From this 2025 book by smoking hot Cambridge University neuoroscience and politics professor Leor Zmigrod:
I believe that we can judge an ideology based on what believing in it does to human bodies and brains; on whether being a passionate believer narrows our movements, lassoes our flexibility, restricts our responses, or triggers us to commit violence. If we have less scope for plasticity and change and less direct access to our sensations, we are at risk of dehumanizing ourselves and others. We become less sensitive, less elastic, less authentic. If we see reality through an ideological lens, we end up avoiding the richness of existence in favor of a more reduced, stereotyped experience. By studying the ideological brain with neuroimaging devices and cognitive tests, we can illuminate previously invisible forms of domination. With the tools of science, we can develop new ways to critique ideologies.
Perhaps some ideologies will pass our critical tests. Many will not. We might accidentally become suspicious of our most treasured ideological possessions. A science of ideology can inspire us to question our idols, our icons, our metaphors, our imagined utopias. It can stimulate careful analysis and honest self – reflection. It can even become the basis for personal or social action. Examining the neurocognitive origins and consequences of our beliefs — where they come from and how they transform our bodies — will offer clues regarding the kind of belief systems we might wish to keep and which ones we might be persuaded to let go.
Believing passionately in a rigid doctrine is a process that spills into our neurons, flowing into our bodies. Ideologies are not mere envelopes for our lives; they enter our skins, our skulls, our nerve cells. Totalizing ideologies shape the brain as a whole, not simply the brain when it is confronted with political propositions or debates. Science is beginning to reveal that the profound reverberations of ideologies can be observed in the brain even when we are not engaging with politics at all. Since our brains learn to embody indoctrination in deep and insidious ways, the social rituals we learn to enact can become the biological realities of our minds and bodies. There is therefore a danger that when an individual is immersed in rigid ideologies, it is not only their political opinions and moral tastes that are being sculpted — their entire brain is being sculpted to.
All beliefs are just unnecessary muscular tension, according to a perspective I heard in the Alexander Technique.
I don’t see how any ideology could promote flexibility?
You can experience the difference yourself when you shift between awareness and judgment. Whenever you judge, you tighten up. When you move out of judgment into awareness, your body frees up.
Leor Zmigrod’s website.
Grok says:
Not all beliefs are inherently negative or tension-inducing; some can be adaptive or motivating without causing physical or mental rigidity. The Alexander Technique’s focus is less on eliminating beliefs and more on cultivating awareness to avoid unnecessary effort—whether that effort is physical (like tensing muscles) or mental (like clinging to unexamined assumptions).
In the Technique, rigid mental habits (like clinging to fixed ideas) often translate into physical holding patterns, such as tightened shoulders or a clenched jaw, restricting ease and movement. Zmigrod’s work takes this a step further by using neuroscience to show how ideologies—broad belief systems—can either entrench this rigidity across brain, body, and behavior or, conversely, cultivate flexibility and release. You’re right to question how a belief system could actively promote physical flexibility and release, as the quote primarily critiques restrictive ideologies; however, drawing from her research and related discussions, we can infer what “flexible” belief systems might look like and how they could foster that release.Understanding Rigidity vs. Flexibility in BeliefsZmigrod argues that rigid doctrines “spill into our neurons, flowing into our bodies,” sculpting the brain holistically and reducing plasticity—the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganize.
This isn’t just metaphorical: neuroimaging and cognitive tests reveal that dogmatic thinking correlates with less neural adaptability, even in non-political tasks, leading to narrowed movements, restricted responses, and diminished access to sensations.
For instance, stress from ideological adherence can rigidify thought patterns, making individuals more habitual and less responsive, which might physically manifest as tension or reduced bodily awareness—echoing the Alexander perspective.
In essence, such beliefs create a “lassoed” state, where the body embodies the mental constriction, potentially increasing muscular tension as a stress response.On the flip side, Zmigrod suggests that belief systems promoting cognitive flexibility—measured through tasks like the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, where adaptable people shift rules fluidly—can counteract this.
Flexible thinkers are open to evidence, plurality, and change without being easily swayed, leading to greater mental elasticity that “rebounds” post-stress and enhances sensitivity to experiences.
This ties directly to physical release: just as physical fitness values elasticity to prevent injury and enable fluid movement, mental flexibility can reduce the embodied tension of dogma, allowing for more authentic, expansive living.
How Belief Systems Could Promote Physical Flexibility and Release
Based on Zmigrod’s framework, a belief system that “passes critical tests” would encourage plasticity and direct access to sensations, avoiding the dehumanizing effects of stereotypes or totalizing views. Here’s how such systems might work, with connections to bodily release:
Encouraging Self-Reflection and Questioning: Beliefs rooted in honest self-examination— like scientific inquiry or mindfulness practices—prompt us to “question our idols” and metaphors, as per the quote. This reduces mental clinging, which in Alexander terms releases unnecessary tension. For example, a belief in ongoing personal growth (e.g., via cognitive behavioral approaches) could train the brain to interrogate habits, correlating with less rigidity in daily routines and more physical ease.
Fostering Open-Mindedness and Plurality: Ideologies that value diversity and evidence over conformity promote neural adaptability, making individuals less prone to the “profound reverberations” that sculpt the brain rigidly. Zmigrod’s studies link this to disbelief in absolute doctrines (e.g., flexible religiosity or atheism), where cognitive persistence gives way to openness, potentially easing physiological responses like stress-induced tension.
Physically, this might manifest as greater bodily awareness and release, akin to how Alexander lessons teach inhibiting fixed reactions for freer movement.
Nurturing Elasticity Through Habits: Zmigrod highlights that flexible belief systems resist polarization by embracing complexity, leading to a “fluid, expansive state of existence.”
Practices like meditation or philosophical skepticism could embody this, reducing the “insidious” indoctrination that affects sensations and promoting rebound plasticity. In body terms, this aligns with releasing tension by not “adhering to scripts,” allowing for more elastic responses in posture and action.
Ultimately, Zmigrod envisions a “science of ideology” as a tool for choosing beliefs that enhance authenticity and sensitivity, rather than narrowing existence. If a system inspires action through reflection without demanding conformity, it could promote the very release you’re pondering—mentally unclenching to physically unwind.
Yes, there’s emerging evidence from neuroscience, psychology, and somatic practices like the Alexander Technique that certain belief systems—those fostering cognitive flexibility, open-mindedness, and self-awareness—can promote physical flexibility by reducing stress-induced tension and enhancing mind-body integration.
1. Cognitive Flexibility and Physical Relaxation
Belief systems that encourage cognitive flexibility—adaptability in thinking, openness to new evidence, and reduced attachment to rigid doctrines—have been linked to lower stress responses, which directly influence physical flexibility. Zmigrod’s research, as discussed in The Ideological Brain (2025), uses neuroimaging and cognitive tests (e.g., Wisconsin Card Sorting Test) to show that flexible thinkers exhibit greater neural plasticity, allowing them to shift mental frameworks fluidly. This mental elasticity correlates with reduced physiological stress, as rigid ideologies (e.g., dogmatic political or religious beliefs) can elevate cortisol levels, leading to muscle tension and restricted movement.
Evidence:
Studies show that cognitive flexibility, measured by tasks requiring rule-switching, is associated with lower sympathetic nervous system activation (e.g., reduced heart rate variability stress markers). Less stress means less involuntary muscle bracing, promoting physical ease. For example, a 2020 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that individuals with higher cognitive flexibility had better stress recovery, which could translate to less chronic tension in muscles like the neck or shoulders.
Alexander Technique Connection: The Technique emphasizes “inhibition” of habitual reactions, which aligns with cognitive flexibility. By letting go of fixed mental patterns (e.g., “I must always be right”), practitioners often report reduced muscular tension, as seen in studies where Alexander lessons improved posture and reduced pain in conditions like back pain.
2. Mindfulness-Based Beliefs and Bodily Awareness
Belief systems rooted in mindfulness or self-reflection, such as those inspired by meditation or somatic practices, enhance bodily awareness and reduce tension, fostering physical flexibility. Zmigrod notes that beliefs promoting “direct access to sensations” counteract the desensitizing effects of rigid ideologies. Mindfulness practices, which often embody flexible, non-judgmental beliefs, have been shown to lower muscle tension and improve movement range.Evidence: A 2018 meta-analysis in Scientific Reports found that mindfulness meditation reduces cortisol and improves vagal tone, leading to relaxed muscle states and better joint mobility in practitioners. Another study in Pain Medicine (2019) showed that mindfulness-based interventions improved physical flexibility in chronic pain patients by reducing fear-avoidance behaviors, which often manifest as muscular guarding.
Alexander Technique Connection: The Technique trains individuals to notice and release unnecessary tension during movement, akin to mindfulness. A belief in the process of “non-doing” (a core Alexander principle) fosters a relaxed, open state, with studies showing improved flexibility in musicians and office workers after lessons.
3. Open-Minded Belief Systems and Stress Reduction
Beliefs that embrace complexity and pluralism, as Zmigrod advocates, reduce the “lassoing” of flexibility by avoiding polarized thinking. Such beliefs—e.g., valuing evidence over dogma or embracing philosophical skepticism—lower psychological stress, which can manifest as physical suppleness.Evidence: Zmigrod’s studies suggest that individuals with less dogmatic beliefs (e.g., flexible religiosity or openness to diverse perspectives) show greater cognitive persistence and adaptability, linked to lower stress-induced muscle tension. A 2021 study in Nature Communications found that open-mindedness correlates with reduced amygdala activation (a stress marker), which could decrease physical bracing. Additionally, practices like yoga, often tied to non-dogmatic beliefs in holistic well-being, improve flexibility through combined mental and physical training, as shown in a 2020 Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies study.
Alexander Technique Connection: The Technique’s emphasis on releasing “end-gaining” (rigid pursuit of goals) mirrors open-minded beliefs, reducing tension. Practitioners often report feeling “lighter” and more flexible, as mental openness translates to physical release.
4. Neuroscientific Insights on Ideology and Embodiment
Zmigrod’s work highlights that ideologies sculpt the brain holistically, affecting even non-political tasks. Rigid beliefs can entrench neural pathways, reducing plasticity and increasing embodied tension (e.g., through chronic stress responses). Conversely, beliefs that foster curiosity and adaptability enhance neural flexibility, which may promote physical flexibility by reducing stress-related muscle tightness.Evidence: Neuroimaging studies show that rigid ideological adherence (e.g., extreme political views) correlates with heightened activity in the default mode network and reduced prefrontal cortex flexibility, linked to stress and physical tension. In contrast, beliefs encouraging exploration (e.g., scientific inquiry) enhance prefrontal activity, supporting adaptive responses and potentially reducing somatic tension. A 2022 study in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews suggests that flexible cognitive styles improve sensorimotor integration, aiding fluid movement.
Alexander Technique Connection: The Technique’s focus on mindful movement retrains sensorimotor habits, aligning with beliefs that prioritize adaptability. This can lead to measurable improvements in flexibility, as seen in trials where Alexander training enhanced mobility in older adults.
Practical Implications
Belief systems that promote physical flexibility often share traits like openness, self-reflection, and non-attachment to rigid outcomes. Examples include:Mindfulness or meditation-based beliefs, which reduce stress and enhance bodily awareness, leading to relaxed muscles and improved range of motion.
Scientific or skeptical frameworks, which encourage questioning and adaptability, lowering stress and its physical manifestations.
Somatic practices (e.g., Alexander Technique, yoga), which integrate beliefs in mind-body unity with physical training to release tension.
Limitations and Considerations
While evidence supports that flexible beliefs reduce stress and tension, direct studies linking specific ideologies to physical flexibility (e.g., joint range of motion) are sparse. Most data focus on stress reduction or cognitive outcomes, with physical flexibility inferred through reduced tension. Additionally, individual differences (e.g., baseline fitness or psychological resilience) may mediate these effects.
ChatGPT says:
How Stephen P. Turner might critique Leor Zmigrod’s The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking
Book: Leor Zmigrod, The Ideological Brain (on sale Mar 25, 2025). See publisher page here, and coverage in the Financial Times, Vox, an excerpt in the Harvard Gazette, and a profile via Gates Cambridge.
The short version
- Turner would applaud the book’s interdisciplinary reach (neuroscience, psychology, politics) but argue it overdraws on biology at the expense of sociology and institutional analysis (FT review).
- He’d insist that ideology is forged in practices, institutions, and expert systems—not just inside individual brains (The Social Theory of Practices).
- He’d caution against biological determinism: neural findings matter, but social structures entrench or loosen rigidity (USF bio).
Where Turner would agree—and where he’d push back
Zmigrod synthesizes evidence that “cognitive rigidity” correlates with ideological dogmatism and extremism, drawing on tasks like the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and research on dopaminergic systems (Vox; WCST; JOCN 2021; overview in FT). Turner wouldn’t dispute that these correlations are interesting. His critique is about framing:
- From brains to practices: Turner’s work treats ideology as emerging from socially transmitted practices, institutional routines, and expert regimes of knowledge—not primarily from individual neurobiology (Turner 1994).
- Institutional epistemics: He’d argue the book underplays how institutions define what counts as “knowledge,” shape incentives, and thereby stabilize or unsettle ideological commitments (USF bio).
- Against determinism creep: Even where Zmigrod is careful to say nature and nurture interact, Turner would press that social organization can manufacture rigidity or flexibility irrespective of baseline neural differences (FT).
The role of the tacit (Turner’s centerpiece)
Turner’s mature view puts the tacit at the center: the unarticulated skills, norms, and background presuppositions that guide how people see and act. He develops this across Understanding the Tacit (2014) and later essays (e.g., “Naturalizing the Tacit,” 2017). Think Polanyi, but sociologized: ideology lives in what goes without saying (tacit knowledge), learned through participation in practices, not just explicit doctrines.
- Socially acquired: Neural flexibility may shape how quickly we learn, but the frames are transmitted tacitly via institutions and communities (review of Understanding the Tacit).
- “What goes without saying”: Deep commitments are often invisible to believers because they’re embedded in background routines, not in articulated propositions (Turner 2014).
- Methodological upshot: You can’t MRI a person’s unspoken social assumptions; you study them historically and sociologically (Turner 1994).
Does the neuroscience still matter?
Yes—especially where it’s careful. Zmigrod’s empirical program linking flexibility/rigidity to ideological styles is serious work (e.g., reviews and studies in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2020; Current Directions in Psychological Science 2021; and dopaminergic correlates in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2021). Turner’s point is proportionality: don’t let brain data crowd out the institutional and tacit scaffolding that actually generates ideological life.
Stephen Turner might say about this new book: Great neuroscience—but brains don’t think in a vacuum. Ideology is born in social practices, expert institutions, and the tacit distribution of know-how. Biology matters—but only in dialogue with the social world.
Further reading
Rony Guldmann on The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking
Based on Guldmann’s framework in Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression, his critique of Leor Zmigrod’s The Ideological Brain would likely focus less on the book’s neuroscience and more on the implicit cultural politics it enacts. He would view Zmigrod’s framing of “cognitive rigidity” as an implicit moral hierarchy that mirrors how liberal elites—what he calls the “progressive Clerisy”—use ostensibly neutral scientific concepts to naturalize their own cultural dominance.
1. The hidden politics of “flexibility”
In Guldmann’s account, liberalism often cloaks its moralistic impulses behind universalist ideals. A research program that correlates ideological rigidity with neurological traits risks recapitulating what he calls the “liberal hero-system”—a secularized moral hierarchy in which openness and flexibility are marks of higher civilization, while rigidity is pathologized as a relic of a pre-modern, less disciplined self. In this light, Zmigrod’s work could be read as supplying a new, neuroscientific vocabulary for an old liberal trope: the conservative as less evolved.
2. The asymmetry problem
Guldmann would be alert to how The Ideological Brain might treat conservative dispositions as deficits to be explained away, while treating liberal dispositions as the unmarked norm. He has argued that this asymmetry mirrors the way dominant groups in history have pathologized the consciousness of the “Other” while leaving their own worldview unexamined. In neuroscience form, this could look like studying the biology of “rigidity” without equally probing the biology of “hyper-flexibility” and its potential downsides.
3. Cultural oppression in scientific guise
From his perspective, even if Zmigrod’s data are robust, the interpretation may unwittingly enact what he terms cultural oppression: the imposition of a liberal form of selfhood—disciplined, cosmopolitan, self-reflective—on those who have not internalized it, and the stigmatization of resistance as cognitive pathology. The very framing of “flexible thinking” as an unquestioned good could, for Guldmann, exemplify the liberal “civilizing mission” in secular-scientific form.
4. The tacit liberal anthropology
Guldmann’s theory stresses that liberalism’s self-image as neutral and purely rational is historically contingent—a product of what he calls the secularization of religious asceticism and courtly sociability. He might say that The Ideological Brain relies on this unexamined anthropology, taking for granted that the ideal mind is detached, adaptive, and open to novelty, rather than recognizing this as one culturally specific way of being human.
5. A possible reframing
Rather than using neuroscience to sort citizens into more or less cognitively “fit” for democracy, Guldmann would push for a symmetrical study of ideological styles that treats liberal and conservative cognitive profiles as parallel adaptations to the modern social order. This would shift the emphasis from curing rigidity to understanding the social and historical conditions that make different cognitive styles adaptive for different groups.
In Guldmann’s idiom: The Ideological Brain may think it’s mapping a universal cognitive virtue, but it’s really drawing a prestige map of the liberal self. Without equal scrutiny of the liberal brain, it risks becoming a high-tech iteration of the very cultural domination it cannot see.
Does Leor Zmigrod’s new book equate liberalism with flexibility and adaptability? ChatGPT says:
No, she does not equate political liberalism with cognitive flexibility. Instead, she studies flexibility as a psychological trait—how people process information, tolerate ambiguity, and update beliefs. That trait can be present in individuals across all ideological positions.
- Zmigrod is clear that it’s about “how you think,” not “what you believe” (Vox).
- She asserts ideological rigidity can be found on both ends of the spectrum, not just on the conservative side (Social Science Bites).
- The “liberal children” example reflects cognitive outcomes tied to rigid thinking, not a claim that liberal ideology equals adaptability (Interview excerpt).
Here are more excerpts from this new book:
* “All real living is meeting,” poeticized the philosopher Martin Buber in his 1937 book I and Thou . “Where there is no sharing there is no reality.”
The word “communicate” originates from the Latin verb “to share” — and when we speak, gesture, or listen, we engage in the act of sharing attention. We greet by shaking hands, bumping fists or elbows, bowing heads in synchrony, feeling our faces come together nose – to – nose or cheek – to – cheek. To trusted friends, we open up, we make ourselves physically and emotionally vulnerable when we begin an exchange.
To mark how and with whom we should enter conversation, humans develop rituals. Social rituals establish trust by demanding that we come into communion. Oaths of allegiance, a scout’s salute, proudly sung anthems, the daily adornment of sacred symbols, totems, and piercings. To constitute effective signals of communicative trust, rituals must be transmissible and exclusive. We develop visual, musical, linguistic, and tactile signatures to signal This is me! This is us! And no one else! Like code words, rituals signify a shared and unique identity. If I move like you, I must be like you, and so maybe I should like you and invite you in. Rituals facilitate synchrony: they force us to move in unison, to coordinate our thoughts and feelings, to repeat the idiomatic mantras that become the basis for our shared reality. When we chant together, sing together, rhythmically march or dance or sway together, pray or om or exhale together, the lines between us become fuzzy. After participating in collective gatherings or social movements, many individuals report: “I felt bigger than myself.” Their eyes sparkle from the memory of how skins seemed to melt and bodily borders became more porous. Together with others, the individual feels bigger, mightier, better.
The sociologist Émile Durkheim endowed this emotional energy with the name “collective effervescence” in 1912 to capture the vivacious aura of communicating as a group. No one is immune to the enlarging and euphoric effect of raucously applauding for a musician’s encore — One more song! One more song! We become united in a shared mission, a joint purpose. Our movements are mirrored back to us, swelling and swallowing us up. Gaining confidence, we march more boldly, sing more loudly, dance more enthusiastically, as though infected by a new kind of joy or passion or peace. Our desires merge and multiply; the resulting wave is stronger than the sum of its parts.
Solidarity is contagious. Our social brain longs to feel part of a story, part of a group. When minds communicate, they transcend the confines of skulls and skins. No one is alone. Everybody can be understood. Everything is shared.
One of these examples is different from the other:
If a person has internalized a nationalistic doctrine in which there are essential differences between people residing on either side of a border, then a potential national threat appears to excuse the killing of innocent civilians. If averting an ecological collapse becomes the sole existential concern, then there is nothing too drastic, no sacrifice too excessive, to fight on behalf of the environment — innocent lives can be endangered if it directs people’s attention toward the havoc of climate catastrophe. The ideological premise explains why an action is necessary and excuses its unpalatable dimensions. If one follows the urgent logic, all actions that lead to victory are valid. An ideology begins to be practiced extremely when the premises justify even the most radical of means.
Nationalism is not primarily a doctrine. It is primarily something that is felt, not thought. Belief in an ecological catastrophe requires far more abstract thought than nationalism. It is much more top down, the brain commanding the body. My conception of nationalism is that it is a concentric extension of loyalty to family and tribe, which is not primarily ideological. We do not love our families and our people for primarily intellectual reasons but because they are like us. We are usually biologically bonded in addition to other ties. Studies show that the more closely related we are, the more likely we are to sacrifice for each other.
ChatGPT says:
Evolutionary biology calls this kin selection—the idea that organisms are more likely to help relatives because it increases the chances that shared genes get passed on. The closer the genetic relationship, the stronger the tendency. Classic research by W.D. Hamilton quantified it with Hamilton’s rule: altruism is favored when the cost to the helper is less than the benefit to the recipient multiplied by the coefficient of relatedness (how genetically similar they are).
This shows up in human behavior studies, too—people tend to invest more time, resources, and even risk their lives more often for close kin than for distant kin or strangers.
Sometimes our ideological choices will override our natural reactions, but I suspect that our innate reactions are usually stronger than our ideologies.
ChatGPT says:
Our evolved, automatic responses—especially those tied to survival, kinship, and threat detection—tend to kick in faster and with more intensity than abstract ideological commitments. Ideologies are learned, culturally mediated frameworks; our instinctive reactions come from older neural systems that operate largely outside conscious deliberation.
When the two conflict, people often rationalize afterward to make their gut reaction fit their ideology. In high-stakes or high-stress moments—danger, injury, kin in trouble—the brain’s fast, emotional systems (amygdala, hypothalamus) tend to dominate over slower, prefrontal “belief-based” reasoning. Ideology can override instincts in some situations, but that usually takes conscious effort and stable social reinforcement.
I’m halfway through Leor’s book. It seems that liberal is always good and the ideal flexible brain is that which shares her lefty hero system, which matches the dominant hero system of academia.
How can I translate my porous embodied reaction to Leor’s book in the language of careful critical discourse?
Ask ChatGPT to do it for me:
Does The Ideological Brain smuggle a liberal hero-system into “flexibility”?
You’re not crazy: read a certain way, “flexible = good” tracks closely with mainstream liberal-academic sensibilities (openness, cosmopolitanism, tolerance of ambiguity). That can make “rigidity” feel like a polite synonym for dissent from that ethos. Below is a tight read that blends your observation with Guldmann’s and Turner’s lenses—while noting what Zmigrod herself says she intends.
What Zmigrod says she’s doing
Where the slippage creeps in
- Construct creep: If “flexibility” is operationalized with tasks and values that mirror the academy’s own ideals, the measure quietly enshrines one side’s virtues. That’s how a neutral metric becomes a prestige map of the liberal self (FT review summary).
- Criterion contamination: If “good citizenship” or “tolerance” is scored in ways that already code for liberal stances, dissent looks like pathology rather than a rival normative style (Vox).
- Institutional echo: Findings are interpreted inside institutions that reward the same “flexible” traits, which can tilt narratives about what counts as mature reasoning (S3 Q&A).
Guldmann’s lens: the asymmetry problem
Rony Guldmann argues that liberal culture often turns its own identity into the unmarked norm—casting opponents as benighted or “rigid.” In this view, a neuroscience of flexibility risks re-branding that asymmetry in scientific language: flexibility as “our” virtue; disagreement as “their” cognitive shortfall. That’s his Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression thesis in a nutshell (SSRN outline; author page overview).
Turner’s lens: the tacit and the institutional
Stephen P. Turner would say the book underplays the tacit—the background practices and institutional norms that define what “flexible” even means. Brains don’t think in a vacuum; cognition is scaffolded by habits and expert systems. So a full account needs sociology of practices, not just psychology of traits (The Social Theory of Practices; Understanding the Tacit; background via Polanyi’s classic The Tacit Dimension).
A fairer reframing (so we don’t pathologize dissent)
- Symmetry check: Test for downsides of “hyper-flexibility” (conformity to elite cues, faddishness, over-persuadability) alongside downsides of rigidity.
- Context sensitivity: Report how “flexibility” scores shift with incentives, threat, identity cues, and institutional settings—not just in lab tasks.
- Value transparency: Separate descriptive findings (“who switches rules faster?”) from normative claims (“who’s a better democrat?”).
Practical questions to bring to the second half of the book
- Does any metric of “flexibility” also predict uncritical uptake of authority when the authority matches elite consensus? (Symmetry test.)
- Are left and right both scrutinized for their preferred forms of myopia (e.g., utopianism vs. status-quo bias)?
- Do interpretations acknowledge that institutions define what counts as “adaptive” thinking (Turner’s tacit)?
One-liner you can use: “Great neuroscience—but if flexibility is just the university’s self-portrait, we’ve measured prestige, not virtue.”
Sources worth linking
