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Published on: September 28, 2018
The relationship between social-cultural attitudes and behavioral measures of cognitive style: a meta-analytic
Alain Van Hiel1, Emma Onraet, Sarah De Pauw
1Ghent University, Belgium. alain.vanhiel@UGent.be
Abstract:
The present meta-analysis investigates the relationship between social-cultural right-wing attitudes and objective measures of cognitive style on a set of 124 unique samples, with a total of 29,209 participants. Intolerance of ambiguity and cognitive ability yielded relationships of moderate strength with right-wing attitudes, whereas only mixed evidence was obtained for rigidity, complexity, and field dependence. In the discussion, we compare the present weak to moderate relationships with a meta-analysis conducted by Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway (2003b), included predominantly self-report measures of cognitive style, reporting moderate to strong relationships between conservatism. The need to study cognitive ability as a basis of ideological attitudes is also discussed.
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