What makes some people fall for extreme ideologies while others remain open-minded? The answer might be hiding in our brain structure and thinking patterns. A Cambridge neuroscientist has discovered surprising connections between our neural wiring and our political beliefs.
Leor Zmigrod’s The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking shows that ideology isn’t just about the ideas we choose; it’s about how our brains are built to think. Some minds are naturally rigid, while others stay flexible and adapt to new evidence. Read on to discover how ideology rewires your brain—and what you can do to protect yourself from extremist thinking.
Overview of Leor Zmigrod’s The Ideological Brain
Leor Zmigrod’s The Ideological Brain (2025) explores how ideologies shape our brains and how our brains shape our ideological beliefs. Rather than focusing on specific political or religious doctrines, Zmigrod examines the fundamental cognitive structures that make some people more susceptible to rigid ideological thinking than others. Her research reveals that ideologies aren’t just abstract ideas: They become deeply embedded in our neural architecture, influencing everything from how we process evidence to how we respond emotionally to other people’s suffering.
A neuroscientist, Zmigrod addresses a crucial problem: Why do some minds embrace dogmatic, inflexible thinking while others remain open to evidence and different perspectives? By untangling the neurobiological factors that contribute to our susceptibility to ideological thinking, she provides insights that could help us cultivate more flexible thinking in ourselves and our communities. As a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, Zmigrod brings experimental methods to questions traditionally explored through philosophy and social psychology. Her research combines neuropsychological tests, brain imaging, and cognitive assessments to identify patterns in how ideologically minded people think.
Our overview of the book The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking walks you through Zmigrod’s framework for understanding ideological thinking, exploring what it looks like in the brain, why some people are more susceptible to it than others, and how ideology changes our thinking processes.
What Is Ideological Thinking?
An ideology isn’t just a set of ideas: It’s a system of ideas that becomes deeply embedded in your mind and body, dictating your perceptions, thought processes, and behaviors. We’ll start by examining how Zmigrod defines ideological thinking—and why our brains are so vulnerable to it.
The Two Components of Ideological Thinking
Zmigrod defines ideological thinking as a cognitive approach with two essential characteristics: It’s both doctrinal (rigid in its adherence to a set of beliefs and resistant to updating those beliefs with new evidence) and relational (favorably oriented toward an in-group; that is, a group of people who share the thinker’s interests or identity). Zmigrod explains that these two components appear consistently across various ideologies, whether you look at political extremism or religious fundamentalism.
Doctrinal Thinking
You can see the doctrinal component of ideology at work when people embrace a dogmatic way of thinking: the kind that assumes there’s one true explanation for—and solution to—the world’s problems. Zimgrod explains that dogmatic ways of thinking typically outline sharp distinctions between those who see the “truth” and those who don’t, and they often categorize the world into “good versus evil,” and “us versus them.”
Relational Thinking
Zmigrod explains that the relational component of ideology manifests itself when people adopt overt identity markers—by flying flags, wearing symbols, and taking part in rituals and other social practices—that signal their membership and loyalty to an ideological group. These markers create feelings of connection and belonging with fellow followers of the ideology, while simultaneously making it clear who doesn’t belong. Think about how quickly you can identify someone’s political affiliation by their clothing, the bumper stickers on their car, or even the language they use to talk about an election: These markers identify them as part of the group that believes in a certain set of ideas and thinks in a specific way about the world.
Why Our Brains Love Ideology
Zmigrod explains that our brains are naturally receptive to ideological systems because they satisfy two of our basic cognitive needs:
- The need for prediction: The doctrinal aspects of ideologies offer explanatory frameworks that help us to understand and predict the world around us. When your life feels chaotic or the world feels uncertain, an ideology can provide you with comforting answers and certainty.
- The need for connection: The relational aspects of ideologies connect us with groups who share our identity, which satisfies our desire for belonging. These communities tell us who “our people” are and give us a shorthand for understanding who’s with us and who’s against us.
Prediction and connection are basic human needs that we all want to satisfy, which makes ideological thinking appealing. Yet turning to ideological thinking to satisfy our needs can also lead our brains into patterns of rigidity and intolerance. Zmigrod explains that when you adopt a strong ideological stance, your brain adopts patterns of dogmatism and resistance to contradictory evidence. We’re all susceptible to this: Rather than seeing ideological thinking as something you either engage in or don’t, Zmigrod sees it as a spectrum from moderate to extreme.
Zmigrod explains that every person’s ideological susceptibility falls along a spectrum from low to high. People at the low end of the spectrum are receptive to evidence that might contradict their beliefs and tolerant of those with different views. At the extreme end of the spectrum, people hold tightly to their doctrines and can seem willing to harm others (or even sacrifice themselves) for their beliefs.
Where you fall on this spectrum isn’t random; Zmigrod contends it’s in part determined by inherent differences in how our brains process and respond to ideological information. This helps explain why some people seem more vulnerable to ideological extremism than others—which we’ll explore in the next section.
Why Are Some People More Susceptible to Ideology Than Others?
Not all brains are equally susceptible to ideological thinking. Zmigrod explains that people vary significantly in their predisposition to ideological worldviews—and these differences aren’t merely a matter of upbringing or socioeconomic context. They’re rooted in our cognitive and neural architecture. When presented with identical information, people process and react to it in different ways based on how their brains process and evaluate information. These neurocognitive dispositions typically operate below the level of conscious awareness, influencing how you evaluate and respond to information without you even realizing it.
Understanding these neurological and psychological factors helps explain why some people are drawn to extreme ideologies and why even typically moderate individuals might become more susceptible to ideology during difficult times. Let’s explore them now.
Factor #1: Some Minds Are More Rigid Than Others
One of Zmigrod’s findings is what she calls the “rigidity of the extremes.” Her research demonstrates that people who live at the ideological extremes, whether far-left or far-right, tend to exhibit lower cognitive flexibility compared to moderates or nonpartisans. Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to adapt your thinking, shift perspectives, and consider multiple viewpoints. It involves being open to new information, adjusting your beliefs in light of evidence, and avoiding rigid thought patterns. When Zmigrod maps cognitive rigidity onto the political spectrum, she finds a U-shaped curve: The extremes on both ends show the greatest rigidity.
Zmigrod measures cognitive flexibility using tasks like the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, in which participants have to adapt to changing rules. In this test, participants sort cards according to color, shape, or number, but the sorting rule changes unexpectedly during the task. Those with greater cognitive flexibility quickly adapt to the new rule, while cognitively rigid individuals persist with the old rule despite evidence that it no longer works. Both in the lab and in the real world, researchers notice cognitive rigidity by looking for a few key patterns—though people with particularly rigid thinking might not recognize these tendencies in themselves:
- They have difficulty switching between different rules or response patterns.
- They resist updating their beliefs when presented with new evidence.
- They struggle to generate diverse ideas and solutions for problems.
Factor #2: People Process Information Differently
Beyond cognitive flexibility, Zmigrod found that basic perceptual processes—how you take in and process information from your environment—also differ in brains prone to ideological thinking. Using specialized techniques to analyze how quickly people make decisions, Zmigrod found two distinct patterns: First, dogmatic people are slower at gathering and integrating evidence when making judgments. At a fundamental level, happening in milliseconds, they struggle to efficiently use the information available to them. But they don’t see themselves as slow thinkers. Instead, they report being impulsive and thrill-seeking. This means dogmatic people make premature decisions based on evidence they’ve processed inefficiently.
Separately, Zmigrod found that higher levels of “response caution,” defined as a preference for accuracy over speed in perceptual tasks, or taking a slow and steady approach, are associated with more socially conservative and nationalistic worldviews. Zmigrod notes that dogmatism and conservatism have different psychological origins, though they’re sometimes mistakenly conflated. She explains that these findings suggest the conservative tendency toward caution extends beyond political views into basic perceptual processes. In other words, our perceptual strategies may parallel our approach to ideological information, revealing connections between millisecond-level brain processes and our broader worldviews.
Factor #3: Brain Structure Influences Ideological Preferences
In addition to people’s behaviors and beliefs, Zmigrod’s research examines physical brain structures, particularly the amygdala, a brain region involved in processing emotions and detecting threats. Studies have found that people with more conservative ideologies often have larger amygdalae, correlating with heightened vigilance toward potential threats. This might explain why conservative ideologies, which often emphasize threats to and the preservation of traditional values, appeal to those with enhanced threat-detection systems.
However, this raises what Zmigrod calls the “chicken-and-egg problem”: Do people with larger amygdalae gravitate toward conservative ideologies because their brains are already primed for threat detection? Or can immersion in certain ideologies alter our emotional biochemistry and lead to structural brain changes? She says this question remains an active area of research.
Factor #4: Stress Makes Everyone More Ideologically Susceptible
Environmental factors also influence your susceptibility to ideological thinking. Zmigrod notes that stress can significantly impact cognitive flexibility. Under stress, even typically flexible thinkers may become more rigid and thus more receptive to ideological narratives. This helps explain why periods of societal stress—economic downturns, pandemics, or political instability—often coincide with rises in extreme ideological movements. Peoples’ neural responses to stress temporarily diminish their capacity for nuanced thinking, making the certainty offered by rigid ideologies more appealing.
How Does Ideology Rewire Your Brain?
Ideological thinking doesn’t just reflect your existing mental tendencies. It actively reshapes how your brain functions by altering your neural pathways, cognitive patterns, and physiological responses. Zmigrod explains that this transformation happens because of neuroplasticity, your brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections. When you’re repeatedly exposed to ideological rules, rituals, and ways of thinking, your brain physically changes. Neural pathways that support ideological habits strengthen through repetition, while alternative mental pathways weaken from disuse.
Think of it like a path through a forest: The more a particular route is traveled, the more defined it becomes. Conversely, unused trails gradually disappear. In the same way, your ideological habits carve pathways in your brain that become increasingly difficult to deviate from.
Let’s look at three effects ideology can have on your brain.
Effect #1: Ideology Impairs Your Information Processing
One of the most powerful consequences of ideological thinking is how it changes the way you process information. Zmigrod’s research reveals that ideological thinking shifts brain activity away from your deliberative prefrontal cortex (the brain region responsible for complex decision-making and rational thought) toward deeper, older regions of the brain (like the striatum) that govern routine behaviors and emotional responses.
Zmigrod explains that when information processing shifts away from the prefrontal cortex and toward more automatic brain regions, this produces several related effects that make it increasingly difficult for you to process new information objectively and learn from mistakes. These effects include:
- Selective perception: You begin to notice and prioritize information that confirms your existing beliefs, and you increasingly filter out contradictory evidence without even noticing that you’re doing so.
- Slower evidence processing: You have a harder time taking in and using new information. Your brain literally processes evidence more slowly, making it difficult for you to update your understanding when faced with new facts.
- Difficulty detecting errors: Ideological thinking impairs your ability to recognize when you’re making mistakes or engaging in faulty reasoning. You may not only miss your errors but also perceive yourself as more decisive and clear-thinking than others.
- Distorted memory: Ideology can function as a filter not just for new information, but for your memories as well, retroactively reshaping your perception of the past to align more closely with your current beliefs.
Effect #2: Ideology Numbs Your Emotional Responses
A second consequence of ideological thinking is that it can alter your emotional and physiological reactions to information and events, particularly those involving others’ suffering. Zmigrod cites a study where participants with strong “system-justifying beliefs” (in this case, beliefs that economic inequalities are natural and good) showed muted responses to videos of homeless people describing their hardships. Their bodies didn’t react: They showed no difference in heart rate or skin conductance when watching these videos versus videos of coffee beans being processed.
This emotional numbing happens because their ideology provides an explanation that justifies the suffering they’re seeing. For people who believe strongly that economic systems are fair and that inequalities result from people’s individual choices rather than from systemic problems, the sight of homeless people doesn’t register as a moral injustice that requires an emotional response. Their ideology effectively acts as an emotional buffer, preventing the empathetic reaction that would otherwise occur when seeing another person’s suffering.
Zmigrod notes this pattern extends beyond this one example: When you adopt an ideology that categorizes others as out-group members or justifies their suffering, your typical emotional and physiological responses to human pain—responses that would normally trigger empathy—are reduced. When you encounter information that aligns with your ideological beliefs, your body tends to show increased physiological arousal. Conversely, when confronted with information that contradicts your ideological beliefs, you experience negative emotions like fear, disgust, and anger, which can lead to defensive reactions and a strengthening of your existing beliefs.
Effect #3: Ideology Creates a Paradoxical Relationship With Order and Chaos
A third consequence of ideological thinking is what Zmigrod identifies as the “rigidity-chaos paradox,” which describes a contradiction in how ideologically rigid thinkers behave. In her experiments, Zmigrod discovered that the same people who showed cognitive inflexibility and rigid thinking in laboratory tasks often described themselves as thrill-seekers who make impulsive decisions. Despite being slow and methodical when processing evidence at a neurological level, these dogmatic individuals not only see themselves as quick and decisive, but they also tend to make more impulsive decisions in real-world situations. This creates a disconnect between their slow cognitive processing and their hasty actions.
Other researchers found a similar pattern in children raised in authoritarian households. These children simultaneously showed “disintegration and rigidity”: They were obsessed with rules and order but also expressed a fascination with chaos, upheaval, and catastrophe. This paradox helps explain why political extremists often demand strict law and order while at the same time advocating for revolutionary upheaval or apocalyptic scenarios. A dogmatic person might insist on rigid moral codes and social structures while also being drawn to violent, chaotic solutions to perceived problems.
Zmigrod suggests this paradox emerges because the dogmatic mind struggles with efficient information processing. Since making sense of complex reality is cognitively taxing for rigid thinkers, they’re drawn to simple, absolutist explanations that impose order—this kind of structure is comforting and less cognitively demanding. At the same time, they’re attracted to dramatic, destructive solutions that use chaos to tear down existing systems they don’t agree with—since this would reduce the complexity of the real-world problems they’re struggling to grapple with.
How Can We Cultivate Flexible Thinking?
After exploring how ideology can constrain our thinking, Zmigrod turns to the question of how we might protect ourselves from it. Her research points to cognitive flexibility as our best defense—the ability to adapt our thinking and consider multiple viewpoints. Cognitive flexibility acts as a protective barrier against extremism by preventing you from adopting overly rigid and dogmatic beliefs. When you can fluidly consider different perspectives, you’re less likely to become entrenched in a single ideological viewpoint. This flexibility fosters intellectual humility, the awareness that your beliefs may be biased, and the willingness to revise them when faced with new evidence.
Let’s look at a few of Zmigrod’s methods for cultivating cognitive flexibility.
Method #1: Build an “Anti-Ideological Brain”
Zmigrod envisions what she calls an “anti-ideological brain”—a mind that actively and creatively rejects the temptation of dogma. Such a mind is characterized by traits that allow you to engage with ideas without becoming possessed by them—so you can maintain your intellectual autonomy even while participating in collective movements or communities. These traits include:
- Intellectual humility: Acknowledging the limits of your knowledge and that your views might not be correct.
- Tolerance for ambiguity: Embracing nuance and complexity rather than demanding simplistic black-and-white explanations.
- Evidence-based belief updating: Willingly revising your beliefs when presented with credible contradictory information.
- Perspective-taking abilities: Actively considering multiple viewpoints, even those that challenge your existing beliefs.
- Balanced emotions: Regulating your emotional responses to allow for more objective information processing.
Zmigrod offers several strategies you can use to build an ideology-resistant brain:
Strategy #1: Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness meditation strengthens prefrontal attentional control and emotional balance, countering the tendency of ideologies to shift brain activity away from the more deliberative regions. By developing greater awareness of your thoughts and emotions, you create space between external stimuli and your responses, reducing the reactive thinking patterns that fuel ideological rigidity.
Strategy #2: Seek Novel Experiences
Actively pursuing mind-expanding experiences creates new neural connections that support cognitive flexibility. Zmigrod says that when you expose yourself to diverse perspectives, cultures, and ideas, you help prevent the narrowing of thought that characterizes ideological thinking. This might involve reading books outside your comfort zone, traveling to new places, or engaging in conversations with people who think differently than you do.
Strategy #3: Question Your Assumptions
Consciously examining your ideological assumptions and entertaining alternative viewpoints can update habitual patterns of thought. Zmigrod suggests regularly asking yourself questions like: “What evidence would change my mind about this belief?” or “How might someone with a different background view this situation?”
Method #2: Create Environments That Nurture Flexibility
The second way Zmigrod says you can cultivate cognitive flexibility is through your environment. The environments where you spend your time play a crucial role in fostering or hindering cognitive flexibility. So, as much as possible, spend time in surroundings that encourage open-mindedness, critical thinking, and intellectual humility. This applies to everything from family dynamics and educational settings to workplace cultures and media ecosystems. Zmigrod notes that children raised in authoritarian environments internalize habits of obedience and conformity, while those raised in families that foster imagination and empathy develop greater cognitive flexibility.
Method #3: Balance Strong Convictions with Open-Mindedness
Zmigrod doesn’t advocate abandoning all convictions or principles in your effort to keep yourself from falling into patterns of ideological thinking. Rather, she argues for a minimalist form of liberalism defined by an openness to new evidence and a willingness to participate in productive debate with others. The challenge is to maintain strong ethical foundations and a sense of purpose while avoiding dogmatic rigidity. Flexibility doesn’t mean the absence of beliefs, but rather holding beliefs in a way that remains open to refinement, nuance, and growth.
Method #4: Protect Yourself During Times of Stress
Zmigrod cautions that even typically flexible thinkers become more rigid under stress. During periods of personal or societal turmoil, when our cognitive resources are taxed, we all become more vulnerable to ideological thinking. Recognizing this vulnerability is essential. By understanding that stress diminishes your cognitive flexibility, you can be more intentional about creating space for deliberation and reflection during difficult times when rigid ideological thinking is most tempting.
