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Are neo-liberals more intuitive? Undetected libertarians confound the relation between analytic cognitive style and economic conservatism

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Abstract

Previous studies consistently showed that analytic cognitive style (ACS) is negatively correlated with social conservatism, but there are mixed findings concerning its relation with economic conservatism. Most tests have relied on a unidimensional (liberal-conservative) operationalization of political orientation. Libertarians tend not only to identify themselves as conservative on this scale but also to score higher on ACS than liberals and conservatives. The presence of libertarians might be the reason for the above-mentioned mixed findings. We investigated the relation between social and economic conservatism and ACS (operationalized using the Cognitive Reflection Test; CRT) in a large, web-based sample. There was a negative correlation between CRT and social conservatism both when libertarians were included and excluded. However, the correlation between CRT and economic conservatism was significantly reduced in magnitude and became non-significant when libertarians were excluded. The results support the argument that the undetected presence of libertarians may confound the ACS-economic conservatism relation.

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Notes

  1. Approximately 95% of the current data was collected after Iyer et al. (2012) data had been collected. Thus, there is, at most, negligible overlap between the two datasets.

  2. It should be clear to the reader that because individuals who choose the options “don’t’know/not political” or “other” refuse to identify as either liberal or conservative and hence, these groups also potentially confound tests of the relation between ACS and conservatism. However, since our theoretical argument focused specifically on libertarians, we also computed the correlation between social and economic conservatism and ACS excluding only libertarians (i.e., retaining the “don’t know/not political” and “other” groups in the data set). Compared to the correlation coefficients from the whole dataset, they lead to the same conclusions as reported in the text (social conservatism-CRT [r = −.071, p < .001; economic conservatism-CRT [r = .005, p = .689).

  3. As an alternative to these correlations and regression models, because the CRT data is a series of binary (correct vs. incorrect) responses, it could be analyzed as a binomial-linked generalized linear model (GLM; see analysis of the Triad Categorization Task in Talhelm 2018; and Talhelm et al. 2015). We conducted two such GLMs with CRT as outcome and social and economic conservatism as predictors; one for the whole sample and one excluding non-conservatives and non-liberals. In the whole sample, social conservatism was negatively related to CRT scores, B = −0.116, p < .00001; and economic conservatism was positively related to CRT scores, B = 0.095, p < .00001. When non-conservatives and non-liberals were excluded, the results are similar: Social conservatism was negatively related to CRT scores, B = −0.107, p < .00001; and economic conservatism was positively related to CRT scores, B = 0.073, p < .00001. An effect size in terms of correlation could be provided for these predictors by excluding the other predictor from the model and taking the square root of Nagelke’s R2. However, sample sizes should ideally be equal for these separate analyses with each predictor. Since this was not the case (due to different missing values on social and economic conservatism variables), we repeated these analyses for only the subset of participants who had complete values on both social and economic conservatism. The regression model coefficients were nearly identical to those reported above. For the whole sample, the correlation effect sizes were r = .091 for social conservatism and r = .057 for economic conservatism. For the subset excluding non-conservatives and non-liberals, they were r = .094 for social conservatism and r = .002 for economic conservatism. These results differ from those reported in the main body of the present article in that economic conservatism is related to CRT in both samples. Because most of the literature investigating these relations relies on regular correlations and regressions, rather than the binomial-linked GLM reported in this footnote, we emphasize the results in the main body: They still point out that the inferences made on the basis of correlations and regressions are influenced in important ways depending on the presence of participants of non-mainstream political conviction in the sample. However, these binomial-linked GLM results serve as a warning that inferences will also differ depending on the method of analysis employed.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Gordon Pennycook and Thomas Talhelm for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Dogus University, 34722, Acibadem, Istanbul, Turkey

    Onurcan Yilmaz

  2. Bogaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey

    S. Adil Saribay

  3. http://www.CivilPolitics.org/

    Ravi Iyer

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  1. Onurcan Yilmaz
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Correspondence to Onurcan Yilmaz.

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Yilmaz, O., Adil Saribay, S. & Iyer, R. Are neo-liberals more intuitive? Undetected libertarians confound the relation between analytic cognitive style and economic conservatism. Curr Psychol 39, 25–32 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-0130-x

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