Emotionality versus Thinking

Core post: Cognitive Distortions.

Emotionality versus Thinking

Most individuals fit the Myers-Briggs ESFJ profile (extroversion, sensing, feeling, judging). The opposite personality profile INTP (introversion, intuiting, thinking, perceiving) is positively correlated with IQ.

In addition, MRI studies have demonstrated that, compared to liberals, the brains of CONservatives have larger amygdalas (fear, anger, submission) and lower activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).

Narcissism versus Humanism

Core post: Cognitive Distortions.

Narcissism versus Humanism

Children are natural narcissists, but most of us outgrow egotism as we mature. Those raised by authoritarian parents appear to be less likely to shed us-versus-them mentality.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder lies at the extreme of a spectrum of attitudes that ranges from a realistic view of self within society to megalomaniacal self-aggrandizement. Those who are high on the self-focus spectrum overvalue their own concerns at the expense of others.

Narcissistic Personality (link)

1. Characteristics
1. Grandiosity, unrealistic self-expectation
2. Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty
3. Believes that he or she is special, unique and can only be understood by high status people or institutions
4. Sense of entitlement
5. Need constant admiration
6. Impulsive and anxious
7. Takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
8. Doubts own adequacy
9. Arrogant and displays haughty behavior
10. Envious of others
11. Lacks empathy

Authoritarianism versus Tolerance

Core post: Cognitive Distortions.

Authoritarianism (RWA, SDO) versus Tolerance.

Fundamentalists hide behind "love the sinner, but hate the sin". However, they are actually sugar coating their hatred of any individual who doesn't bow to the narrow edicts that they publicly advocate (but not necessarily follow).

Ironically, this is the attitude that the Jesus Myth inventors preached against.

“Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian

leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too

much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do

whatever they want—which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal. In my day, authoritarian fascist and authoritarian communist dictatorships posed the biggest threats to democracies, and eventually lost to them in wars both hot and cold. But authoritarianism itself has not disappeared …. the greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation.” [italics mine]

Bob Altemeyer, The Authorarians (pdf)

Defective Moral Compass

Core post: Cognitive Distortions.

d) Defective Moral Compass

We've all seen examples of this. The internet has many Christian-fundamentalist-moralists who fail to see the hypocrisy inherent in applauding the murder of abortion doctors, or in defending the nasty "God" of the Hebrew Bible who (supposedly) drowned most life on earth in a fit of pique. Lamentably, these types are willing not only to excuse, but to defend genocide when "God" commands it. 

Deuteronomy 2:34, 3:6, 7:2, 7:16, 13:15, 20:16-17

Joshua 6:21, 10:40

1 Samuel 15:2-3

Jonathan Haidt's research demonstrates that, rather than fine-tuning their moral thinking according to the Golden Rule, conservatives a) dutifully adopt 'in-group' dictates, and b) base moral pronouncements on visceral responses.

Deception versus Truth

Core post: Cognitive Distortions.

e) Deception versus Truth

Ironically, those who rely on fallacies of logic and deny reality (truth) in the mistaken (false dichotomy) belief that the only choices are "God" or science simultaneously make claims to being in possession of "revealed Truth" (essentially, Gnosticism).  They fail to apprehend that one cannot create a "Truth" by denying truth.