of what use would that information be? According to research that I have read, people often avoid information and situations that have the potential to contradict previously held beliefs and attitudes (i.e., situations that arouse cognitive dissonance). For example, according to the motivated social cognition model of political ideology, conservatives tend to have stronger epistemic needs to attain certainty and closure than liberals. This implies that there may be differences in how liberals and conservatives respond to dissonance-arousing situations. My question is that if such a theory were factual, would that imply that conservatives in such situations where their belief are challenged be exhibiting a brain defect. In short, if yes, then the assumption must be that the capacity to see the truth regardless of personal issues would have to be the preferred condition, that the normal state of morality is that objectivity is the best state to be in.
If the belief that objectivity is better than bias and conservatives are more biased than liberals, the information from such experiments and theories are useless to those to which they most apply, and that would be conservatives. They will have a condition they will avoid any information or situations that would help them see that fact
So if you have a condition you would not like to have and therefore will not see that you have, do you have defective thinking?
In two experiments, we investigated the possibility that conservatives would be more strongly motivated to avoid dissonance-arousing tasks than liberals. Indeed, U.S. residents who preferred more conservative presidents (George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan) complied less than Americans who preferred more liberal presidents (Barack Obama and Bill Clinton) with the request to write a counter-attitudinal essay about who made a better president. This difference was not observed under circumstances of low perceived choice or when the topic of the counter-attitudinal essay was non-political (i.e., when it pertained to computer or beverage preferences). The results of these experiments provide initial evidence of ideological differences in dissonance avoidance. Future work would do well to determine whether such differences are specific to political issues or topics that are personally important. Implications for political behavior are discussed.
If the belief that objectivity is better than bias and conservatives are more biased than liberals, the information from such experiments and theories are useless to those to which they most apply, and that would be conservatives. They will have a condition they will avoid any information or situations that would help them see that fact
So if you have a condition you would not like to have and therefore will not see that you have, do you have defective thinking?
In two experiments, we investigated the possibility that conservatives would be more strongly motivated to avoid dissonance-arousing tasks than liberals. Indeed, U.S. residents who preferred more conservative presidents (George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan) complied less than Americans who preferred more liberal presidents (Barack Obama and Bill Clinton) with the request to write a counter-attitudinal essay about who made a better president. This difference was not observed under circumstances of low perceived choice or when the topic of the counter-attitudinal essay was non-political (i.e., when it pertained to computer or beverage preferences). The results of these experiments provide initial evidence of ideological differences in dissonance avoidance. Future work would do well to determine whether such differences are specific to political issues or topics that are personally important. Implications for political behavior are discussed.