I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the choice to select participants from Italy and the United States might be influenced considerably more by the author holding research positions at Italian and US universities than the nature of hypothesis they were testing...
The authors should at least note caveats such as that. It doesn't seem like they did in the "Limitations and future directions" section. The article seems to just take the conclusion as given.
The initial description of conservatism in the study:
According to the ‘rigidity of the right’ perspective, politically conservative beliefs are paired with cognitive and even perceptual rigidity (e.g., Jost et al., 2003; Tetlock et al., 1985).
In the US, perhaps things were more straightforward at the time of those references, but it seems disingenuous to not consider the recent political climate.
Comments
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the choice to select participants from Italy and the United States might be influenced considerably more by the author holding research positions at Italian and US universities than the nature of hypothesis they were testing...
The authors should at least note caveats such as that. It doesn't seem like they did in the "Limitations and future directions" section. The article seems to just take the conclusion as given.
The initial description of conservatism in the study:
In the US, perhaps things were more straightforward at the time of those references, but it seems disingenuous to not consider the recent political climate.