New research suggests that individuals who identify as politically conservative are more likely than their liberal counterparts to find “slippery slope” arguments logically sound. This trend appears to stem from a greater reliance on intuitive thinking styles rather than deliberate processing.
The study’s findings were published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Slippery slope arguments are a staple of rhetoric in law, ethics, and politics, suggesting that a minor action will trigger a chain reaction leading to a catastrophic final outcome.
To investigate this phenomenon, researchers conducted 15 separate studies involving diverse methodologies. They presented participants with non-political slippery slope arguments, such as the idea that skipping washing dishes today will lead to not cleaning the house at all. The results showed that conservatives rated these arguments as more logical than liberals, even when controlling for demographic factors.
The researchers then analyzed over 57,000 comments from political subreddits and found that comments in conservative communities were more likely to exhibit slippery slope structures. Additionally, comments using this style of argumentation tended to receive more approval from other users.
The study suggests that conservatives’ reliance on intuition is the key factor driving their preference for slippery slope arguments. When prompted to think deliberately about the arguments, conservatives showed a significant decrease in endorsement of slippery slope reasoning. The researchers also found that the structure of the argument itself mattered, with conservatives rating arguments as more logical when intermediate steps were present.
The study’s findings have implications for our understanding of political polarization and cognitive styles. They suggest that differences in intuition versus deliberative thinking may contribute to the growing divide between liberals and conservatives.
Source: https://www.psypost.org/conservatives-are-more-prone-to-slippery-slope-thinking