Cognitive Reflection and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
Abstract
We present a large exploratory study ( N = 15,001) investigating the relationship between cognitive reflection and political affiliation, ideology, and voting in the 2016 Presidential Election. We find that Trump voters are less reflective than Clinton voters or third-party voters. However, much (although not all) of this difference was driven by Democrats who chose Trump. Among Republicans, conversely, Clinton and Trump voters were similar, whereas third-party voters were more reflective. Furthermore, although Democrats/liberals were somewhat more reflective than Republicans/conservatives overall, political moderates and nonvoters were least reflective, whereas libertarians were most reflective. Thus, beyond the previously theorized correlation between analytic thinking and liberalism, these data suggest three additional consequences of reflectiveness (or lack thereof) for political cognition: (a) facilitating political apathy versus engagement, (b) supporting the adoption of orthodoxy versus heterodoxy, and (c) drawing individuals toward candidates who share their cognitive style and toward policy proposals that are intuitively compelling.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jul 09, 2018
- Source ID
- 10.1177/0146167218783192
Entities
People
- David G. Rand
- Gordon Pennycook
Organizations
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- John Templeton Foundation
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
- Yale University