Open mindedness

The relative openness or closedness of a mind cuts across specific content. It is not uniquely restricted to any one particular ideology, religion, philosophy, or scientific viewpoint. Open mindedness is more easily defined in contrast with close mindedness and with dogmatic attitudes involving intolerance, authoritarianism and righteousness. Open mindedness is concerned with various forms of acceptance, whether of ideas, people or authority, or of change in its many forms. It has been argued that individuals and societies survive and grow through alternating between periods of opening and closing to information.