“Close-minded”? Are you sure? It’s one or the other, study suggests …

“Close-minded people are very certain and dogmatic in their views, and generally believe that there is a single correct point of view.” – Dolores Albarracin, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Huh? To paraphrase a bit, didn’t Prof. Albarracin just say that “close-minded people are close-minded people”? The above quote relates to a new NIH-funded study to determine “whether exposure to information is guided by defense or accuracy motives.” In other words, the analysis is intended to determine if people want to have their opinions confirmed by others more than they want to determine if their opinions are valid. All of this comes from an American Psychological Association study entitled, Feeling Validated Versus Being Correct: A Meta-Analysis of Selective Exposure to Information. The report ultimately comes to the conclusion that people who are less confident in their beliefs are more reluctant than others to seek out opposing perspectives, for fear they will be shown up by their more-confident counterparts. This discovery is hardly a breakthrough, but does provide perspective for some of today’s most pressing and/or controversial societal issues.

Professor Albarracin also states, “The implication is that you have a group of people who would only seek to confirm their points of view, resisting all evidence to the contrary via avoidance of exposure.” Can you say “global warming”? Or “health insurance reform”? Or, five years ago, “stem cell research”? Our point is that, too often, politicians, the media, and the punditry claim issues are “settled” (for scientific and/or moral reasons). Does this study suggest that, in reality, such issues are only settled in the minds of “people with little confidence in their own beliefs”? Now, we certainly don’t mean to suggest that the heavy-hitters that have weighed in on these and other issues don’t have certainty in their beliefs, but that it is peculiar that such important matters have not always been submitted to the kind of rigorous inquiry that they should. To quote such a heavy-hitter, “… promoting science … [is] about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient, especially when it’s inconvenient.” These are the words of President Barack Obama (12/20/08). Let’s hope he, and others, show that these words do not ring hollow, as we confront the many environmential, health-care, economic, and foreign policy challenges we face down the road.

However, we started with a quote that was funded by your tax dollars, but that common sense says is obvious on the face of it. So to this researcher we say:

“Oh no you didn’t say that!”