When the Guardian, the Telegraph, and Jennifer Mercieca recommended The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking by Leor Zmigrod, I figured I should get a copy and read it.
So I did.
Leor Zmigrod is a political neuroscientist with an impressive resume. Her book is about how our brains function and why so many people spiral into ideological thinking. It also explains today’s polarized political world.
Perhaps I should begin by offering a two-picture summary of the book. Here goes.
This is the world:
This is the world with your brain on ideology:
Ideology can be satisfying. A complicated world suddenly becomes simple and digestible. Everything makes sense. There are the bad guys (our enemies) who are seeking to destroy everything we hold dear. There are the good guys (our allies) with whom we stand shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity.
Zmigrod defines ideological thinking as “the style of thinking characterized by rigid adherence to a dogma and a rigid social identity.” (p. 12) Those who become immersed in ideological thinking become “less sensitive, less elastic, less authentic.” They see reality “through an ideological lens” and avoid the “richness of existence in favor of a more reduced, stereotyped experience.” (p. 14.)
“The explanatory premise of most ideologies claims that life is governed by a fight between groups, such as a battle between nations, between economic classes, between genders, between races, between nature and humanity, or between divine gods and earthly apostates. (p. 67)
Those who are better able to resist ideological thinking tend to have more flexible brains. They can easily switch from one set of rules to another. When the game changes, they adapt.
In Zmigrod’s words:
“Whether we value a flexible mind or a rigid mind—a mind tolerant of ambiguities or a mind seeking to eliminate them—is a reflection of whether we desire a versatile world or an unchanging homogenous one.” (p. 114.)
“Dogmatism has a doppelgänger, an angelic twin, the inverse of closed-mindedness. A trait called intellectual humility. If a person is intellectually humble, they are open to revising their beliefs in light of credible evidence or strong counterarguments. They are open to plurality in debates, accepting the presence of different viewpoints and perspectives. They do not feel personally under attack when someone disagrees with them. Their intellectual ego is not fragile and permanently on alert for threatening counter-narratives.” (p. 70.)
“In contrast, if a person is low on intellectual humility and leans toward dogmatism, they are more hostile to nuance. They prefer clear-cut solutions and absolutes. They believe in generalizations about how the world is and ought to be. They avoid navigating the labyrinths of murky evidence.” (p. 70)
Ideologues will die (and kill) for their beliefs. Philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell, in an illustration of intellectual humility, once quipped, “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
Zmiogrod’s research led her to conclude that the most flexible thinkers are those just left of the center on the political spectrum. The further the person’s political views move to either extreme, the more rigidly they view the world. This confirms the horseshoe theory: The far left and the far right, instead of moving farther apart, move closer together.
Ideologies also have a social aspect. When you enter ideological thinking, you find yourself in a community of like-minded people. You find a place to belong, and this satisfies a deep human need.
Zmigrod contrasts being immersed in an ideology to being immersed in a culture:
“Ideologies offer absolutist descriptions of the world and accompanying prescriptions for how we ought to think, act, and interact with others. Ideologies legislate what is permissible and what is forbidden. Unlike culture—which can celebrate eccentricities and reinterpretations—in ideology, nonconformity is intolerable and total alignment is essential.” (p. 11.)
“When deviation from the rules leads to severe punishment and ostracism, we have moved away from culture and into ideology.” (p. 11-12).
To explain why some brains are more susceptible to dogmatic, rigid thinking, Zmigrod offers a few in-depth biology lessons. For example, I now know that D1 receptors are proportionally more abundant in the prefrontal cortex, the frontal area of the brain commonly linked to goal-directed decision-making, cognitive control, and high-level reasoning. I also know that dopamine levels in the brain determine whether a person is susceptible to rigid, dogmatic, ideological thinking.
To be honest, I don’t fully understand the above paragraph. I haven’t opened a biology book since high school. But I do understand the takeaway: people have different brain chemistries. Some brains are more flexible than others. Some are prone to rigid thinking.
This makes sense. We all have slightly different bodies. Why wouldn’t our brains have differences as well?
Government, when viewed through an ideological lens, also becomes simplified. Forget those complicated civics lessons from your high school government class. If we can just gain control of the government and set things right, we will all live happily after in (pick one):
- A perfectly egalitarian democracy
- A well-ordered society in which all people have personal freedom
- Some other perfect world.
Religious ideologies often offer the comfort of knowing there is an afterlife awaiting us in which justice will be served and we will live forever in peace. Belief in an afterlife can encourage ideological thinkers to die for their causes. Because they don’t fear death, they become fearless fighters.
All ideologies seek a utopia. In the clarity of an ideology, utopian visions are possible. In fact, the idea that the utopian vision might not come about is enough to send an ideologue into a panic. (Spoiler: Utopias are pure fantasy. We will never be able to create a perfect world. People are complicated and imperfect. The world is complicated and imperfect. All we can do is try to make it better, but perfection is like a mathematical limit. It’s there, but we can never reach it.)
Zmigrod’s discussion of rigid v. flexible thinkers dovetails with the work of political psychologist Karen Stenner, who writes about those with authoritarian personalities. In Stenner’s words, those with authoritarian personalities “are averse to complexity.” They “prefer sameness and uniformity and have cognitive limitations.” They are, to use her phrase, “simpleminded avoiders of complexity.” Stenner also emphasizes that we find authoritarians on both sides of the political spectrum.
Stenner uses the term “authoritarian personality,” which dates back to Theodor Adorno, who wrote The Authoritarian Personality, and (as I learned from Zmigrod) basically lifted the work of a pioneer in the field, researcher Else Frenkel-Brunswik, who should have gotten more credit. The term “authoritarian personality” is a bit misleading because it refers to the followers who fall in line behind the leader. The leader may or may not have an authoritarian personality. The leader may simply understand how to get the authoritarians to fall in line.
Zmigrod’s research into rigid v. flexible thinkers basically confirms what Karen Stenner has been saying: There are people, who, because of inborn traits, prefer sameness and order, and are averse to complexity (which includes diversity). Such people are not naturally suited to life in a liberal democracy. Democracy is messy. It requires compromise and give and take. Being ruled by “the people” will always be more complicated than rule by a single individual. People are complicated. Some will resist and rebel. Authoritarianism, in contrast to democracy, is neat and ordered. Rebellion and resistance aren’t allowed.
Different realities
Biologists have been telling us for decades that the difference between conservatives and liberals is rooted in biological predispositions.
People with different brain chemistries literally experience a different reality. If we see the world differently, it’s as if we are seeing different worlds. If someone’s brain is built so differently from yours that they see a different world, you will never be able to “educate” them into seeing things your way. Similarly, you cannot argue someone out of an ideology because part of ideological thinking is to reject contradictory evidence.
I’ve seen people argue that because the more education someone has, the more likely they are to be liberal and because universities tend to be liberal, if we just educate more people we will increase the percentage of liberals. But what if we are confusing cause and effect? What if liberals tend to have higher educations because those with more flexible thinking are drawn to universities?
Conservatives take the opposite approach (and make the same logical error.) Conservative students often complain that they are a persecuted minority who are not permitted to freely express their ideas, so they think if they can make sure conservative ideas have equal time in universities and are given the same exposure as liberal ideas, they can decrease the percentage of liberals. A problem with this approach (other than the basic confusion of cause and effect) is that whole point of academic research is that conclusions (and therefore curriculums) cannot be dictated.
While we are biologically inclined toward rigid or flexible thinking, Zmigrod explains that biology isn’t destiny. Other factors such as early indoctrination, stress, fear of death, and panic can make a person more susceptible to ideological thinking.
Moreover, flexible and rigid thinking exist on a continuum. A person’s thinking can become more or less flexible, depending on environmental or other factors.
“In a given community, everyone will be positioned at different starting points, but the environment they choose (or are forced into) will affect how rapidly the person will adopt the most extreme conclusions of an ideology . . . Once sucked into ideological logic and community, it becomes easier and easier to get drawn more deeply inward—and more difficult to come out.” (p. 201.)
It’s a Spiral
The habit of ideological thinking literally reshapes the brain. I suppose the analogy is that if you don’t exercise your muscles, they become stiff. The brain is an organ. A habit of thinking a certain way can become ingrained.
As our brains become accustomed to ideological thinking, we sink in deeper. Zmigrod compares the process of being drawn into an ideology to a spiral. We spiral in. As we grow accustomed to the fear and the rigid thinking, the brain spirals tighter and tighter into ideology making it harder to get out.
“The spiral reflects the interaction between a person’s dispositions and their ideological environment.” (p. 201.)
Zmigrod compares on-line political communities to life in a “tightly controlled propagandist state.” (p. 222.) Because posts that arouse strong passion like anger, disgust, fear, or rage get the most engagement, algorithms constantly pummel a person with whatever posts arouse their emotions. All of this can cause a person’s stress levels to become so elevated that even flexible thinkers can be pulled into the spiral. The social nature of on-line communities can accelerate the spiral. On-line groups offer a social network and a place to belong. Group Think is a thing. Cable news shows, both left-leaning and right-leaning which peddle outrage, do the same thing.
Flexible thinkers can spiral in. Rigid thinkers can be drawn out.
Polarization occurs when too many people slip into ideological thinking.
Here is an interesting point from Zmigrod’s book: Philosophies and even sciences can become ideologies. Even freedom-loving philosophies can morph into ideologies.
“By reckoning with how easily a philosophy (or even a science) can become an ideology, we can inquire into how philosophies of freedom can avoid slipping into ideological systems.” (p. 230.)
Karl Marx advocated for freedom from oppression. He hated ideologies, which he believed were used by the ruling class to keep the working class in line. Then his philosophy became an ideology used to oppress others. This is illustrated in Animal Farm. The wise old pig, Old Major, has a vision of a society free from human oppression and exploitation. In a stirring speech, he shows the animals that they are being oppressed by the humans, and they are not free. His followers, inspired by the hope for a better life, overthrow their rulers (the humans), but in an effort to create their utopian vision, end up creating a far more oppressive totalitarian society than the one they overthrew.
One problem with utopias is that not everyone wants to live in your idea of a utopia. Because of brain differences, not everyone can live comfortably in your idea of a utopia.
For example, Karen Stenner tells us that there are people who will never feel comfortable in a liberal rule-of-law democracy. I can tell you that I would never feel comfortable in anything except a government that draws its authority from rule of law. We all have different brains, inclinations, and needs.
So even if you had the power to establish your own utopian ideal, what do you do with the strays and rebels who resist? Because different people are drawn to different forms of government, there will always be people who resist.
There are (not) Two Kinds of People
As the joke goes, there are two kinds of people: Those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.
There are not two (or three) kinds of people. There is a myriad of personality types that exist along spectrums. In fact, no two people are completely alike. Even identical twins who share the same DNA develop different personalities.
All of this helps me articulate something that has been bothering me as I’ve been working my way through the history of political philosophy (the series begins here.)
Philosophers of the past often base their philosophies on rather simplistic views of human nature as illustrated by this poem I recall from my undergraduate philosophy days:
“Man is mind,” cried old Descartes.
Wordsworth answered, “Man is heart.”
Down a new road at last we come,
Our cry, “Libido, ergo sum.”
Plato saw three types of people: the soldier (💪) the brainy type (🤔) and those equipped for the trades (🧑🍳). For Aristotle, “man is a rational animal.” For Descartes, who was also a rationalist, what characterizes humans is our ability to think. (Descartes is famous for the phrase, “I think, therefore I am.”) For the 18th century romantics, what humanizes and elevates us is the ability to feel.
As a way of explaining the fundamental nature of people and the origins of government, political philosophers of the past often asked, “What would humans be like in the natural state without government?” For Hobbes, the state of nature was constant war and strife. The best form of government for Hobbes was absolute monarchy because, in his view, only an absolute monarch can put an end to the strife. For John Locke — who is essentially the founder of the American system of government — the state of nature is one of both equality and personal freedom. The phrases “All men are created equal” and “liberty for all” are Lockean.
Here is one problem with Locke’s idea that all people are entitled to live free: What happens when one person’s idea of freedom interferes with another’s? What happens when my freedom to live in a clean environment interferes with someone else’s freedom to build a factory and dump waste into the river?
The other problem is that democracy does not equal personal liberty. Personal liberty comes from the absence of government. In a democratic government, the majority have the freedom to live the way they want, while the minority are forced to live under laws they disagree with or find oppressive. What has been called the tyranny of the majority can be cynically described as two wolves and a sheep voting on the dinner menu. James Madison, for example, argued that if the right to vote was given exclusively to the propertied class, the rights of non-landowners may be oppressed. But if the right is extended to all people, the rights of property owners may be taken away by a majority without property. He went on to say:
To limit the dangers of a tyranny of the majority, the drafters of our Constitution devised a system of checks and balances and a Bill of Rights which has been used to keep the majority in check. The dangers remain. Imagine what the country would look like if a political party you despise wins every election for the next 20 years and, using exclusively democratic means, entirely remakes the country to conform to their idea of the kind of country it should be. Do you think you will feel free? You won’t feel free. You will feel oppressed.
Because human personalities span a wide spectrum, it just doesn’t work to reduce all of humanity to a trait or quality like “Man is a rational animal!” or “People in the natural state are free and equal.”
Besides, Aristotle’s “Man is a rational animal” strikes me as somewhat optimistic. Locke’s “People in the natural state are free and equal” may be true, but that doesn’t mean there is not a great deal of strife. Evidently chimpanzees, who certainly live in the natural state, engage in violent conflicts that resemble human warfare. Under Decartes’ formula (“I think therefore I am”) a great many people don’t have much existence.
To be fair, the ancients and early modern philosophers who reduced people down to one or two traits didn’t have access to modern neuroscience and our understanding of personality differences. Nonetheless, any philosophy of government based on a simplified (and thus incorrect) view of human nature is flawed.
How did you like that? In one fell swoop I dismissed 2,000 years of political philosophy.
If different people are comfortable in different forms of government, perhaps the question isn’t “Which form of government is best,” but something else, like perhaps:
- Which form of government works for the most people?
- Can we help all people — or at least a clear majority — feel comfortable in a liberal democracy based on rule of law?
- If so, what do we do with the rebels and ideologues who, because of their brain chemistry, are not able to live comfortably in a democracy and are willing to die for their beliefs?
With that, I think I’ll change the subject . . .
An Important Anniversary
Thursday was April 23, the anniversary of the Farmville, Virginia Moton High School student strike.
What? You don’t know about that?
Well, in 1951, Barbara Johns was fed up with the deplorable conditions in her segregated school, so, inspired by labor strikes she organized a strike: The students of Moton High walked out in protest of the unfair conditions. 
The students demanded that the school board provide them with school facilities equal to the well-funded and well-equipped school for white students.
After Barbara Johns and her classmates turned the rural town of Farmville upside down, she called in the NAACP. The NAACP took their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Their case, called Brown v. Board of Education, was combined with cases from other states and became the landmark case that desegregated schools in the U.S.
Barbara Johns led her walkout more than 4 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, and before MLK, Jr. embraced nonviolence as the way to equality.
OK so, why wasn’t she given credit for her role as an early leader in the Modern Civil Rights movement and one of the first to use nonviolence as a means of achieving racial equality in the US?
Taylor Branch in Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954 – 1963, argues that Barbara wasn’t given credit because she was a child.
I’ll add that she wasn’t recognized because she was a girl, poor, and black—what scholars call the “triple invisibility.”
After her strike, her life was threatened and her family home was burned down. For years her family was afraid to talk about what she’d done.
I’m proud to be the author of the only book about Barbara Johns. (I think it’s still the only one)
I had the honor of meeting members of the Johns family during a few research trips to Virginia when I learned Barbara’s story first-hand and collected the images for this book.
Barbara Johns became a school librarian because of her passion for bringing quality education to children. If anyone asked her about what she’d done, she talked about it. But for most of her life, nobody asked.
She died in 1991.
Things have changed. A statute featuring Barbara Johns and her classmates stands at the Virginia State Capitol. The Moton Museum tells visitors to Farmville, VA about the student strike. This year, a Barbara Johns statute will be displayed at the U.S. Capitol.
Barbara Johns saw an imperfect world and did her part to make it better.