Cognitive Patterns of Political Extremism Across U.S. Presidential Transitions: A Mind Genomics Study

The study uses the emerging science of Mind Genomics to study the prevalence of extremist thought in random samples of online research panel participants, first with 212 respondents in August 2021, and then with another group of 200 respondents in August 2025. The two studies presented each respondent with a unique set of 24 vignettes, comprising 2–4 statements that could be construed as extremist (e.g., Vaccines are a way for the government to control people). Respondents rated the likelihood that either they, their family, or both agreed with the statements in the vignette or disagreed with the statements in the vignette. The respondents were deconstructed by regression modeling and clustering to show the prevalence of agreement with the statements across different types of people (age, gender, political leaning, year) and across mind-sets. The data suggest that respondents easily differentiated the statements and that the distribution of responses to extremist statements did not dramatically change when President Trump succeeded President Biden. The approach is presented as a new way to investigate sensitive topics by creating sets of test stimuli, answers to which cannot be “gamed”. Given all the news and near-news circulating in the fragmented media, this research offers a clear, if complex, view of attitudes and any changes which may have occurred between the Biden and second Trump administrations.