The need for cognitive simplicity biased early researchers toward equating communism with fascism

Evidence

It would be most satisfying to find that communism and fascism are somehow alike and that we have, all along, been consistently opposed to this quality they have in common. Perhaps it is this strain toward cognitive simplicity that caused Eysenck to see in Coulter’s data the greater authoritarianism of both Fascists and Communists rather than the closeness of Communists to neutrals. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 671

Categorization

• XREF: Direct parallel to motivated reasoning and confirmation bias literature in political psychology, and to the ‘horseshoe theory’ of ideology. — connects to: The Frankfurt School subordinated empirical research to theoretical speculation — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 661
• SEED: An essay angle: how the psychological drive for cognitive simplicity itself generated a partially false scientific finding — the mind’s preference for clustered villains shaping quantitative research design.