Some of these people show signs of being rather high-level rationalists overall, although some don't.

I wouldn't necessarily expect there to be a super-strong connection between not rationalizing and being a "high-level rationalist". There are other ways to go systematically wrong than through goal-directed rationalization. As a possibly overlapping point, your concept of "high-level rationalist" probably sneaks in things like intelligence and knowledge that aren't strictly rationality.