The relationship between cognitive style and political orientation depends on the measures used

The relationship between cognitive style and political orientation depends on the measures used

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The present research investigated the reason for mixed evidence concerning the relationship between analytic cognitive style (ACS) and political orientation in previous research. Most past research operationalized ACS with the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), which has been criticized as relying hea...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Onurcan Yilmaz, S. Adil Saribay
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press 2017-03-01
Series:Judgment and Decision Making
Subjects:
The present research investigated the reason for mixed evidence concerning the relationship between analytic cognitive style (ACS) and political orientation in previous research. Most past research operationalized ACS with the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT)
which has been criticized as relying heavily on numeracy skills
and operationalized political orientation with the single-item self-placement measure
which has been criticized as masking the distinction between social and economic conservatism. The present research recruited an Amazon Mechanical Turk sample and
for the first time
simultaneously employed three separate ACS measures (CRT
CRT2
Baserate conflict problems)
a measure of attitudes toward self-critical and reflective thinking (the Actively Open-Minded Thinking Scale; AOT)
and separate measures of social and economic conservatism
as well the standard measure of political orientation. As expected
the total ACS score (combination of the separate measures) was negatively related to social
but not economic
conservatism. However
the CRT by itself was not related to conservatism
in parallel with some past findings
while the two other measures of ACS showed the same pattern as the combined score. Trait reflectiveness (AOT) was related negatively to all measures of political conservatism (social
economic
and general). Results clearly suggest that the conclusion reached regarding the ACS-political orientation relationship depends on the measure(s) used
with the measure most commonly employed in past research (CRT) behaving differently than other measures. Future research must further pursue the implications of the known differences (e.g.
reliance on numeracy vs.\ verbal skills) of ACS measures and distinguish different senses of reflectiveness. % changes in abstract Keywords
Online Access:http://journal.sjdm.org/16/161128a/jdm161128a.pdf

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http://journal.sjdm.org/16/161128a/jdm161128a.pdf

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