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

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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.

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Source: WVS Australia 2005

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Notes

  1. Moreover, Pearson correlations between critical and socio-cognitive open-mindedness were also increased by 2% due to imputation. The structural equation model used later in the validation process also requires imputation.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the journal’s guest editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. We are also grateful to the World Values Survey Association and the Australian Data Archive for making the original data collections available to us.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology, Australia, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, 2308, Australia

    S. A. Hamed Hosseini

  2. Professor of Sociology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia

    Lawrence J. Saha

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  1. S. A. Hamed Hosseini
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  2. Lawrence J. Saha
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Correspondence to S. A. Hamed Hosseini.

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Hosseini, S.A.H., Saha, L.J. How ‘Critically Open-Minded’ Are We? An Australian Perspective Through the World Values Survey. Soc Indic Res 136, 1211–1236 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1608-2

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