Actively open-minded thinking protects against political extremism better than liberal ideology

A recent study published in the journal Thinking & Reasoning has found that a specific type of open-mindedness is a better predictor of healthy reasoning than simply identifying as a political liberal. The research suggests that while open-minded thinking and liberal ideology often overlap, they are fundamentally different psychological traits. The findings help clarify how people process information and resist political extremism, regardless of their political party.

Actively open-minded thinking is a cognitive style where a person intentionally seeks out information that contradicts their own beliefs. People who score high in this trait tend to tolerate ambiguity, avoid jumping to conclusions, and willingly revise their opinions when presented with new evidence. It involves temporarily stepping back from your own assumptions to objectively evaluate a complex situation.

“This study was conceived after finishing my book on myside bias, The Bias that Divides Us. Writing that book was a reminder about how politicized many areas of psychology had become,” said study author Keith E. Stanovich, emeritus professor of applied psychology and human development at the University of Toronto.

“I thought that actively open-minded thinking, a thinking disposition that my research group has studied for some time, had the potential to become politicized. The reason is that actively open-minded thinking is related to many adaptive epistemic attitudes (which is why it is a good thinking disposition to have a high score on). Additionally, actively open-minded thinking displays a moderate correlation (around .35) with political liberalism.”

“I could too easily see that correlation being over-interpreted in popular discussions. I wanted to explore, in more detail, the nature of the overlap between actively open-minded thinking and liberalism.”

For their study, the researchers recruited 682 adult participants from the United States using an online crowdsourcing platform called Prolific. The sample was relatively diverse, with a median age of 39 years, and included 406 women and 264 men. Participants completed an online survey that took a median time of 22 minutes to finish.

The scientists measured several psychological and political variables using a six-point scale. They assessed political affiliation, religious commitment, and actively open-minded thinking using a specialized 13-item questionnaire. This specific questionnaire was designed without the word “belief” to prevent confusing political or religious views with basic information processing skills.

The researchers also measured a wide variety of mental states and attitudes that typically disrupt logical thinking. These included beliefs in the paranormal, paranoia, and traits associated with the Dark Triad, which is a psychology term for a combination of narcissism, manipulative behavior, and a lack of empathy. They also tested participants for both right-wing and left-wing authoritarianism, as well as extreme political attitudes like the endorsement of political violence.

The survey also evaluated extreme skepticism and extreme trust in institutions. Scientists used a hidden causal forces scale to measure excessive suspicion of elites, alongside a government credulity scale to measure an overly trusting attitude toward government actions.

To test how well participants evaluated complex information, the survey included questions about established conspiracy theories. Participants had to identify mature false conspiracies, like the idea that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, as well as historically verified true conspiracies. Finally, the researchers presented a set of nine contested statements that were deliberately designed to appeal to liberal political biases but lacked strong factual backing.

The data provides evidence that actively open-minded thinking is not just a proxy for liberal ideology. While the two traits did show a moderate positive correlation, they separated dramatically when it came to evaluating irrational or extreme ideas. For instance, liberal ideology was positively associated with left-wing authoritarianism.

In opposition to that trend, actively open-minded thinking showed a significant negative correlation with left-wing authoritarianism. This means that people with high open-mindedness scores were less likely to hold authoritarian views, even if they leaned left politically. The same pattern emerged with anti-democratic attitudes and the endorsement of political violence, where liberalism showed a positive association, but open-mindedness showed a negative one.

Actively open-minded thinking also consistently protected against illogical psychological states. High open-mindedness scores negatively correlated with paranormal beliefs, paranoia, and Dark Triad traits. Liberal ideology either showed no connection to these unhelpful mental states or correlated with them in an unhealthy direction.

The data also provides evidence that liberal ideology is associated with an excessive amount of trust in government entities. Open-minded thinking, on the other hand, showed a negative correlation with both extreme government trust and extreme anti-establishment skepticism.

The scientists also found that open-mindedness was a much stronger predictor of truth-seeking than political ideology. Both open-mindedness and liberalism helped people discriminate between true and false historical conspiracies. However, actively open-minded thinking had a significantly higher correlation with this ability, making it the only variable in the study that consistently predicted accurate conspiracy evaluation.

The conspiracy theory evaluation portion of the study highlighted how open-mindedness encourages healthy skepticism. While many psychological variables correlated with believing both true and false conspiracies simultaneously, open-minded thinking followed a purely logical pattern. High scores in this trait were linked to rejecting debunked historical plots while remaining open to verified government controversies.

When faced with the nine highly partisan, liberal-leaning statements, the differences between ideology and open-mindedness became even more distinct. Liberal participants tended to agree with these statements, which included exaggerated claims about systemic bias and the economy. Meanwhile, participants who scored high in actively open-minded thinking tended to reject these partisan lures, demonstrating an ability to separate facts from politically appealing narratives.

For example, one statement claimed that prestigious universities actively conspire to keep out minority students. While liberal participants were more likely to agree with this broad claim, highly open-minded participants were more likely to reject it. This trend held true across the majority of the politically charged statements.

The researchers suggest that the key feature of actively open-minded thinking is cognitive decoupling. This mental process allows a person to detach from their current social context or partisan identity when evaluating a claim. It forces the brain to separate factual analysis from emotional beliefs and identity politics.

This distancing requires significant mental effort, making it a relatively rare mental style. Because it is so difficult to separate identity from information, many people naturally fall back on their political ideology to make decisions. Open-minded thinking scales seem to identify the people who are willing to put in that extra mental work.

“The take home message of the study turned out to be that actively open-minded thinking comprises the ‘good’ part of liberalism,” Stanovich told PsyPost. “Specifically, being liberal without displaying actively open-minded thinking is no advantage at all in avoiding suboptimal thinking. Liberalism without actively open-minded thinking does not associate with positive epistemic outcomes, but the converse (high actively open-minded thinking without liberalism) often does.”

“Liberalism is moderately correlated with left-wing authoritarianism, but the actively open-minded thinking shows a significant negative correlation. Performance on the actively open-minded thinking shows significant negative correlations with a host of variables that disrupt epistemic rationality (e.g., paranormal beliefs, paranoia, the Dark Triad, government credulity) but liberal ideology either does not correlate with these variables or correlates positively (that is, in the maladaptive direction).”

A limitation of this research is its reliance on self-reported survey data from a single online platform, which might not perfectly represent the entire general public. The contested beliefs used in the study were also specifically chosen to tempt liberal respondents, meaning a different set of questions would be needed to test conservative blind spots in the exact same way. These factors mean the results provide a specific snapshot rather than a complete picture of political psychology.

Future research will focus on the relationship between actively open-minded thinking and general intelligence. The scientists plan to investigate whether the mental benefits of actively open-minded thinking are simply a byproduct of higher intelligence. They hope to determine if this cognitive style provides unique advantages for processing information independently of a person’s basic intellectual ability.

The study, “Actively open-minded thinking and liberal ideology – associations and dissociations,” was authored by Keith E. Stanovich and Maggie E. Toplak.