Actively open‐minded thinking in American adolescents

Abstract

In a mixed-methods study following 1551 adolescents from eight diverse schools across the US, a large majority demonstrated (a) strong norms of actively open-minded thinking (AOT) and (b) a widespread capacity for AOT. Students from two public (government) schools, two private (public) schools, and two charter (academy) schools were followed for 18 months over the transition from middle school to high school, with data collected in each semester of the eighth grade and ninth grade year. The study included an unusually varied set of approaches to assess AOT values and habits, including a rating scale, two new multiple choice measures, teacher reports from three teachers per student, peer nomination, and interviews with subsets of the larger sample. These varied measures converged to reveal widespread openness to disagreement, desire for understanding, and pluralistic norms. In interviews, participants demonstrated AOT in three powerful ways: deep search for ideas, epistemic empathy, and pluralistic thinking. Moreover, repeated administration of measures indicated moderate intertemporal reliability of this trait, with six-month test-retest correlations ranging from .27 to .59 depending on the measure. This research suggests that existing capacities for AOT could be more fruitfully leveraged and supported by educators, helping students to capitalise on their own values and intuitions as they develop into mature critical thinkers. [Corrections made on 24 August 2020 after first online publication: 'web search' was incorrectly used throughout this article and it has now been corrected to 'search' in this version] Keywords adolescence, cognitive development, critical thinking. Ever since Dewey (1916), there has been a growing push to teach students not just what to think, but how to think. Eighty percent of Americans think schools should teach critical thinking (Gallup, 2013). Critical thinking is front and centre in the Common Core Standards, a set of curricular goalposts rolled out in 2009 and now adopted by 42 states (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2016). But if we as a society want to teach our children to be good thinkers, we had better have some idea how a good thinker thinks. Baron (1988, 1993) suggested that the best critical thinking is actively open-minded; that is, characterised by a deep and unbiased search for alternatives, evidence, reasons, and goals. Long reflection is not sufficient for good thinking if it is merely an elaboration of support for a favoured conclusion (Wason and Evans, 1975); a balanced consideration of alternatives is also necessary.

Safeguarding social justice and equality: Exploring Finnish youths’ ‘Intergroup Mindsets’ as a novel approach in the prevention of radicalization and extremism through education

“…Thus, in terms of intergroup attitudes, both quantitative and qualitative analysis disclosed a strong focus on equality and non-partisan, prosocial attitudes for the Inclusion oriented group. As with ways of thinking, the low mean in dogmatism ( M = 2.81) and the high mean in liberalism ( M = 5.79) indicated that the Inclusion oriented youths had high levels of epistemic empathy for different people (Metz et al, 2020), and that they were very open-minded to alternative ideas and opinions (Table 4).…”

“…The liberalism sub-scale included three items tapping attitudes toward other people and their opinions, one of which is ‘I believe that the different ideas of right and wrong that people in other societies have may be valid for them’. Both sub-scales tap the (un)willingness to consider alternative options and perspectives, which is an essential characteristic of open-mindedness (Fowers and Davidov, 2006; Metz et al, 2020). The items were translated into Finnish by the researchers, supported by the previous translation made by Svedholm-Häkkinen and Lindeman (2018).…”

“…Rigid and inflexible beliefs are also related to what is called a ‘fixed mindset’, referring to a deterministic view of the world and one’s qualities (Dweck and Yeager, 2019). Contrary to the SDO, which is associated with the acceptance of social injustices, inequality, and hostility, open-mindedness refers to people’s cognitive disposition to show a willingness to engage with intellectual and alternative options, and to switch perspectives if needed (Fowers and Davidov, 2006; Metz et al, 2020). Already Dewey (1933) referred to open-mindedness as ‘freedom from prejudice, partisanship, and other such habits as close the mind and make it unwilling to consider new problems and entertain new ideas’ (p. 30).…”

“…Already Dewey (1933) referred to open-mindedness as ‘freedom from prejudice, partisanship, and other such habits as close the mind and make it unwilling to consider new problems and entertain new ideas’ (p. 30). This type of open-mindedness goes beyond the mere acceptance of the other and refers to ‘epistemic empathy’, that is, ‘the ability to understand the intellectual position and internal logic of someone with whom one disagrees’ (Metz et al, 2020, 769). Open-mindedness allows us to consider and challenge our beliefs (Song, 2018), and have constructive dialogues, which are both essential to transformative learning (Mezirow, 2009).…”

Pomiar otwartego i elastycznego myślenia (POEM). Polska adaptacja kwestionariusza do badania myślenia aktywnie otwartego (AOT)

“…Wychodzenie poza dostępne informacje i kontekst wymaga dostrzeżenia tych danych, których nie obejmuje własna perspektywa. Kluczowa dla tego aspektu myślenia otwartego i elastycznego jest zdolność do rozumienia stanowiska innej osoby oraz logiki mu przyświecającej bez względu na to, czy się z tą optyką zgadzamy, czy nie (Metz, Baelen, Yu, 2020). Ostatni wskazany przez Stanovich i West (1997) element myślenia otwartego i elastycznego to brak absolutyzmu w poznawaniu.…”