Main content
Testing the predictive validity of the open-minded cognition scale
Date created: | Last Updated:
: DOI | ARK
Creating DOI. Please wait...
Category: Project
Description: The open-minded cognition (OMC) scale is a new measure of cognitive style (Price, Ottati, Wilson, & Kim, 2015). We identify both limitations to and important omissions in tests of its predictive validity. In five studies, we test two hypotheses derived from the conceptualization of OMC: the OMC outgroup attitude hypothesis and the OMC bias attenuation hypothesis. We find that whereas OMC is associated with less prejudice overall, evidence is mixed that it reduces prejudice towards attitudinally dissimilar groups, a key aspect of the OMC outgroup attitude hypothesis (Studies 1a and 1b). We also find mixed support for the OMC bias attenuation hypothesis: whereas OMC is associated with avoiding selective exposure (Study 3), it did not attenuate political biases across seven separate tests (Studies 2a, 2b, and 3). We recommend further tests of the OMC scale’s predictive validity before its use to assess genuine differences in cognitive style.