Open-minded cognition: The attitude justification effect

Abstract

Although open-mindedness is generally valued, people are not equally open-minded in all situations. Open-mindedness is viewed as socially desirable when individuals encounter viewpoints that are compatible with conventional social norms. However, open-mindedness is viewed in less desirable terms when individuals encounter viewpoints that undermine these norms. The perceived desirability of open-mindedness is also influenced by the individual’s personal attitudinal convictions. Individuals ‘inflate’ the normative appropriateness of open-mindedness when it serves to reinforce their convictions, but devalue the normative appropriateness of open-mindedness when it serves to contradict these convictions. Conversely, normative prohibition of closed-mindedness is exaggerated when a closed-minded orientation threatens the individual’s personal attitudinal convictions, but is minimized (or reversed) when a closed-minded orientation reinforces these convictions. Paradoxically, the perceived appropriateness of open-mindedness is engendered (at least in part) by the motivation to confirm one’s prior attitudinal convictions. Evidence of this attitude justification effect is obtained in two experiments.

Keywords:

• Social cognition
• political cognition
• open-mindedness
• open-minded cognition
• cognitive style
• attitudes
• intellectual humility

Acknowledgment

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Fuller Thrive Center or the John Templeton Foundation.

Funding

This work was supported by the Fuller Theological Seminary/Thrive Center in concert with the John Templeton Foundation [grant number IH-111, 513560].

Notes

1. This procedure is advantageous because it enabled us to code the politician as ‘congruent’ vs. ‘incongruent’ with the participant’s own political orientation, in terms of both ideology and party. Not surprisingly, participant partisanship and participant ideology were strongly correlated. Thus, it is not surprising that the same pattern of findings emerged when solely screening out ideological moderates, and when operationalizing ‘congruence’ solely in terms of the participant’s ideology – an approach that parallels the focus on participant ideology (not partisanship) in Experiment 1.

2. Due to an error in survey programming, the item ‘agreeable’ was not included in this study, though it was included in Experiment 1.

3. See, foot note 1