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Psyche ·For the curious

The Thinking Style That Makes People Vulnerable to Extremism

by Leor Zmigrod

Published 2026-06-26 10:00:00+00:00

Why are people who struggle to adapt when the rules change so vulnerable to extremism?

0:00 / 12:45 · Narrator Vindemiatrix

Context

For decades, textbooks have taught a comforting story about extremism: under enough pressure, any ordinary person can become a tyrant. But in a 26 June 2026 essay for Psyche, a neuroscientist looks past the crowd to study the stubborn minority who refuse to conform. The resulting research asks a quiet but unsettling question. What if vulnerability to radical ideas has nothing to do with a person's environment, and everything to do with how their brain reacts to a simple change in the rules of a card game?

Show notes

An examination of the cognitive traits that make people vulnerable to extreme political ideologies. Based on experiments using pattern-matching games to test how subjects react to changing rules, the research links unconscious cognitive rigidity directly to authoritarian behavior. The results indicate that a person's susceptibility to radicalization depends heavily on how they process uncertainty, rather than just their environment or specific beliefs.

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