Public opinion on immigration is often assumed to be mercurial. Indeed, in Europe, by some metrics—such as whether there is too much immigration, or whether it is one of the most important issues— attitudes in Europe have swung back and forth over the last decade. Yet beneath these shifting numbers lies a puzzling question: why do some citizens change their minds while others hold fast to their beliefs?

My new open-access study published in Political Psychology, “The Psychology of Political Attitudinal Volatility”, digs into this question using ten years of British Election Study panel data. It shows that the likelihood of changing one’s mind about immigration—or any major political issue—isn’t random or purely reactive to events. It is shaped, in part, by deep-seated psychological predispositions that differ from person to person.

Stable minds, shifting views

Political scientists have long—with good reason—shown that many adult political attitudes, including to immigration, are largely stable when measured by national averages: early socialisation and personality shape our outlooks, and those orientations then stay put. Yet recent politics tells a more nuanced story, with myriad examples of attitudinal change, such as attitudes to homosexuality. The study challenges the idea that such shifts are simply noise or fleeting reactions to headlines. Instead, it finds that attitudinal volatility—the extent to which an individual’s views fluctuate over time—is a patterned, measurable feature of political behaviour.

Measuring volatility in practice

Volatility here is measured statistically as the standard deviation of a person’s responses to the same question across multiple survey waves. This measure was captured using the responses of 71500 respective individuals for the issue of immigration across a maximum of the 16 waves in which the British Election Study has asked the same question on immigration policy preference. Across six issues—immigration, redistribution, European integration, environmentalism, capital punishment, and Scottish independence—the average Briton shows moderate variation. But the more revealing finding is that certain psychological traits predict who changes their mind and who doesn’t.

The traits: Distrust, open-mindedness, and uncertainty tolerance

Three characteristics stand out in their respective tests. Social distrust, active open-mindedness, and tolerance for uncertainty are all strongly linked to greater volatility on immigration and other issues:

• Social distrust—a tendency to assume others cannot be relied upon—correlates with greater movement in immigration attitudes over time. Distrusting individuals are less anchored by collective norms or partisan cues and therefore more prone to shifts in their political outlook.
• Active open-mindedness, the willingness to consider opposing arguments and revise beliefs when faced with new evidence, also predicts higher volatility. Open-minded people are not just more informed; they are more willing to rethink their positions in light of new information or arguments.
• Tolerance for uncertainty plays a similar role. Those comfortable with ambiguity and complexity are less wedded to the status quo and more willing to entertain changing perspectives on divisive topics like immigration.

Together, these findings suggest that the same traits that underpin cognitive flexibility in general also make political attitudes—especially on morally and socially charged issues—more fluid.

The limits of psychology as a basis for changing one’s mind

Interestingly, not all psychological traits foster change. Others—such as need for cognition (enjoyment of complex thinking), empathy, and risk tolerance—only predict volatility in specific domains or not at all. The results imply that changing one’s mind about immigration depends less on how much one thinks, feels, or gambles, and more on how one manages ambiguity and disagreement.

In follow-up panel analyses, the study also examined whether these traits make individuals more responsive to perceived societal changes—such as believing that immigration levels are rising. On average, people who think immigration is increasing tend to become more opposed to it. But most psychological traits did not make individuals more or less sensitive to these perceptions. The exceptions were need for cognition, which intensified negative reactions to perceived increases in immigration, and empathy, which sometimes softened them. The broader lesson: personality shapes not just what people believe, but how rigidly or flexibly they hold those beliefs.

Implications for migration politics

For policymakers and communicators, these findings offer both caution and opportunity. They suggest that the electorate is not uniformly persuadable. Some citizens—those more open-minded or tolerant of uncertainty—will weigh new evidence about migration’s effects; others will resist or reinterpret it through stable cognitive filters.

This helps explain why immigration debates so often polarise rather than converge. When policy arguments appeal to different cognitive dispositions—some emphasising complexity, others moral certainty—they activate distinct psychological audiences. At the same time, recognising that volatility has psychological roots reframes shifts in public opinion. Rather than viewing fluctuations in immigration attitudes as mere mood swings, we can see them as the result of enduring individual differences in how citizens engage with political information.

The deeper question

The study’s most provocative message is that “changing one’s mind” is itself a stable trait. Some people are, quite literally, dispositionally more likely to do so. In an era of rapid social and economic transformation, that matters. If the capacity for attitudinal flexibility is unevenly distributed, democracies face a structural challenge. Political consensus may depend not only on facts and persuasion but on the psychological composition of the electorate. The more that societies reward dogmatism and punish cognitive openness, the harder it becomes to build common ground on contested issues like immigration. As Europe continues to grapple with migration’s realities, understanding why minds change—or refuse to—remains an important frontier for democracy, governance, and how Europe manages fundamental demographic changes.

“The Psychology of Political Attitudinal Volatility” is available now, open-access in the leading scientific journal Political Psychology.