How open-minded are you?

The May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas re-ignited the passionately held views for and against gun controls, when 18-year-old, Salvador Ramos, using an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, killed 19 young children and 2 teachers. Views of the profound personal tragedy suffered by the families in Uvalde deepened the polarization between people on opposite sides of the gun control issue. To explore your opinion on gun reform and your open-mindedness, record a number between –5 and 5 that describes the degree to which you support the following assertion: 

Then visit: https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/38/1/140/2754868

There you will find a comprehensive meta-analysis of national and international research on all aspects of gun legislation and its consequences. Clicking on the icon for the PDF version of this report will enable you to obtain a viewable and printable copy with page numbers. Scan the various graphs to gain a sense of the diversity of the results. The assertion above is addressed on page 149 of that report under the heading “Laws targeting specific firearms and ammunition.” After reading this section, visit the conclusions section of the report, beginning on page 152 and reflect on what you’ve read.

Now choose a number between –5 and 5 that describes the degree to which you agree with the statement above. Compare this with the one you recorded earlier. Did the article change your opinion about the truth of the statement? If not, why not?

If the article did not change your opinion, it could be that you have already researched the issue in depth and this article offered no new information on the banning of high-capacity semi-automatic rifles. It is also possible that you chose a number between –2 and 2 in both your original and final opinions, so your judgment aligned with the general conclusions of the article. However, if your original and final numbers were located at the extremes, –4, –5, or 4, 5, then you may have an emotional stake in what you believe about guns. Open-mindedness is the ability to hold your opinions in abeyance, pending more information. It’s a rare quality, because our natural tendency is to subscribe to the beliefs of the tribes to which we belong. Yet, those who have this open-mindedness have a huge advantage over the rest of us in seeing past false beliefs.

Reflecting on his methodology in his search for truth, Charles Darwin, during the last years of his life, wrote:

As far as I can judge, I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men. I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it. Indeed, I have had no choice but to act in this manner, for with the exception of the Coral Reefs, I cannot remember a single first-formed hypothesis which had not after a time to be given up or greatly modified.