Scientist has a truly mindblowing explanation for what causes fascism

The Herald Scotland

13-07-2025

Your individual ideology isn't simply down to how you were raised, or your age, sex, income, race and education. Your biology is just as important, from the structure of your brain to your genetics and the way your body releases chemicals.
Spend an afternoon with Zmigrod and you're left pondering what agency
– if any – we have over our own political beliefs.
Zmigrod has shot to fame in the world of neuroscience as a pioneer of political psychology: the study of what makes us follow certain ideologies.
Educated at Harvard and Cambridge, she has taught at some of the world's most prestigious universities, and has just brought out her landmark book The Ideological Brain.
She has been showered with awards for her work as a scientist. Zmigrod met with
The Herald on Sunday to discuss her research, which raises profound questions about how much control we have over our own opinions, and how primed we are to be exploited by unscrupulous politicians.
Zmigrod explains that she set out to answer one of the biggest questions of the 21st century: 'What makes someone susceptible to extreme ideologies?'
She wanted to look beyond issues like 'education, background, sociodemographic status', and focus on 'our brains, cognitive styles, and everyday thinking patterns'.
In other words, scholars have mostly focused on the 'nurture' side of the debate: what is it in our background and experiences which leads us to hold various political opinions.
Zmigrod wanted to explore the 'nature' question. Are our political beliefs innate? Are they 'created' by our biology, brains and DNA?
'Ideology isn't just about our society and culture,' she says. 'It's deep-rooted in our biology.'
She wanted to understand 'which brains are most likely to gravitate to extreme worldviews. There are neurobiological traits that make some more susceptible to extreme ideologies, regardless of what that ideology may be'.
However, her work went one step further. She didn't just explore 'how our biology affects our ideologies' – Zmigrod also set about unravelling 'how our ideologies might actually sculpt our brains in ways that are really deep and tangible'.
What she's suggesting is staggering: that holding certain political views leaves an indelible, physical mark on the shape of your brain. It may sound fantastical, but this has already been proved to be true.
Experiments
'Immersion in rigid ideologies can transform our brains,' she says. 'Ideologies become reflected in our bodies – embodied in our bodies. There are parallels between the way we think ideologically and the way our brains are structured at a biological level.'
Key to understanding the 'ideological brain' is what Zmigrod calls 'cognitive rigidity'. It's a 'thinking style – a cognitive and emotional way of responding to the world'.
Zmigrod carried out experiments on many thousands of participants in order to explore how cognitive rigidity works and what it reveals about political extremism.
'Some of us are very rigid thinkers,' she says. 'That means they see the world in very binary terms. They'll struggle to switch between modes of thinking, and struggle to adapt when the environment changes.
'Some of us are more flexible thinkers. They see the world in more expansive ways. When they encounter situations where the environment changes, they can adapt their behaviour to respond – they're receptive to evidence, they'll listen.
'Whereas a rigid person will reject the evidence which suggests change needs to happen.'
Zmigrod found that cognitively rigid people map directly onto those who support extremist ideologies – whether those ideologies are on the far left or the far right.
One experiment she has conducted many times takes the form of a game that seemingly has nothing to do with politics. It's more like Tetris, where you sort cards.
Some cards may have 'three red circles' on them, other cards may have 'a single blue triangle'. The participant is given no rules and simply told to match the cards.
By trial and error, participants will discover that they have, for instance, to match only cards with the three red circles. But then, suddenly, the rules of the game change and matching cards with three red circles is no longer correct.'I'm interested in that moment of change,' says Zmigrod. Some participants will accept 'that the old rule doesn't work any more and they need to change – they need to find the new rules and adapt their behaviour. These are the genuinely cognitively flexible people.'
By experimenting, they might discover that the new rule is now matching cards with blue triangles, or other cards with green stars.
'But other people,' Zmigrod explains, 'will reject the evidence that they should change their behaviour. They reject change. They continue to apply the old rule, even though they're getting feedback signals that what they're doing no longer works. But they really want to stick to that old rule. These are the cognitively rigid people.'
Now for the kicker. 'What I've found,' she adds, 'is that people who tend to be most rigid on this task also tend to be more ideologically rigid on the left and right, in a way that's really remarkable.'
Violence
THE data comes out as a 'U-shaped curve, where the people on the extreme far right and far left tend to be the most cognitively rigid, and the people who are more moderate, more independent, more suspicious of pre-established political identities, tend to be the most flexible.
'The game I gave them had nothing to do with politics – it just measures their cognitive style, their way of processing information and responding to change. But we see that this maps on to their political extremity really powerfully.'
Zmigrod also found that those who are more cognitively rigid 'tend to be more willing to support violence in the name of their ideological cause and group. They are also the most willing to sacrifice themselves – to commit violence against others and themselves in the name of that ideological cause.
'You can see how the way in which someone approaches the world is very tightly connected to the way in which they process information, to their ideological identity, and how they respond to turmoil.'
If you ever wondered what kind of person becomes a suicide bomber, or why some Japanese soldiers refused to surrender at the end of the Second World War, then cognitive rigidity is your answer. 'It's linked to that kind of ideological fanaticism,' Zmigrod adds.
The next step in Zmigrod's research was 'connecting this to biology'. After she ran these experiments and discovered how rigidity mapped almost perfectly on to extremism, Zmigrod set out to understand 'what makes a person rigid, what affects whether we're a more rigid or flexible thinker'. She began to 'study the genetics of people who tend to think more rigidly than flexibly'.
Now for the second kicker. 'What we find is that there is a genetic profile which puts people at higher propensity of thinking more rigidly. That genetic profile is related to the genes that control dopamine production.'
Most people think of dopamine as a chemical messenger linked to reward and mood. We hear about the 'dopamine rush' that comes from running, for example.
However, dopamine is also 'the neurotransmitter that fundamentally governs learning, new information, and how we update our beliefs.
'It's tightly connected to our flexibility and adaptability. What I found in this very large genetic study is that people who have particular dispositions in terms of how dopamine is distributed in their brains have more tendency to think rigidly, and be less adaptable.'
The science is complicated but broadly the lower the level of dopamine in the brain's prefrontal cortex, and the higher the level in the area of the brain known as the striatum, then the more likely you are to think rigidly. Consequently, that makes you more likely to be an extremist.
The pre-frontal cortex is 'responsible for high-level thinking, sophisticated thought and decision-making'. The striatum is 'the mid-brain structure responsible for dopamine production' and 'instinctual responding'.
Genetics
IN essence: 'People who tend to be more rigid thinkers have particular idiosyncrasies in how dopamine is distributed in their brains.' So there's a 'genetic component' to political 'behaviour'.
If scientists artificially altered dopamine levels you wouldn't suddenly become more or less extreme. Extremism depends on your standard body chemistry.
This all creates the genetic template for extremism. 'If someone is ideologically extreme, we can trace that back to their cognition, their psychology and then all the way down to how particular genetic and biological mechanisms work.'
So do we have any free will? That's the deeply disturbing question raised by Zmigrod's work.
Becoming an extremist, however, is a little like getting lung cancer. You might have a genetic predisposition to lung cancer, but that wouldn't become an issue unless you started smoking. It's once you start smoking that your biological predisposition becomes a risk factor.
Until now, it was thought that environmental factors explained why someone becomes an extremist. In other words, it was how you were raised, the views of your family and community, and your economic and social experiences which pushed you towards extremism. Now, however, with Zmigrod's work, we're discovering that environmental factors are only half the story.
Think of the average German in the 1930s. Some would have grown up with parents who held extremist views. They might also have experienced economic hardship and political turmoil. However, they didn't vote for Hitler. Then, evidently, there were other Germans who might have had liberal parents, and never experienced financial hardship, yet still backed the Nazis.
(Image: Adolf Hitler addresses German crowds)
Biology may explain 'why'. Zmigrod says: 'We need to look at how biology interacts with environmental factors.'
One key environmental trigger that will switch on a brain predisposed to extremism is 'stress'. Again, let's consider Germany in the 1930s and think of the economic chaos in the country.
'When you're in a very stressful situation that makes us more rigid. Think about the time you were most stressed, it's when you're thinking in the most narrow way. You're not exploring the world.'
In cognitive flexibility experiments 'people perform lower when stressed'. Scientists can 'put people in really stressful situations and see their brains changing in response to stress factors. When the stress is removed, their brains bounce back and they become more flexible'.
It shows that 'susceptibility to rigid thinking' increases when you're 'put in stressful environments'. One experiment on toddlers 'showed that stress impairs their cognitive flexibility'. Half the toddlers were exposed to stress – like being separated from their mum. Half weren't exposed to 'stressors'.
Disaster
SCIENTISTS measured the toddlers' cortisol levels which rise with stress. The toddlers were given simple 'learning tasks' – like pressing coloured buttons sequentially to make lights flash and music play. For toddlers, Zmigrod says, 'that's a party'.
After some time pressing buttons, however, the lights and music stopped. The happy toddlers wandered off to explore. The stressed toddlers, though, just kept pressing buttons.
'Stressors' can be a 'profound driver of ideological behaviour,' says Zmigrod. If you put someone with cognitive rigidity – a person with that particular dopamine cocktail in their brain – 'in a stressful environment you get a perfectly disastrous recipe for being drawn into extreme ways of thinking'.
You can see how this research speaks directly to concerns around political extremism today. We live in a highly stressed, volatile world. If a large minority are walking around with the biology and psychology which predisposes them to extremism in cases of high stress, then that may well explain what's gone wrong with 21st-century politics.
Previous eras lacked one crucial ingredient when it came to the combustible elements needed to create an extremist: social media.
'Young brains,' Zmigrod notes, are already 'extra sensitive' to emotions. Now, take a young person with a 'tendency towards rigid thinking' and bombard them with the fear, hate, anger and jealousy that's found on platforms like Elon Musk's X and you've a recipe for disaster.
'A big predictor of how willing people are to endorse violence is how emotionally impulsive they are in their everyday lives: are they good at inhibiting their responses or do they seek out thrills and big emotional experiences,' Zmigrod says.
Given young people are already 'emotionally impulsive', those who are also predisposed to 'cognitive rigidity' become at risk of 'radicalisation' online. 'Digital environments have algorithms designed to give you the most binary information, and information that's negatively impacting your emotions, making you feel scared, anxious, or threatened.'
For 'people already at risk', the online world means that traits like rigidity, impulsivity and stress 'get amplified and accentuated in really dangerous ways'. It explains why some become radicalised online and others don't.
Until now, Zmigrod explains, it was believed that cognitive rigidity was mostly found 'on the right' of the political spectrum. That's not the case, though.
'The right is supposedly the side that's about maintaining the status quo and tradition, and avoiding change. The left was seen as the side of progress and change.'
When she measured the 'unconscious trait' of cognitive rigidity, she found both camps equally susceptible.
Clearly, her findings make sense, if you consider the atrocities committed by communist and fascist regimes – both sides can be as extreme as the other. It's important to understand that Zmigrod isn't talking about people who are simply left or right wing – she's talking about the far left and far right.
READ MORE
NEIL MACKAY'S BIG READ: 'SNP nationalism is destroying education' - the devastating assessment of Sturgeon and schools by leading Scottish educationalist
Neil Mackay: Why is the best entertainment from Scotland in years such a secret?
Neil Mackay: Gangsters are terrorising Scotland, but do our politicians care?
Neil Mackay: Working-class quotas and why we need a taste of social engineering
Holocaust
THE resistance within psychology to accept that there were similar cognitive behaviours going on within the far left and far right is 'understandable', she explains. Early research began in the late 1940s, when psychologists were trying to understand the Holocaust and 'figure out what makes a potential fascist'.
'But I think it's so important we recognise that we also see psychological rigidity in people who are on the extreme left,' she says. 'Rigidity can exist with regard to any ideology.'
Matters take an even more curious turn, however, when you explore the structure of the brains of people with varying political beliefs.
'We can actually see neurobiological differences in the shape of the brain between people who are left and right wing.'
These findings have been 'replicated with hundreds of participants in multiple countries like America, the UK and the Netherlands'.
The key part of the brain in question here is the amygdala. It 'processes negative emotions, like threat, fear, and disgust of things that are foreign. This area of the brain is enlarged in people who are right wing relative to people who are left wing. And it's consistent. There's a pattern'.
One theory is that 'right-wing ideologies tend to engage with those kinds of emotions – disgust, threat, fear. Perhaps there's a natural affinity that makes people with larger amygdala gravitate towards right-wing ideology'.
However, it could also work in reverse. 'If you're immersed in the kind of ideology which engages those emotions, that experience can physically change the brain and the structures responsible for those emotions. It's a chicken and egg problem. We're still trying to figure it out.'
In other words, people with enlarged amygdala may be drawn to right-wing extremism, or being a right-wing extremist may enlarge your amygdala. Either way, there's a biological link to politics.
Zmigrod has investigated what happens 'to flexible brains in dogmatic environments, and to dogmatic brains placed in environments that aren't overly authoritarian or tribal'.
She looked at religious conversion, and how some people who 'grew up in incredibly devout environments chose to leave those ideologies behind, and how some people who didn't grow up in religious environments chose to adopt the ideology'.
Zmigrod discovered that the people who left religious environments which were 'closed ideologically, were the most cognitively flexible people. And it was true the other way, where the people who didn't grow up with religious dogma, but later choose it, tend to be the most cognitively rigid'.
This is the third kicker, because it means that your brain is seeking out the ideological environment which suits its best. For Zmigrod, this proves 'that we do have free will and agency. We have the capacity to leave behind certain environments and choose the one that most accords with our cognitive tendencies'.
Where you are born and how you are raised 'don't fully determine your beliefs. Our choices are really fundamental'.
Freedom
BUT if your pre-programmed brain is seeking out the political environment which most accords with its biology, is that really free will or is it genetics irresistibly pushing you towards an ideology? That's the troubling metaphysical question which remains hanging.
Zmigrod says she personally believes we're free to choose, it's just that 'not everybody chooses to practise freedom'.
And, of course, setting free will aside, it can be exceptionally hard for anyone
– even if they are biologically and genetically predisposed to flexible ways of thinking – to reject their upbringing and the traditions of their family and community. Voting Tory in a socialist household could be tricky. Joining Just Stop Oil if your family are Conservative may not be easy.
'If you want to have mental freedom, you should interrogate the ideologies you believe in,' Zmigrod says. 'That's a really hard struggle, as you have to constantly fight off all these different narrowing pressures, stressful experiences, ideological rhetoric and your own biology.'
For those with an ideological brain, political language can be particularly effective when it comes to ramping up fears over issues like a lack of resources. It triggers deep evolutionary emotions.
Remember, for instance, how the amygdala, which processes fear and disgust, is larger among right-wingers. Now consider, for instance, rhetoric by far-right parties about migrants taking jobs or homes.
Zmigrod believes her work can help us 'build resilience' to propaganda. Although she's also fully aware that in this age of 'scepticism towards expertise and science' that many of the very people she needs to reach will automatically reject her findings.
'I find that really funny because why would you be closed off to more information?' she asks.
She stresses that her book isn't about 'what you believe, but how you believe. So hopefully it speaks to people who believe in very different things. It's not political, it's rooted in science which has implications for politics'.
Zmigrod adds: 'It's not trying to say there's a right side, or that one side needs pathologised. It's about trying to understand ideological extremism and radicalisation whether that's for the left, right, nationalistic, globalist, environmentalist, misogynistic, whatever.
'Rigidity exists at the extremes of many different ideologies.'
What connects all ideologies, she says, is that when there's any form of conflict, 'all means justify the ends, like violence against innocent people or yourself. All ideologies think they're good, noble, virtuous and ethical'.
TERRORIST
When a terrorist atrocity happens, therefore, we shouldn't just focus on the perpetrator's 'religion, age, gender, eduction, and income'. Such issues are relevant but 'neurobiology also affects who goes to those really radical, extreme ends. There's a really deep and complicated biology and psychology here'.
And we are, all of us, on a spectrum of extremism, she notes. 'Some people are extremely susceptible and a big chunk are moderately susceptible.'
Zmigrod's investigations into the role stress plays in radicalisation help us understand 'the particular contemporary moment we're in'. What could be more stressful than a global war on terror, followed by a global financial crash, followed by a global pandemic?
'We're biological creatures, psychological creatures. Pandemics, catastrophes, wars, economic crises affect the brain and make it more ideological, more dogmatic, more discriminatory. Human bodies respond to these crises.
'World events become personal. It's like the old saying 'the personal is political and the political is personal'. All these conflicts and crises become embodied in our bodies. That imbues politics with a new kind of importance, as politics doesn't just exist in the political world it exists within us, in our bodies, existentially and biologically.'
Zmigrod notes that today there's a difference in the 'psychology of ideological leaders and the psychology of ideological followers. It can be quite distinct. The leaders are in many ways like entrepreneurs, much more flexible. Many are not necessarily very dogmatic'.
Ideologies, she adds, 'sculpt adherents in their image'. A 'catastrophising ideology' will create 'catastrophising minds'. However, this isn't a question of fools being brainwashed by puppet-master politicians. Supporters aren't 'passive participants or passive vessels'.
Nor is ideological thinking 'irrational' from the perspective of the believer. It often has a 'compelling logic'. If you accept that life is a competition, for example - between nations, classes, genders or races - then that will lead you to 'a set of conclusions' about how to govern the world.
Ideological leaders will use 'seductive logic to present misinformation' to support that narrative. But that's not brainwashing, it's the believer listening to skewed information which fits their worldview and excluding information which undermines their worldview.
'It's not that we're being controlled, we bring a lot to the table ourselves,' Zmigrod says. 'We need to understand our own role and responsibility.'
INEQUALITY
Here's one final experiment which Zmigrod finds 'chilling'. It was conducted to investigate attitudes to inequality. Participants were shown videos of 'homeless people discussing the struggles of their lives'. People who said they were upset by inequalities showed an accelerated heart rate. 'You could see their bodies were disturbed by the injustice,' says Zmigrod.
Those who said they believed 'inequality was good or natural', however, showed no physical change. 'Physiologically, they were unmoved, they were numb.' Zmigrod says she finds the experiment disturbing as it shows ideology playing out biologically before our eyes.
'It shows how our nervous systems can be fundamentally sculpted by the ideologies we believe. Ideologies don't exist outside us in some abstract realm, they're truly embodied physically.'
Those with no reaction to inequality weren't psychopaths devoid of empathy, however. 'They weren't people who didn't react emotionally to anything. It was specific to inequality. Your political or economic worldview parallels your nervous system response. I'm still astounded by it to be honest.'
The term 'system justification' exists in psychology. It explains how someone can justify inequality as it accords with their political beliefs. This experiment shows 'system justification' playing out in the human body.
Zmigrod jumps from this dark example of dehumanisation into thoughts about how ideology itself dehumanises the adherent. 'You force yourself to live according to a particular script,' she says. 'You follow rules, and apply harsh moralities to yourself and others.'
To live better, happier lives, we should question the ideologies we believe in, she says. Indeed, we should avoid any notion of 'tolerating intolerance' if we're to build good societies. 'If we uncritically tolerate every kind of intolerance, liberalism and democracy start to fold in on themselves,' she adds.
What did she discover about the tolerant, non-extremist brain? 'It's less tied to strict identities and doctrines. You see flexibility of thought in all things not just politics.
More tolerant people are more expansive in their imaginations. There's emotional and empathetic sensitivity to other's suffering. There's less numbness. There's the capacity for emotional regulation.
'There's also something called 'intellectual humility', which is the capacity to resist being overly confident about your beliefs. It's not about being endlessly persuadable, it's about being attuned to credible evidence and being willing to change your beliefs.'
And how did these traits reveal themselves biologically? People with more moderate political views have a larger part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. It's involved in 'emotional processing and cognitive control'. It's effectively your inner critic.
'The tolerant brain is much better at recognising its own errors relative to the ideological brain,' says Zmigrod. 'The ideological brain struggles to know when it's wrong, it typically thinks it's right even when it's wrong.'