A Psychology of Ideology: Unpacking the Psychological Structure of Ideological Thinking

The psychological study of ideology has traditionally emphasized the content of ideological beliefs, guided by questions about what people believe, such as why people believe in omniscient gods or fascist worldviews. This theoretical focus has led to siloed subdisciplines separately dealing with political, religious, moral, prejudiced, and racist attitudes. The fractionation has fostered a neglect of the cognitive structure of ideological worldviews and associated questions about why ideologies – in all their forms – are so compelling to the human mind. It is here argued that it is essential to consider the nature of ideological cognition across a multitude of ideologies. The review offers a multidimensional, empirically-tractable framework of ideological thinking, suggesting it can be conceptualized as a style of thinking that is rigid in its adherence to a doctrine and resistance to evidence-based belief-updating, and favourably-oriented towards an ingroup and antagonistic to outgroups. The review identifies the subcomponents of ideological thinking and highlights that ideological thinking constitutes a meaningful psychological phenomenon that merits direct scholarly investigation and analysis. By emphasizing conceptual precision, methodological directions, and interdisciplinary integration across the political and cognitive sciences, the review illustrates the potential of this framework as a catalyst for developing a rigorous domain-general psychology of ideology.