Menschen, die sich als politisch konservativ bezeichnen, neigen eher als ihre liberalen Kollegen dazu, „Slippery-Slope“-Argumente für logisch fundiert zu halten. Diese Tendenz scheint darauf zurückzuführen zu sein, dass man sich eher auf intuitive Denkstile als auf bewusste Verarbeitung verlässt.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672251391893

From the linked article:

Conservatives are more prone to slippery slope thinking

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 tendency appears to stem from a greater reliance on intuitive thinking styles rather than deliberate processing**. The findings were published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Slippery slope arguments are a staple of rhetoric in law, ethics, and politics. These arguments suggest that a minor, seemingly harmless initial action will trigger a chain reaction leading to a catastrophic final outcome.

This analysis showed that comments posted in conservative communities were more likely to exhibit slippery slope structures than those in liberal communities. Additionally, comments that utilized this style of argumentation tended to receive more approval, in the form of “upvotes,” from other users.

The researchers then sought to understand the psychological mechanism driving this effect. They hypothesized that the difference was rooted in how individuals process information. Conservative ideology has been linked in past research to “intuitive” thinking, which involves relying on gut feelings and immediate responses. Liberal ideology has been associated with “deliberative” thinking, which involves slower, more analytical processing.

The data from this experiment provided evidence for the intuition hypothesis. When conservative participants were prompted to think deliberately and forced to slow down, their endorsement of slippery slope arguments decreased significantly. In fact, the gap between conservative and liberal ratings narrowed substantially in the deliberation condition. This suggests that the ideological difference is not necessarily a fixed trait but is influenced by the mode of thinking a person employs at the moment.

Common sense = intuitive thinking. Basically, if it feels right then it must be true. A lot of people make this mistake. It’s way more obvious in conservative circles. Which is why they tend to parrot misinformation that feels right to them, even if proven to be false.

Good moment to remind people that slippery slope arguments are not inherently fallacious. I don’t know if the article is meant to imply that they’re specifically talking about fallacious arguments or not

Science stops being science when it dawns a political hat. History has taught us this time and time again.