Closed-Mindedness

An unwillingness to consider the value of the ideas, philosophies, or worldviews of others or to accept various people, cultures, or institutions. Closed-mindedness is the opposite of [Page 79]open-mindedness and is exhibited by people at all educational and economic levels.

Arie Kruglanski calls closed-mindedness, together with open-mindedness, a phenomenon of human behavior, arguing that people adhere to preconceived viewpoints as a means of closure toward information that could delay them from making judgments or decisions. He states that people have the potential to open their minds and reconsider opinions.

Sanford I. Berman states that unconscious assumptions affect how people think, speak, and behave, as well as how they view themselves, and that a human tendency toward misevaluation leads people to draw conclusions from inference rather than fact. Noting that the world is complex while a human's knowledge is limited, he argues that people can open their minds by learning to think beyond the more immediate acts of assumption and misevaluation. For more information, see Berman (2001–2002) and Kruglanski (2004).