Title: Mental Rigidity - Exploring your mind
Headings: Mental Rigidity
Mental Rigidity
Mental rigidity
The need for cognitive closure
Are you close-minded?

Content: Mental Rigidity - Exploring your mind
Mental Rigidity
5 minutes
Last update: 12 July, 2016
The word “close-minded” has been used in popular language for a long time. We use it to describe people who display mental rigidity, or people who don’t understand or want to understand another point of view. Or people who, just to be right, will try to convince you that you’re wrong. Conventionally, when we talk about close-minded people, we’re referring to people who reject other people’s approaches, ideas, or perspectives, so they can remain “enclosed” in their own ideas and mental schemas. These are people who try to adapt the world to their own minds and not the other way around. This word, among many others that have been popularized, has more depth when you look at it from a psychologist’s perspective. The word “close-minded” has different variants in psychology. We’ll focus on two of them, since their meanings are quite similar. Mental rigidity
Mental rigidity involves a lack of flexibility and open-mindedness towards seeing ideas from different perspectives, towards withstanding criticism of something we believe in, and towards living instead of surviving.