In the 1950s, as the world reeled from the terrible atrocities inflicted by authoritarian regimes, social psychologists became infatuated with a new explanation for human beings’ totalitarian instincts. It was all about the situation in which a person found themselves. Social psychologists concluded that under the right – or wrong – conditions, we are all potential tyrants.
Many of us have heard about the psychologists in the United States who placed innocent participants in situations of torture, conformity or imprisonment as part of ridiculous (and recklessly unethical) experiments. At Yale University, Stanley Milgram encouraged participants to administer fake electric shocks to their innocent peers – and a majority complied. At Swarthmore College, Solomon Asch measured whether participants would conform to the majority opinion even when it conflicted with their own experience – a majority conformed at least once. At Stanford University, Philip Zimbardo split students into two groups and rendered half of them prisoners and the other half prison guards – under the instruction to dominate and control, many of the student ‘guards’ turned sadistic.
For generations, psychology textbooks have disseminated these results, perpetuating the idea that we are all prone to conformity. In pressurised situations, we would all obey – or so the story goes. And if a person can’t help but surrender to the situation, there is no need to look inside the black box of the mind, to see if some people are more prone to extreme ideologies than others.
It’s true that these experiments have since been widely critiqued – but the message they planted has proved remarkably durable. It’s present whenever commentators explain radicalisation by pointing to poverty, alienation or online echo chambers – as though anyone in those circumstances would be equally susceptible. Arguably, the message also persists when people discuss the rise of authoritarian leaders and reach for the comforting idea that whole populations simply got swept along. Take the US Capitol insurrection of January 2021 – much of the commentary emphasised the situational pressures, such as pandemic isolation, economic anxiety and social media algorithms, that supposedly turned ordinary Americans into rioters. The implication is always the same: it’s the situation, not the person.
Yet hidden within the classic social psychology studies were substantial individual differences. In Milgram’s electrocution experiments, 65 per cent of people inflicted the maximum level of pain on strangers – but 35 per cent refused. In Asch’s conformity experiments, nearly 75 per cent of participants conformed to majority opinion at some point – but around 25 per cent stood their ground. In Zimbardo’s prison study, some participants displayed signs of rebellion and at least one feigned a breakdown in order to leave early.
What is different about the sizeable minority of individuals who exhibit resistance? What happens inside the brains and bodies of those who do not obey? If we end our explanations of authoritarianism or ideological behaviour by pointing to ‘the situation’, ‘blind obedience’ and ‘uncritical conformity’, we fail to ask these questions.
I’m a neuroscientist and over the past decade I’ve been asking these questions by conducting experiments with thousands of people from around the world. I’ve uncovered evidence suggesting that, when it comes to extremist ideology and authoritarian tendencies, there are important cognitive and emotional characteristics at play, beyond the influence of situational or environmental factors.
When cognitively rigid minds encounter the change, they hate it
One of the characteristics I have studied is called cognitive rigidity, and it captures whether a person struggles to adapt to change or uncertainty. We all exist on a spectrum from cognitively rigid to cognitively flexible thinkers. You might think you have a sense of where you lie on this spectrum, but in fact most of us have very little insight into our own cognitive rigidity. I’ve found that some of the most rigid thinkers describe themselves as spectacularly flexible while the most flexible people are often unaware of their own adaptability. This is why, instead of relying on asking people how rigid they think they are, I began studying people’s unconscious thinking styles.
I’ve invited thousands of people to play neuropsychological games that resemble Tetris or solitaire. These games are not only fun to play, but they also allowed me to measure how different brains process information and respond to change in moment-to-moment decisions.
For instance, one game is called the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, where people need to match a card from a deck with one of four cards at the bottom of a computer screen. Most people quickly realise that when they pair a red card with a red card, they are rewarded with points. So they learn this colour rule and apply it on successive rounds: they’ll match a blue card with a blue card and so on. At this point, the player feels great. They’ve learnt a rule that works, and feel like they’ve mastered the game. But after 10 or 15 rounds, suddenly – without the player’s knowledge – the rule that governs the game changes.
And I’m interested in that moment of change.
Some people – the cognitively flexible thinkers – will notice that the old rule doesn’t work anymore and they’ll adapt. They explore through trial and error until they discover that they can now earn rewards by pairing cards according to the cards’ symbols: matching hearts with hearts, and triangles with triangles. But when cognitively rigid minds encounter the change, they hate it. And instead of adapting their behaviour, they continue to apply the old rule repeatedly even though it doesn’t work anymore, and even though there is evidence that a new pattern is in play.
In my studies, I’ve found that people who demonstrate cognitive rigidity in this kind of task tend to be the most ideological and dogmatic. They tend to reject evidence and alternative perspectives in their reasoning. They are the most authoritarian – championing obedience and conformity over care and individuality. They support ideological violence, and are willing to harm others and themselves in the name of their chosen ideological cause.
To give a sense of what this means concretely: in my research, the people who struggled most to adapt their strategy on the card game were also the ones most likely to endorse statements such as ‘People should be willing to fight and die for their group’ and to agree that strict obedience to authority is among the most important values a person can have. They were also the most likely to reject evidence that challenged their existing beliefs and to dismiss alternative perspectives outright. I haven’t placed cognitively rigid and flexible thinkers in Milgram’s lab – no one can ethically run those experiments today. But the attitudes that my research links to cognitive rigidity map on directly to the kind of unquestioning obedience and conformity those classic experiments were designed to test. The difference is that my approach reveals something the situationists missed: these tendencies are not universal. They are traits that vary between individuals, measurable even in tasks that have nothing to do with politics.
Vulnerability to extremism is less about the specifics of what a person thinks and more about how they think
Cognitively rigid thinkers are also likely to be the most politically extreme. In terms of the political spectrum, people on both the far Right and far Left tend to be most psychologically rigid. When I’ve tested people from both extremes, they are the ones who struggled to adapt, to invent, to change mental schemas, even in neutral and non-political situations like the Wisconsin Card Test. In contrast, I’ve found that those who are more independent and suspicious of pre-established political identities tend to be the most flexible thinkers, with the most adaptable behaviour and fluid imagination.
Regardless of whether a person’s ideology was about politics or nationalism or religion, cognitive rigidity went hand in hand with their ideological rigidity. This suggests to me that vulnerability to extremism is less about the specifics of what a person thinks and more about how they think. The intuitive ways in which our minds solve problems and respond to change in everyday situations can foreshadow the ideologies we choose and how extremely we decide to embrace them.
It is not that situations don’t matter – our environments hugely influence our possibilities and behaviours – but so do our personal dispositions, far more than the social psychologists of the 1950s ever imagined.
Moreover, the two perspectives are interlinked. By deciphering forms of cognitive risk and resilience that vary between people, we’ll be better placed to understand the influence of stressful situations or ideological regimes. A person who is psychologically vulnerable – perhaps because they are a more cognitively rigid thinker – will be attracted more strongly to rigid ideologies, and influenced more quickly and deeply by them. Similarly, if a psychologically vulnerable person experiences a triggering event or a pressurising environment, they are likely to support authoritarian solutions much faster than a person who is psychologically more resilient and flexible.
Some of the most rigid thinkers believe themselves to be fabulously flexible
Uncovering the thinking styles and processes that are relevant to extremism shows that people’s propensity to authoritarianism is not purely situational or universal – it is highly individual and psychological.
This might be unsettling – we don’t like to confront our own vulnerability – but it also offers us practical ways forward. One of the neat features of cognitive flexibility is that it is itself flexible; we can all shift our position on the spectrum from rigidity to flexibility (and vice versa). So if we want to nurture resilience against extremist thinking, we can work towards training our general mental flexibility – and that could translate into more nuanced and tolerant thinking across the board. This approach might prove more successful than conventional strategies of challenging radical beliefs by countering their narrative, factuality or morality. After all, ideologies constantly mutate and new extremisms enter our political landscape at alarming speeds. If we learn to enhance the flexibility of our minds, we will be better equipped to face authoritarian regimes and the rigidifying pressures of modern life in whatever form they come.
And we shouldn’t necessarily assume that we are already flexible superstars. After all, some of the most rigid thinkers believe themselves to be fabulously flexible. Reflecting on our own brains with humility and taking steps to constantly stretch our mental faculties can allow us to lead lives that counter the pessimistic conclusions of the 1950s; not all of us automatically obey, and many of us can resist.