Thinking like a patriot : criticizing the country and the nation is linked to the differences in thinking style and cognitive ability

Some forms of national identification facilitate criticism of one's own country and nation, whereas others prevent it. The critical form of national identification - constructive patriotism - is characterized by the willingness to criticise the group in order to improve it. The uncritical form of national identification - glorification - is characterized by seeing the group as superior to others and by intolerance of criticism of the group. We used dual-process theories to examine whether differences in thinking style and cognitive ability help predict the emergence of the critical and uncritical form of national identification. We ran three correlational studies (total N = 2509) in Poland including two samples representative of Polish society. We ran an internal meta-analysis to summarise the obtained results from all studies. We found that constructive patriotism was positively linked with need for cognition (i.e., the willingness to engage in slow, effortful information processing; for the random effect model r = 0.18). Constructive patriotism was also positively linked with cognitive ability (r = 0.07). In contrast, glorification was negatively associated with need for cognition (r = -0.26) and cognitive ability (r = -0.09). Glorification was also positively linked with faith in intuition (r = 0.14)

Is patriotism helpful to fight the crisis? : the role of constructive patriotism, conventional patriotism, and glorification amid the COVID-19 pandemic

We examined the link between constructive patriotism, glorification, and conventional patriotism and COVID-19-related attitudes and behaviors at different stages of the pandemic in Poland. In Study 1 (N = 663), constructive patriotism was positively associated with support for internal measures (e.g., raising awareness about health practices). Glorification was negatively linked to support for such measures and positively connected to support for external measures (e.g., closing the borders). In Study 2 (N = 522), constructive patriots showed greater compliance with hygiene and social distance practices. In Study 3 (N = 633), the attribution of responsibility for fighting the crisis to the state and particularly to individuals underlined the link between constructive patriotism and compliance with health practices. Additionally, constructive patriotism was linked to support for international collaboration. Study 4 (N = 1051), conducted on a representative sample, further corroborated these findings. The results regarding conventional patriotism were not consistent across studies