There was once a princess called Sophia,
whose philosophy museum was superior.
But most of the stores
became locked behind doors,
which led to collective amnesia.
Then along came a band of ...ajar‐minders,
who decided to issue reminders
of the treasures inside
that hadn't yet died,
and opened the doors to all finders.
In this article we synthesize theory and research from several areas of psychology and political science to propose and test a causal model of the effects of threat on political attitudes. Based in ...part on prior research showing that fear, threat, and anxiety decrease cognitive capacity and motivation, we hypothesize that under high (vs. low) threat, people will seek to curtail open-ended information searches and exhibit motivated closedmindedness (one aspect of the need for cognitive closure). The subjective desire for certainty, control, and closure, in turn, is expected to increase the individual's affinity for political conservatism, insofar as resistance to change and adherence to authority figures and conventional forms of morality are assumed to satisfy these epistemic motives more successfully than their ideological opposites. Consistent with this account, we find in Studies la and lb that putting people into a highly threatened mindset leads them to exhibit an increase in motivated closed-mindedness and to perceive the world as more dangerous. Furthermore, in Study 2 we demonstrate that a subtle threat manipulation increases selfreported conservatism (or decreases self-reported liberalism), and this effect is mediated by closed-mindedness. In Study 3, we manipulated closed-mindedness directly and found that high (vs. low) cognitive load results in a greater affinity for the Republican (vs. Democratic) party. Finally, in Study 4 we conducted an experiment involving political elites in Iceland and found that three different types of threat (to the self, group, and system) all led center-right politicians to score higher on closed-mindedness and issue-based political conservatism. Implications for society and for the theory of ideology as motivated social cognition are discussed.
•The need for closure (NFC) has a key role in cognitive flexibility.•The scores in preference for predictability and closed-mindedness were higher in ASD.•The ASD group reported lower scores in ...decisiveness.•These NFC facets were associated with cognitive flexibility in ASD and TD groups.
The need for closure (NFC), a desire for a firm answer and less ambiguity, has a key role in cognitive flexibility in typical development (TD) populations. This study investigated this motivational construct and its relation to cognitive inflexibility in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Compared with individuals with TD, those with ASD reported higher levels in preference for predictability and closed-mindedness and lower levels in decisiveness. These NFC facets were significantly associated with cognitive flexibility in ASD as well as TD groups. The study findings provide further insights into the motivational underpinnings of flexible behavior in ASD.
ABSTRACT
Educational‐theoretical discussions of open‐mindedness and closed‐mindedness focus on the moral benefits and hazards of these dispositions in pedagogical encounters with the new and hitherto ...alien. Such discussions often employ spatial metaphors of openness and rely on politically safe examples to illustrate ambiguous enactments of open‐mindedness and closed‐mindedness as epistemic or moral virtues and vices. This article explores how a shift in our metaphors and a change in attention from the new to the “inflammatory (un)controversial” may complicate current outlooks on open‐mindedness and politicize it differently. To illustrate this critique of virtue‐theoretic approaches to open‐mindedness, the article uses fictive classroom exchanges on Holocaust and genocide denialism as (un)controversial material that ignites minds.
According to the Earned Dogmatism Hypothesis, social norms entitle experts to be more dogmatic (closed-minded) than non-experts. Consequently, individuals who occupy the expert role are more ...closed-minded than non-experts. Ottati, Price, Wilson, and Sumaktoyo (2015) originally documented this effect in two sets of experiments, the “switching roles” and “success versus failure” experiments. Calin-Jageman (2018) obtained the earned dogmatism effect when replicating the “switching roles” experiments, but not when replicating the “success versus failure” experiments. Two hypotheses can account for this divergent replication pattern. The “restrictive condition” hypothesis postulates the earned dogmatism effect is limited to highly restrictive and unrealistic conditions (i.e., switching roles experiments that entail projective judgments in hypothetical situations), and fails to replicate under less restrictive conditions (e.g., conditions that evoke success versus failure, real world situations). The “optimal manipulation” hypothesis postulates the earned dogmatism effect is easily replicated in experiments that employ optimal manipulations of relative expertise, but less easily replicated in experiments that employ sub-optimal manipulations. According to this view, optimal expertise manipulations elicit the earned dogmatism effect, even under non-restrictive conditions. The “optimal manipulation” hypothesis is supported in three new experiments. In these experiments, the earned dogmatism effect is obtained using an optimal manipulation that is explicitly relative, an optimal manipulation that prompts participants to remember real-world situations, and an optimal manipulation of success versus failure. When predicting the earned dogmatism effect size across studies (Ottati, Price, Wilson, & Sumaktoyo, 2015; Calin-Jageman, 2018; three new experiments), the “optimal manipulation” hypothesis is also favored.
•Experts have “earned” the privilege of being more dogmatic than non-experts.•Occupation of the expert role increases dogmatic cognition.•A variety of optimal manipulations produce earned dogmatism effect.
Evidence suggests that politically right-leaning individuals are more likely to be closed-minded. Whether this association is inherent or subject to change has been the subject of debate, yet has not ...been formally tested. Through a meta-analysis, we find evidence of a changing association between conservatism and facets of closed-mindedness in the U.S. and international context using 341 unique samples, over 200,000 participants, and 920 estimates over 71 years. In the U.S., data ranging from 1948 to 2019 revealed a linear decline in the association between social conservatism (SC) and closed-mindedness, though economic conservatism (EC) did not vary in its association with closed-mindedness over time. Internationally across 18 countries, excluding the U.S., we observed a curvilinear decline in the association between SC and closed-mindedness over that same time, but no change in ECs association. We also tested variation over time for attitudinal measures of conservatism ranging between 1987 to 2018. In the U.S., we observed a linear increase in the association between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and closed-mindedness, with a similar linear increase in the association between social dominance orientation (SDO) and closed-mindedness. Internationally, there was a curvilinear increase in the association between RWA and closed-mindedness, but no change in the association with SDO. We discuss the changes to the political landscape that might explain our findings.
Background
Compared to liberals, conservatives tend to score higher on individual difference measures of closed-mindedness. That is, conservatives tend to describe themselves as less tolerant of uncertainty, more likely to rely on intuition rather than effortful thinking, and as avoiding rather than embracing change. Previously, scholars have argued that traditionalism and mainstream ideas have an inherent appeal to people who are more closed-minded. Conservatives often adopt a traditional stance on a host of issues, whereas liberals are more likely to embrace a non-traditional stance. That is, self-described differences between conservatives and liberals in closed-mindedness seem to demonstrate a preference for certain types of political beliefs.
Why was this study done?
We asked whether conservatives and liberals always differ in their self-reported closed-mindedness, or whether the size of this difference may have changed over time. We tested the hypothesis that the differences have increased against the hypothesis that the differences have shrunken in size. The hypothesis that difference would have increased is based on the observation that, across the world, the public has become more polarized, implying that liberals and conservatives have become more distinct on a host of political values and beliefs. If individual differences in closed-mindedness reflect a preference for matching values and beliefs, then we would expect conservatives and liberals to be more different today than they once were. The hypothesis that the difference between conservatives and liberals would have decreased is based on the notion that once liberal ideas have become much more mainstream; thus, embracing such beliefs may no longer reflect low closed-mindedness. At the same time, conservatism may no longer appeal mainly to people motivated to avoid uncertainty, effortful thinking, and change. Today’s conservatives are more likely to present themselves as proponents of change than was once the case. Given these competing hypotheses, we wanted to test how differences in conservatives’ and liberals’ self-descriptions have evolved over time.
What did the researchers do and find?
We conducted a meta-analysis over a 71-year period (1948-2019). We obtained all data sets we could find (published or unpublished) that assessed the correlation between political conservatism-liberalism and various self-report measures of closed-mindedness. We found hundreds of such data sets, which we analyzed in various ways, with the bulk of the data coming from the U.S. In, and outside of, the U.S. we confirmed that conservatives score higher on self-reported closed-mindedness compared to liberals. However, in the U.S. we found that the originally modest-sized difference has been steadily declining since 1948, and by 2019 was very small. Across 18 non-U.S. countries, we found a different trajectory of change over time, but the differences between conservatives and liberals were the smallest by 2019. These conclusions primarily held for 1) social conservatism, but not economic conservatism, and 2) self-description of political identity, but not attitudinal measures of conservatism-liberalism.
What do these findings mean?
Especially in the U.S. liberals and conservatives have become more similar in their self-described closed-mindedness over time. Based on our data, we cannot say if liberals have become more or conservatives less closed-minded (or both). We also do not believe that the preference for mainstream ideas on the part of closed-minded individuals has changed. Rather, we suggest that the change in the shrinking differences between liberals and conservatives reflect a changing political environment and political messages as to which kinds of beliefs are seen as more mainstream.
Based on theorization on the four basic dimensions of religiousness, Believing, Bonding, Behaving, and Belonging, and corresponding cognitive, emotional, moral, and social motives and functions of ...religion, we developed a measure and investigated cross-cultural consistency of the four dimensions as well interindividual and cross-cultural variability. Data were collected from 14 countries varying in religious heritage: Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism/Taoism (N = 3,218). Beyond their high interrelation and common personality correlates, that is, agreeableness and conscientiousness, the four dimensions were distinct across cultures and religions, less interrelated in Eastern Asia compared to the West, differentially preferred across cultural zones, and characterized by distinct features. Believing and bonding, to which spirituality was primarily related, were preferred in Western secular societies. Behaving and belonging, valued in religious societies, were importantly related to fundamentalism, authoritarianism, and low openness. Bonding and behaving were primordial in, respectively, Israel and Turkey. Furthermore, belonging (marked by extraversion) and bonding were uniquely associated with increased life satisfaction, whereas believing was uniquely related to existential quest and decreased life satisfaction. Thus, the multidimensionality of religiousness seems deeply rooted in distinct psychological dispositions evident at both the individual and the cultural levels.
The Moral Limits of Open‐Mindedness Ferkany, Matt A.
Educational theory,
August 2019, 2019-08-00, 20190801, Letnik:
69, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Epistemologists have long worried that the willingness of open‐minded people to reconsider their beliefs in light of new evidence is both a condition of improving their beliefs and a risk factor for ...losing their grip on what they already know. In this article, Matt Ferkany introduces and attempts to resolve a moral variation of this puzzle: a willingness to engage people whose moral ideas are strange or repugnant (to us) looks like both a condition of broadening our moral horizons, and a risk factor for doing the wrong thing or becoming bad. Ferkany pursues a contractualist line of argument according to which such hazardous engagement is a virtue only when it matters to our interlocutors whether they can justify themselves to us on terms we can accept — for our sake or for the sake of their own virtue, not instrumentally or to get something out of us. When it does not so matter, openness can be unintelligent or gullible — in other words, not virtuous.
This article considers the implications of the mainstreaming of ‘right-wing extremism’ for what, and whom, we understand as ‘extreme’. It draws on ethnographic research (2017-2020) with young people ...active in movements routinely referred to in public and academic discourse as ‘extreme right’ or ‘far right’. Based on interviews, informal communication and observation, the article explores how actors in the milieu understand ‘extremism’ and how far this corresponds to academic and public conceptualisations of ‘right-wing extremism’, in particular cognitive ‘closed-mindedness’. Emic perspectives are not accorded privileged authenticity. Rather, it is argued, critical engagement with them reveals the important role of ethnographic research in gaining insight into, and challenging what we know about, the ‘mind-set’ of right-wing extremists. Understanding if such a mind-set exists, and if it does, in what it consists, matters, if academic research is to inform policy and practice to counter socially harmful practices among those it targets effectively.
The need for closure and the ability to achieve closure are generally thought to be independent from one another. However, previous researchers have found inconsistent relations between these two ...variables, possibly due to measurement scale modifications that slightly shifted how the underlying constructs were assessed. The present research attempted to address some of these methodological issues with previous research by conducting a single-paper meta-analysis on the correlations between the ability to achieve closure scale and the full need for closure scale and each of its five subscales. Across six university student samples (N = 1983), the full need for closure scale and most of its subscales were significantly negatively correlated with the ability to achieve closure. This finding suggests that the ability to achieve closure affects the costs and benefits of closure and therefore, consistent with lay epistemic theory, the ability to achieve closure predicts individual differences in the need for closure.
•Need and ability to achieve closure were historically considered independent.•A meta-analysis of six studies suggested a negative relation between need and ability.•Low ability to achieve closure may cause a high need for closure.•Measurement of need for closure may be confounded with ability to achieve closure.
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