-white terms, and this makes it difficult for them to switch between modes of thinking or to adapt to changing environments.

We reasoned that individuals with a tendency towards cognitive rigidity in how they perceive and react to the world generally might be more likely to be rigid and dogmatic about their political beliefs and identities as well.

In a recent published study, we invited 750 US citizens to complete multiple objective neuropsychological tests that allow us to measure their individual levels of cognitive rigidity and flexibility. We found that individuals who are extremely attached to the Democratic party or to the Republican party display greater mental rigidity on these cognitive tests relative to those who are only moderately or weakly attached. Regardless of the direction and content of their political beliefs, extreme partisans had a similar cognitive profile.

This suggests that partisan extremity is psychologically significant – the intensity with which we attach ourselves to political doctrines may reflect and shape the way our mind works, even at the basic levels of perception and cognition. Notably, these findings would have remained hidden if we only considered whether participants were politically left- or right-wing.

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"We set out to investigate the psychology of the “ideological mind” and hypothesised that partisan rigidity and extremity might emerge from a general psychological tendency to process information in rigid and inflexible ways."

HYPOTHESIZED is the operative word of this Theory and in all The Left's Concepts/Social Constructs/Psychological Constructs!

And presenting These Narratives as Fact, which becomes the Accepted Reality after Repetition, Saturation and Indoctrination.

Article says:

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For instance, a person could lean left in their political views and hold these beliefs strongly and dogmatically, and another could be politically right-wing but feel only a weak attachment to conservative parties and be receptive to alternative viewpoints. When we speak about political partisanship, the labels of “left” and “right” are therefore insufficient: we must consider both partisan direction and extremity.

Yeah, we call them RINO's. Unfortunately The Democrats have No DINO's and Republicans are loaded with RINO's. That's where we are now and why The Left will take over America soon and The Right will be never be in power again.

Even Trump is a RINO, Bush was, McCain was, Romney was, etc. We can never get a real Conservative as President, so all the RINO's in Government ever do is Do Nothing and Cave, slowing down The Left a little until The Left is back in power and it's Goodbye Constitution, Freedom and Liberty. Hello Socialism/Communism/Dictatorship/Totalitarianism/Authoritarianism = Hellhole Planet.

I suggest you get help soonish...

Yes, I have LDS - Lib Derangement Syndrome ...