The 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign was marked by an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, which sparked intense public debate and fueled various alternative explanations, including claims that the attack was staged by Trump himself or orchestrated by his opponents.
Grounded in literature on individual differences in conspiratorial thinking, the present work investigated the psychological factors associated with adherence to such conspiracy-based explanations, with particular attention to features of psychological rigidity as captured by the construct of Socio-Cognitive Polarization (SCP). SCP is a multidimensional construct encompassing conservative political ideology, absolutistic thinking, and xenophobic attitudes, reflecting a higher level of inflexibility in processing complex or ambiguous information.
In Study 1, we investigated the cognitive underpinnings of socio-cognitive rigidity by administering a battery of cognitive measures (cognitive flexibility, fluid intelligence, field (in)dependence, generalized overconfidence) to evaluate their predictive role in accounting for individual differences in SCP. The goal was to identify a cognitive profile underlying higher levels of socio-cognitive rigidity.
In Study 2, we compared responses collected before and after the assassination attempt to assess whether beliefs in related conspiracy theories shifted following Trump's election as president. Participants were grouped into two clusters based on their levels of psychological rigidity. Those classified as less rigid demonstrated lower SCP, fewer conspiratorial tendencies, and better problem-solving abilities, whereas more rigid individuals showed the opposite pattern. Interestingly, even participants characterized by lower levels of rigidity were somewhat more inclined to endorse all kinds of conspiracy theories about the attack after the election results.
Findings from these studies advance our understanding of the ways in which socio-cognitive rigidity influences how individuals interpret complex socio-political events and emphasize the relevance of addressing cognitive mechanisms underlying biased reasoning to inform educational and psychological interventions aimed at promoting critical thinking and mitigating the spread of misinformation.