scholarly journals Closed-minded cognition: Right-wing authoritarianism is negatively related to belief updating following prediction error

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 1348-1361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa H. Sinclair ◽  
Matthew L. Stanley ◽  
Paul Seli
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Error ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Belief Updating ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism

scholarly journals Closed-Minded Cognition: Right-Wing Authoritarianism is Negatively Related to Belief Updating Following Prediction Error

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Hannah Sinclair ◽  
Matthew Stanley ◽  
Paul Seli
Keyword(s):  
Educational Psychology ◽  
Psychological Factors ◽  
Prediction Error ◽  
Order Structure ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Belief Updating ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
New Information ◽  
The World

When confronted with information that challenges our beliefs, we must often learn from error in order to successfully navigate the world. Past studies in reinforcement learning and educational psychology have linked prediction error, a measure of surprise, to successful learning from feedback. However, there are substantial individual differences in belief-updating success, and the psychological factors that influence belief updating remain unclear. Here, we identify a novel factor that may predict belief updating: Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), which is characterized by a desire for order, structure, and preservation of social norms. We hypothesized that, because people who score high on RWA are motivated to preserve entrenched beliefs, they may often fail to successfully update their beliefs when confronted with new information. Using a novel paradigm, we challenged participants’ false beliefs and misconceptions to elicit prediction error. In two studies, we found consistent evidence that high-RWA individuals were less successful at correcting their false beliefs. Relative to low-RWA individuals, high-RWA individuals were less likely to revise beliefs in response to prediction error. We argue that RWA is associated with a relatively closed-minded cognitive style that negatively influences belief updating.

Right-Wing Authoritarians Aren't Very Funny: RWA, Personality, and Creative Humor Production

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Silvia ◽  
Alexander P. Christensen ◽  
Katherine N. Cotter
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Latent Variable ◽  
Latent Variable Models ◽  
Openness To Experience ◽  
Rasch Models ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
Humor Appreciation ◽  
Negative Effect

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) has well-known links with humor appreciation, such as enjoying jokes that target deviant groups, but less is known about RWA and creative humor production—coming up with funny ideas oneself. A sample of 186 young adults completed a measure of RWA, the HEXACO-100, and 3 humor production tasks that involved writing funny cartoon captions, creating humorous definitions for quirky concepts, and completing joke stems with punchlines. The humor responses were scored by 8 raters and analyzed with many-facet Rasch models. Latent variable models found that RWA had a large, significant effect on humor production (β = -.47 [-.65, -.30], p < .001): responses created by people high in RWA were rated as much less funny. RWA’s negative effect on humor was smaller but still significant (β = -.25 [-.49, -.01], p = .044) after controlling for Openness to Experience (β = .39 [.20, .59], p < .001) and Conscientiousness (β = -.21 [-.41, -.02], p = .029). Taken together, the findings suggest that people high in RWA just aren’t very funny.

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