Success of human beings as a species ought to be due to higher cognitive functions, social bonding and the ability to be open to new solutions. From an evolutionary standpoint, close-mindedness should not be a matter of individual difference unless nature allowed it to be propagated for certain benefits. Close-mindedness offers certain evolutionary benefits which can be many and in the tradition of evolutionary psychology, we can only guess them. But the discourse leads to important insights into workplace behaviours.
In this article, we discuss close-mindedness and what the SPS research tells us about it. We define close-mindedness as a tendency to prefer established ways of thinking and doing things over looking for, acknowledging and utilising new information in intrapersonal and interpersonal decision-making. Close-mindedness is not just the opposite of open-mindedness and it is important to distinguish. It is easy to consider it a bipolar opposite of openness factor from the Big 5. It is a more complex construct and an important one given how much it impacts social interactions - something that is usually more linked to agreeableness and extraversion factors.
We asked 247 individuals attending selection interviews who took SPS Scan to rank order what they consider their common workplace challenges. The adjective inventory uses undesirable adjectives mapped to all of the big five factors (from the SPS Scan original item bank) and Likert statements from SPS Scan. All respondents were forced to choose at least 1 and upto 4 from a block of 8 negative phrases (standard SPS Scan format). We looked at individuals who self-reported close-mindedness as a descriptor for themselves and compared them with the Likert statement responses. We report below the top 5 items with highest differences of practical and statistical significance (p<0.01).
| Item | Cohen's D (based on standardised theta scores) |
| I am always prepared | 0.57 (Moderate) |
| I excel in what I do | 0.45 (Low) |
| I prefer variety to routine | - 0.35 (Low) |
| Item | Cohen's d (based on standardised theta scores) |
| I like to keep busy. | 0.93 (Large) |
| I am very productive. | 0.80 (Large) |
| I see beauty in things that others might not notice. | 0.72 (Moderate) |
| I am always on the go. | 0.66 (Small) |
Some outcomes were expected and some were surprising.
Self-report humility as well as progressivism were not very accurate indicators of close-mindedness. We hypothesise that social desirability may reduce the efficacy of these measures in predicting close-mindedness. Further, it is very much possible that close-minded individuals may not be open to feedback on their humility and progressivism from social interactions. This would lead them to believe that they are less close-minded than others. Interestingly, other-report Humility and Progressivism had higher effect size of 0.36 and 0.39 respectively. But neither of these were found to be statistically significant. Possibly due to the smaller sample size of the group.
We hypothesise that close-mindedness is an attitudinal construct given high association with Drive constructs. This could indicate that some individuals may find close-mindedness rewarding.
We analysed the items that best predicted self-report and other-report closemindedness. These correspond to SPS Scan scales which measure common workplace risks. Two themes from the four scales emerge:
- Avoids Complexity and Avoids Novelty which put together may be inversely interpreted as Abstraction-orientation
- Low Productivity and Lacks Drive which put together (along with competence and challenge drives) may be inversely interpreted as Closure-orientation
We suggest that abstraction-orientation (low) and closure-orientation (high) may be two dynamic affects that may constitute close-mindedness. This explains the rewarding attribute of close-minded behaviours. Sticking to biases and not being open to new inputs is likely to help bring quicker closure and give a sense of efficacy and confidence to individuals in dealing with day to day decision-making. On the other hand, it also reduces one's ability to work with abstract information which would impede one's ability to deal with complex problem, reconciling opposing viewpoints, paradoxes, new ideas and new situations.
Workplace implications of these findings are interesting as well. Our research suggests that individuals who consider themselves to be effective in carrying out tasks and productive are at higher risk of being close-minded. They may not be consciously leveraging the benefits of the dynamic and worse still, may not be aware that they are close-minded or carry that reputation, in the first place. Self-awareness is critical for high flying executives and managers as their close-mindedness might just be the cost they pay to perform their tasks quickly and effectively in organisational settings.