Cognitive Reflection and the 2016 US Presidential Election

Pennycook, G. & Rand, D. G. (2018). Cognitive Reflection and the 2016 US Presidential Election. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. DOI: 10.1177/0146167218783192

46 Pages Posted: 5 Feb 2018 Last revised: 29 Mar 2019

See all articles by Gordon Pennycook

Gordon Pennycook

University of Regina

David G. Rand

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Date Written: January 26, 2018

Abstract

We present a large exploratory study (N = 15,001) investigating the relationship between cognitive reflection and political affiliation, ideology, and voting in the 2016 Presidential Election. We find that Trump voters are less reflective than Clinton voters or third-party voters. However, much (although not all) of this difference was driven by Democrats who chose Trump. Among Republicans, conversely, Clinton and Trump voters were similar whereas third-party voters were more reflective. Furthermore, although Democrats/liberals were somewhat more reflective than Republicans/conservatives overall, political moderates and non-voters were least reflective whereas Libertarians were most reflective. Thus, beyond the previously theorized correlation between analytic thinking and liberalism, these data suggest three additional consequences of reflectiveness (or lack thereof) for political cognition: 1) Facilitating political apathy versus engagement, 2) Supporting the adoption of orthodoxy versus heterodoxy, and 3) Drawing individuals toward candidates who share their cognitive style, and towards policy proposals which are intuitively compelling.

Keywords: Political Ideology; 2016 Election; Donald Trump; Hillary Clinton; Cognitive Reflection; Analytic Thinking; Intuition; Dual Process Theory

Suggested Citation

Pennycook, Gordon and Rand, David G., Cognitive Reflection and the 2016 US Presidential Election (January 26, 2018). Pennycook, G. & Rand, D. G. (2018). Cognitive Reflection and the 2016 US Presidential Election. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. DOI: 10.1177/0146167218783192, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3110929 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3110929

Gordon Pennycook (Contact Author)

University of Regina ( email )

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Canada

David G. Rand

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ( email )

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Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
United States

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