How ‘Critically Open-Minded’ Are We? An Australian Perspective Through the World Values Survey

S. A.Hamed Hosseini*, Lawrence J. Saha

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    4 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This article introduces ‘critical open-mindedness’ as a new sociological construct, which can be employed particularly in the studies of social attitudes and attitude change, social values, social identities, cross-cultural relations and social discrimination. By drawing on the data collected through the 2005 World Values Survey in Australia, we have operationalized the construct into an integrative social index, called ‘critical open-mindedness index’ consisting of five dimensional composite indicators (CIs; i.e. the social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental). We have adopted an integrative approach to constructing these composite indicators in which we pragmatically select and incorporate a variety of techniques with the purpose of maximizing the validity of the end results. The findings with respect to Australians’ critical open-mindedness, both in general and in reference to its five dimensions are discussed. We have also developed and examined a social psychological index of ‘socio-cognitive open-mindedness’ inspired by a number of commonly used international scales and by drawing on the same dataset. We have shown that these two types of open-mindedness are qualitatively different. Our analysis does not support the idea that individuals’ social psychological open-mindedness determines their critical open-mindedness. It is rather the opposite which is the case.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1211-1236
    Number of pages26
    JournalSocial Indicators Research
    Volume136
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2018

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