There is a way to measure how simply or complexly a person thinks. Not what they think. Not whether they are right or wrong. How their brain processes information. Whether it can hold one idea at a time or several. Whether it sees the world in two categories or twenty. Whether it can sit with a contradiction or needs to crush one side of it before the thinking can continue.
Psychologists have been measuring this for over fifty years. And the results, applied to political extremism, are as clear as anything in the research literature.
What Suedfeld Measured
Peter Suedfeld, Dean Emeritus of Graduate Studies and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, spent over three decades developing and applying a measurement system for the structural complexity of human thought. His work spanned more than 300 published studies across political psychology, crisis decision-making, leadership under stress, and extremism.
The system he developed measures something called integrative complexity. It operates on a scale from 1 to 7, and it captures two distinct cognitive operations.
The first is differentiation. This is the ability to recognize that a problem has more than one dimension. That a situation can be viewed from more than one perspective. That two things can both be true at the same time even if they seem to contradict each other. A person scoring low on differentiation sees every issue as having one side. One cause. One answer. A person scoring high on differentiation sees multiple dimensions operating simultaneously.
The second is integration. This is the ability to draw connections between those different dimensions. To see how competing perspectives relate to each other. To build a framework that accounts for complexity rather than flattening it. Integration is the higher-order operation. You cannot integrate perspectives you never differentiated in the first place.
A score of 1 means the person sees only one dimension and draws no connections. Everything is black or white. Good or bad. Us or them. A score of 7 means the person sees multiple dimensions and draws sophisticated connections between them. They can hold contradictions, tolerate ambiguity, and construct frameworks that account for competing truths.
Suedfeld found, consistently, across decades of research and hundreds of analyses, that political extremists score the lowest on integrative complexity. This is not a finding about one party or one ideology. It applies to extremists on both ends of the political spectrum. But the application to the modern American right is devastating, because the MAGA movement has turned low integrative complexity into an identity.
What Low Complexity Looks Like
A person operating at level 1 integrative complexity processes the world the way a child processes the world before the age of eleven. One cause. One villain. One answer. No middle ground. No gray area. No possibility that the opposing side has a point.
Every issue is sorted into exactly two categories: for us or against us.
Immigrants are destroying the country. Not some immigration policies create economic tradeoffs that affect different communities in different ways. Immigrants are destroying the country.
The media is the enemy of the people. Not some media outlets have institutional biases that should be critically evaluated. The media is the enemy.
The election was stolen. Not the electoral system has weaknesses that should be addressed through institutional reform. It was stolen.
These are level 1 statements. One dimension. No differentiation. No integration. No complexity of any kind. A ten-year-old could process them. And that is the point.
Why They Are Proud of It
This is where the MAGA movement does something that Suedfeld’s research framework was not designed to anticipate. They have turned cognitive simplicity into a virtue.
They call it common sense. They call it cutting through the b******t. They call it telling it like it is. They call it being a straight shooter. They call it not being politically correct.
Every one of those phrases is a rebranding of low integrative complexity. Every one of them is the celebration of a brain that cannot or will not hold two ideas at the same time. And every one of them is treated, inside the movement, as evidence of superior thinking.
This inversion is critical to understanding why MAGA is so resistant to evidence, argument, and persuasion. They have not simply failed to develop complex thinking. They have constructed an identity around its absence. Complexity is the enemy. Nuance is weakness. Uncertainty is cowardice. The person who sees both sides is the person who doesn’t have the guts to pick one.
Inside that framework, the smartest person in the room is always the one with the simplest answer. And the simplest answer is always Trump’s answer. Because Trump speaks exclusively at level 1. Every sentence. Every rally. Every post. One enemy. One solution. One leader.
What the Research Shows About Extremism
Suedfeld’s research on integrative complexity and political extremism has been replicated and extended across multiple countries and multiple decades.
In 2003, psychologists Alain Van Hiel and Ivan Mervielde published research in Political Psychology measuring the relationship between cognitive complexity and political extremism directly. They found exactly what Suedfeld’s framework predicted. People at both extremes of the political spectrum scored lower on cognitive complexity than moderates. But the research consistently shows that the modern American right has concentrated low-complexity thinking to a degree that is historically unusual.
A 2021 study published in PLOS ONE examined what happens to integrative complexity when people engage with extremist online communities over time. The researchers found that sustained engagement with ideologically extreme forums predicted lower integrative complexity scores. The communities were not just attracting simple thinkers. They were making people think more simply. The longer someone participated, the lower their complexity scores dropped.
This is the feedback loop that makes MAGA so durable. The movement attracts people who already think in simple terms. The media ecosystem reinforces that simplicity every day. The social community punishes anyone who introduces complexity. And over time, the capacity for complex thought that the person may have once possessed atrophies from disuse.
They did not evaluate nuance and reject it. Their brains stopped being able to process it. And the community they live inside made sure it stayed that way.
Why Simple Answers Are Always Wrong
There is a reason that every serious expert on every serious subject uses qualified language. “The data suggests.” “Based on current evidence.” “There are competing interpretations.” “It’s complicated.”
That language is not uncertainty. It is the verbal signature of high integrative complexity. It is the sound of a brain that can see multiple dimensions and is trying to account for all of them.
MAGA supporters hear that language and interpret it as weakness. If the expert isn’t sure, then the expert doesn’t know. And if the expert doesn’t know, then the guy who speaks with total certainty must be right.
This is the Dunning-Kruger Effect operating at the level of cognitive structure. The person who cannot process complexity cannot recognize complexity when someone else is displaying it. They literally cannot see what the expert is doing. The nuance is invisible to them. The qualifications sound like hedging. The careful reasoning sounds like confusion.
Meanwhile, Trump’s level 1 statements sound clear, strong, and true. Because they are operating at exactly the cognitive level his audience can process. Not above it. Not below it. Exactly at it.
He is not simplifying for effect. He is communicating at the only level his audience can receive. And they love him for it because he is the first political figure who makes the world as simple as their brain needs it to be.
The Cost of Simple Thinking
Suedfeld’s research showed that integrative complexity is not just an academic measurement. It has real-world consequences for decision-making, conflict resolution, and the capacity to navigate a complex world.
Leaders with high integrative complexity are more effective at resolving international crises without violence. They are better at anticipating the second and third-order effects of their decisions. They are better at maintaining stability during periods of rapid change. Leaders with low integrative complexity are more likely to escalate conflicts, more likely to pursue single-variable solutions to multi-variable problems, and more likely to make catastrophic errors of judgment.
A movement that celebrates cognitive simplicity is a movement that will consistently choose the worst available option on every issue. Because the worst available option is always the simplest one. The one that ignores tradeoffs. The one that pretends consequences don’t exist. The one that sounds great in a rally chant and falls apart the moment it contacts reality.
Build a wall. Lock her up. Drain the swamp. Mass deportation now.
Every one of those is a level 1 statement. One action. One outcome. No complexity. No second-order effects. No consideration of what happens next.
The wall doesn’t stop immigration. Locking her up doesn’t fix corruption. Draining the swamp fills it with worse people. Mass deportation destroys communities and economies that depend on the labor being deported.
Every simple answer creates ten complex problems. But you can only see those problems if your brain can process complexity. And these brains can’t.
MAGA supporters didn’t reject nuance because they evaluated it and found it lacking. They rejected it because their brains cannot process it. And the movement they belong to made sure they never have to try.
A person who cannot hold two ideas at the same time will always pick the simpler one. And the simpler one is always wrong.
Sources
Suedfeld, P., & Tetlock, P. (1977). Integrative Complexity of Communications in International Crises. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 21(1), 169-184.
Suedfeld, P. (2010). The Cognitive Processing of Politics and Politicians: Archival Studies of Conceptual and Integrative Complexity. Journal of Personality, 78(6), 1669-1702.
Suedfeld, P., & Bluck, S. (1993). Changes in Integrative Complexity Accompanying Significant Life Events: Historical Evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(1), 124-130.
Van Hiel, A., & Mervielde, I. (2003). The Measurement of Cognitive Complexity and Its Relationship with Political Extremism. Political Psychology, 24(4), 781-801.
Houck, S. C., Repke, M. A., & Conway, L. G. (2017). Understanding What Makes Terrorist Groups’ Propaganda Effective: An Integrative Complexity Analysis of ISIL and Al Qaeda. Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 12(2), 105-118.
Zmigrod, L., Rentfrow, P. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2020). The Partisan Mind: Is Extreme Political Partisanship Related to Cognitive Inflexibility? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(3), 407-418.
Baker-Brown, G., Ballard, E. J., Bluck, S., De Vries, B., Suedfeld, P., & Tetlock, P. E. (1992). The Conceptual/Integrative Complexity Scoring Manual. In C. P. Smith (Ed.), Motivation and Personality: Handbook of Thematic Content Analysis. Cambridge University Press.
