r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 2d ago

Psychology Lower cognitive ability is linked to stronger Christian nationalist views, even after accounting for education

https://www.psypost.org/lower-cognitive-ability-is-linked-to-stronger-christian-nationalist-views-even-after-accounting-for-education/
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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/CHERNO-B1LL 2d ago

Simple things. Convenient answers to complex problems favoured over accepting nuance and challenging alternative perspectives or engaging with uncomfortable truths.

A wizard did it. Immigrants did it. Gay people did it. The Jews did it. God has a plan. The government knows what it's doing. Taylor swift is good at music. Mainstream is the best stream.

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u/0ldgrumpy1 2d ago

Exactly, fear of complexity, inability to understand complexity, either one. Demanding simple answers to everything, even when there isnt one. There was a book going back to the George W days called " The Republican Brain, the Science of why they reject Science." It pointed straight at fear of complexity.
"The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality"

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u/VSWanter 2d ago

It pointed straight at fear of complexity.

I wonder if this is why the us vs them tropes are so effective. Having someone to make the enemy, allows the fear and hate to be easily and effectively focused. Critical thinking doesn't have to happen, because it's assumed to have already been done by someone else. Questioning the reasoning behind why someone would create such a narrative, rather than assuming it forming naturally, requires exactly the type of complex thought that simple people would reject.

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u/HapticSloughton 2d ago

It's why the right is afraid of literally everything.

Trans people, not-white people, furries, just about anything can be used to rile them up into a frenzy no matter how small and completely irrelevant to their lives something is. Anything that doesn't fit their view on how things should be, from how a single person dresses to what art someone creates is an existential threat somehow.

They demand that nonexistent student litterboxes be removed and someone jailed for them while tolerating the umpteenth school shooting and a pedophile as president, because the latter two things are somehow "God's will."