How do radicals become that way? Likely quite naturally.

Excerpted from “The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking” by Leor Zmigrod, Visiting Research Fellow ’19

From fascism and communism to eco-activism and spiritual evangelism, ideological factions provide absolute and utopian solutions to societal issues, stringent behavioral guidelines, and an in-group mentality through dedicated practices and emblems. These attributes persist across the ideological spectrum. Such qualities can emerge even when the ideology is driven by the most genuine intentions and loftiest ideals — even if it asserts to safeguard human dignity or flourishing.

Generally, ideologies are envisioned as grand visions. Majestic and ethereal. Intangible and beyond our personal influence. Few among us can articulate the specific principles of gloriously capitalized Conservatism, Liberalism, Fascism, Communism, Capitalism, Racism, Sexism, Theism, or Populism, with all their numerous meanings and interpretations. As though from celestial realms, these -isms delineate the contours of existence and prescribe human actions, guiding us about the universe and how we should relate to others within it. For adherents, the utopian fate of an ideology appears carved from the clouds of eternity. An imposing force soaring above, meant to be worshipped and esteemed.

The portrayal of ideologies as celestial and unchanging has consistently unsettled me. Ideologies dwell among us, within us, on this planet. Not in the heavens of history or the towers of political elites. There exists no transcendent realm where they reside; no heights from which attitudes emerge fully formed and revered. Ideologies reside within individuals. Individual minds transform social doctrines into ideological thought, a way of thinking governed by strict cognitive rules and meticulously regimented mental leaps.

While most definitions regard ideologies as historical currents and sociological movements, I am keen on investigating ideologies as psychological phenomena instead. This psychological perspective allows us to inquire what an ideology does to its devotees and who it most readily draws in. By highlighting the processes occurring within individual brains, we can examine when an ideology restricts its followers’ cognitive lives and whether it can ever liberate them.

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I invite you to take a seat in that gray chair — yes, the one at the desk — and make yourself at ease. I direct your attention to the screen before you and state that this is where the experiment will take place. Soon, when I exit the room, you will see instructions appear on the display.

Please press ENTER when you are ready.

You press ENTER.

Greetings! Welcome to the experiment. Today you will engage in a series of cognitive games and problem-solving tasks. For the first game, a deck of cards will be presented to you. Each card will be illustrated with a variety of geometric shapes of specific colors. For example, you might encounter a card displaying three red circles or a card adorned with a single blue triangle.

The game is a “card-sorting task.” A card will show up at the bottom of your screen. Imagine it is illustrated with four orange squares. You must decide how to match it to one of four cards already positioned at the top of the screen.

You will hear a cheerful jingle when you select the CORRECT match.

You will hear an angry beep when you select the INCORRECT match.

Please press ENTER if you comprehend the instructions.

You press ENTER.

Your first card displays three green stars.

You attempt to match it with the card at the top of the screen embellished with two blue stars. Perhaps stars should be paired with other stars.

BEEP!

You exhale. You try again. Maybe your three green stars should go with the card containing four green circles? Green-on-green?

Drag, press, release, and … joyous jingles! You are correct!

You nod in satisfaction to yourself.

Green-on-green. Simple.

Next card in your deck: one red triangle.

You follow the pattern: pair color with color. You place red with red and … success! Jingles again.

You appreciate this rule. You apply it in the next round and the following one. Green-on-green, red-on-red, orange-on-orange, blue-on-blue.

The routine is oddly satisfying. Sliding cards into their correct groupings, you scarcely need to think.

After five, or ten, or fifteen rounds — repetition blurs the edges of time — the next card in your deck shows two blue squares. You reach for the blue card at the top of the screen.

BEEP!

A furious, unforeseen noise emanates from the speakers.

You feel let down. You had forgotten the game world could produce such an offensive sound. It’s insulting.

Maybe it’s merely a glitch.

You select the blue card again. It’s second nature to you now, blue on blue.

BEEP!

How can this be? The game’s inconsistency feels like an astonishing betrayal. It urges you to stand up and exit the experiment room.

But you are now hooked. The jingle provided you with the sensation (the illusion?) of control, of self-ownership. It signaled your cleverness.

In a fit of frustration, you drag the two-blue-squared card toward the three-orange-circled card — there is nothing in common among these cards, neither number, color, nor shape, but you don’t care, you are irritated. BEEP! The noise scarcely fades before you are pulling the card again, this time toward the four-green-starred card. BEEP! Outraged by this disobedience, you move the mouse in rapid, frantic movements. The rules aren’t supposed to alter midway through the game. You haul
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The card leads you to the final uncharted choice, vowing to yourself that if this isn’t the correct one, if the melody doesn’t resurface, you will make an exit in protest. You will lift your arm to summon the experimenter back into the room and demand explanations; you will — jingle! It functioned! You strain to discover what the corresponding card was. It was two crimson triangles. Two. Two! Ha! The quantity of shapes on the card matched that of the card in your possession. Hallelujah! Perhaps order will be restored again. Or maybe this version of the task was merely a glitch. A slight interruption.

When the next card appears on the display, should you adhere to the previous tradition, follow the color schema, or attempt this novel pattern, counting and sorting anew? Should you remain steadfast — dismiss the anomaly — or should you shift, explore, modify, adapt, revise, and recognize that…

This is where I step away from the experiment and reveal that your instinctive reaction to the alteration can reveal nearly everything about your character. Your immediate response to the fact that the former rule has ceased to function and that you must uncover a new one to thrive serves as an inadvertent confession. In this straightforward game of stars and circles, you have unintentionally and inevitably unveiled your deepest convictions.

Why? Because two versions of you exist. There is the participant who recognizes the alteration in the rule governing the game and reacts by adapting to the new requirements of the task. This iteration of you is the flexible, cognitively adaptable persona. When circumstances shift, you may experience surprise, yet you harbor no fear. You evolve with the times and the demands of your surroundings. You are not rigidly bound by rules. You glide seamlessly between habits. In fact, you don’t mind lacking a habit altogether. You effortlessly transition between modes of thought; you are fluid; elastic; you adjust.

However, there is another version of you. In this aspect, you despise the shift. You note that the previous rule is ineffective, yet you refuse to accept it. You will attempt repeatedly to enforce the original rule, but it will be futile. In fact, each time you revert to the previous habit, you will face consequences. The unsettling BEEP will hit you like a jolt. Yet you will remain static, clinging tightly to the false hope that somehow the punishing beep will fade and give way to a cheerful tune. The mistaken and nostalgic belief that your surrounding environment will miraculously revert, leaving you unchanged. You persist even when it would be swifter to sever connections with the past and move forward. This represents the cognitively rigid side of you.

Which of these manifestations of you truly represents you? The adaptable or the inflexible? The flexible or the resolutely static?

Perhaps you embody neither extreme. You might occupy a middle ground: sometimes versatile, sometimes inflexible. Your adaptability might rely on the context. At ease, you are fluid, adjusting seamlessly to the unexpected or novel. Yet in times of tension, your movements constrict, your thoughts solidify. Anxiety reinforces your rigidity, making you stiff.

What I, as the experimenter and scientist, have uncovered is that your performance in this game can provide insights into your overall approach to existence. Your degree of rigidity on this neuropsychological assessment foreshadows the manner in which you cling to ideologies in the social and political landscape. Your perceptual reflexes correlate with your ideological ones.

In fact, your brain begins to reflect your political views and biases in peculiar, profound, and astonishing manners — ways that challenge our understanding of the interplay between nature and nurture, risk and resilience, freedom and inevitability. If our ideological beliefs are correlated with our cognitive and neural response patterns, then we must confront new questions regarding how our bodies become politicized and how we find the capacity to resist, adapt, and exercise individual agency.

When my colleagues and I invited thousands of individuals to complete cognitive evaluations of mental flexibility, such as this game known as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, we observed that those who were most behaviorally adaptable in neuropsychological tasks were also the individuals who — within the realm of ideologies — were the most open-minded and accepting of diversity. The individuals with the most adaptable minds are those who recognize that the intellectual domain can be distinguished from the personal one. They may dislike certain opinions but do not project that disdain onto the people expressing them. In contrast, the most cognitively inflexible individuals, who struggle to adapt when rules shift, often hold the most dogmatic beliefs. They detest disagreement and are resistant to changing their views when credible counter-evidence arises.

Cognitive rigidity translates into ideological rigidity.

This may seem evident to some: a rigid person is simply rigid. But these patterns are not as clear-cut. When neuroscientists discuss cognition and perception, we refer to information processing that engages with simple stimuli, basic sensory data in neutral contexts. Cognitive tasks consist of uncomplicated elements — colored shapes and moving black dots — displayed on minimalistic, unadorned screens. Through these tasks, we are not assessing how you handle emotionally charged or triggering information — data that genuinely frightens you or evokes a sour pinch of disgust. We are not examining tasks that are overly complex or cognitively demanding — ones that might unnecessarily frustrate you. When neuroscientists evaluate cognition and perception, we comprehend individual differences in how a brain processes decisions, learns from its environment, and reacts to challenges or contradictions at the most fundamental level.

These individual variations are implicit; we possess little conscious awareness of them or control over their manifestations. A cognitively rigid individual may assert that they are exceptionally flexible, while an adaptable thinker may perceive themselves as lacking mental malleability. It is astonishing how infrequently we truly understand ourselves.

As a consequence, the connection between cognitive inflexibility and ideological rigidity reveals a significant insight into the workings of our brains and the ways ideologies infiltrate human thought. It implies that our inherent rigidity, which is apparent when we engage with any type of information — even orange stars and blue circles — can propagate into higher-level rigidities that surface in our ideological choices and actions.

Even when we are not explicitly contemplating politics, the reverberations of our ideological beliefs can be perceived and quantified. Ideological marks on the brain can be identified when our minds are allowed to wander and drift, when we imagine and create, when we observe and interpret even the most neutral scenarios. The rigidities and peculiarities of the ideological brain manifest where we least anticipate them, in our most personal sensations and physiological reactions, beneath the surface of our public beliefs and conscious emotions. The dangers of dogmatic ideologies are therefore not only political — their consequences are neural, individual, and existential.

Published by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 2025 by Leor Zmigrod. All rights reserved.