Open-minded cognition: The attitude justification effect

Abstract

Although open-mindedness is generally valued, people are not equally open-minded in all situations. Open-mindedness is viewed as socially desirable when individuals encounter viewpoints that are compatible with conventional social norms. However, open-mindedness is viewed in less desirable terms when individuals encounter viewpoints that undermine these norms. The perceived desirability of open-mindedness is also influenced by the individual’s personal attitudinal convictions. Individuals ‘inflate’ the normative appropriateness of open-mindedness when it serves to reinforce their convictions, but devalue the normative appropriateness of open-mindedness when it serves to contradict these convictions. Conversely, normative prohibition of closed-mindedness is exaggerated when a closed-minded orientation threatens the individual’s personal attitudinal convictions, but is minimized (or reversed) when a closed-minded orientation reinforces these convictions. Paradoxically, the perceived appropriateness of open-mindedness is engendered (at least in part) by the motivation to confirm one’s prior attitudinal convictions. Evidence of this attitude justification effect is obtained in two experiments.     

Early Examples of Resource-Consciousness

As with the development of several logical notions, it is shown that the concept of resource-consciousness, i. e. the concern over the number of times that a given sentence is used in the proof of another sentence, has its origin in the foundations of geometry, pre-dating its appearence in logical circles as BCK-logic or affine logic.     

The factor structure of the Eysenck Personality Profiler in Russia

One hundred and seventy seven males and 399 females completed a translated short version of the Eysenck Personality Profiler (EPP-S). Two hundred and ninety four Ss also completed the EPQ. By means of item analysis, further shortening of the EPP was achieved, while retaining adequate psychometric characteristics and convergent validity with EPQ scales. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed the Eysenck hierarchical model of personality with three basic dimensions and showed stability of the EPP factor structure across genders and sub-samples of different origin. However, CFA showed that only E and P were independent, while N was correlated with E and P.     

Economic inequality is linked to biased self-perception

People's self-perception biases often lead them to see themselves as better than the average person (a phenomenon known as self-enhancement). This bias varies across cultures, and variations are typically explained using cultural variables, such as individualism versus collectivism. We propose that socioeconomic differences among societies--specifically, relative levels of economic inequality--play an important but unrecognized role in how people evaluate themselves. Evidence for self-enhancement was found in 15 diverse nations, but the magnitude of the bias varied. Greater self-enhancement was found in societies with more income inequality, and income inequality predicted cross-cultural differences in self-enhancement better than did individualism/collectivism. These results indicate that macrosocial differences in the distribution of economic goods are linked to microsocial processes of perceiving the self.     

Consumer response to tobacco smoke in service settings

• Establishing smoking policies which accommodate customers' smoking preferences is a major problem for restaurants, bars, hotels, and other firms in the service industry. This study is based on the premise that tobacco smoke can be considered a component of both the physical and ambient retail service environment. Because of legal and ethical concerns, the presence or absence of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in two types of eating facilities (bar and fine dining restaurant) was operationalized by the presentation to respondents of photographs which pictured customers in a setting where smoking was either present or absent. The success of this method of manipulation of the treatment variable was assessed with a thought listing procedure. Thought listing responses indicate that both treatments (type of facility and smoking policy) were adequately conveyed by the photographs. Results indicate that cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses were all negatively affected by the presence of tobacco smoke. The conclusion is that managers who permit smoking in their facilities risk losing non‐smoking patrons while smokers are little affected by either the presence or absence of smoke.
• The major contributions of this study include both the exploration of tobacco smoke as part of the retail service environment for eating establishments and the use of thought listings as a manipulation check for variables which were manipulated through use of photographs depicting the treatment conditions.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multisource Assessments of Behavioral Competencies and Selection Interview Performance

This study sought to determine whether and how ratings of leadership in a developmental multisource feedback program compare against those obtained by leadership selection decision makers. Seventy‐seven senior managers received feedback on eight competencies that also formed the basis of a subsequent promotional interview for senior executive positions. Each rating source displayed a unique perspective on the participants, but only the supervisor and peer ratings predicted performance on the interview. As well, peer, subordinate, and self‐ratings failed to improve upon the supervisors' predictions. The results also suggested a general performance factor underlying both the multisource assessments and the interview ratings.     

Discriminant validity of the ZKPQ in a sample meeting BPD diagnosis vs. normal-range controls

Widiger and Simonsen (2005) state that given the limitations of the categorical model of Personality Disorders classification proposals are to be expected for dimensional classifications. The purpose of this paper is to test the alternative five factorial model (AFFM) of personality in a sample with PDs. Subjects were administered the ZKPQ to test the discriminant capacity of the AFFM in classifying subjects diagnosed with BPD (n = 74) vs normal-range controls (n = 148) paired by age and sex, and identifying sensitive and/or specific dimensions that can be of help in diagnosing BPD. The results showed that high scores on N-Anx and Imp-SS, and low scores on Act are prognostic factors for being diagnosed with BPD. Likewise, this model correctly classified 88% of subjects with a kappa index of 0.73. The AFFM of personality appears to have a substantial power for predicting SCID-II interview-based BPD diagnosis.