Age Differences in Open-Mindedness: From 18 to 87-Years of Age

ABSTRACT

Background

As health care improves and more people work into later age, it is important to understand what impacts open-mindedness has on decision-making. This paper examined the role of aging on open-mindedness.

Methods

Open-mindedness was measured across 12 studies before data amalgamation. The Actively Open-minded Thinking (AOT) scale and Actively Open-minded Thinking about Evidence (AOT-e) scale measured open-mindedness in this sample (n = 9010) of participants between 18 and 87-years of age.

Results

Summary AOT positively correlated with AOT-e (r = 0.27). For two subfactors derived from factor analysis based on the AOT, scores for both subfactors positively correlated with AOT-e (subfactor-1: r = 0.17/subfactor-2: r = 0.31) but negatively correlated with age (subfactor-1: r = −0.01/subfactor-2: r = −0.16). Age negatively correlated with both AOT (r = −0.11) and AOT-e (r = −0.13). Regressions revealed that open-mindedness decreased with aging. Age marginally predicted the change in open-mindedness, and sex differences were not a predictor.

Conclusion

It is proposed that the observed differences are the result of a reluctance to change long-established values and ideas at the cognitive level and cortical changes that occur with aging. In an aging population where more adults work into later age, the decrease in open-mindedness could influence many areas of judgments of decision-making. Importantly, this demonstrates that open-mindedness varies across lifespan.

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges that no funding was provided for this research and that there are no conflicts of interest. The data for this study can be found freely accessible on the Open Science Framework from the time of publishing. To find this data, search the title of this paper on the Open Science Framework. This paper was not preregistered.

Declaration of interest statement

The author reports no conflict of interest.