a cognitive-emotional pattern characterized by extreme adherence to one’s own beliefs and ideas, rejection or resistance to any alternatives or opposing points of view, regardless of the persuasiveness of the evidence or arguments presented. A dogmatic person perceives his beliefs as absolute and indisputable truths and tends to view the world in a strictly binary way (right/wrong, good/evil, us/them), which limits his intellectual flexibility and makes him more susceptible to prejudice and cognitive rigidity. The concept of dogmatism was clearly formed in social psychology thanks to the work of Milton Rokeach (1960), who developed a scale for measuring dogmatism and considered it a cognitive trait relatively independent of political or ideological orientations. According to Rokeach, dogmatism reflects the degree to which a person’s “belief system” is closed or open, with a dogmatic person tending to shut down their cognitive system for fear of contradictions or undermining their confidence.
The main features of dogmatism are:
1) Cognitive closeness: rejection of new information or ideas that can question existing beliefs.
2) Absolutism: consideration of ideas as definite and final, not subject to revision.
3) Dichotomous thinking: perceiving reality in only two colors (black/white, right/wrong) without recognizing intermediate degrees or complexity.
4) Resistance to change: the difficulty of changing beliefs even in the light of strong empirical evidence.
5) Appeal to authority: substantiating beliefs on the basis of traditional or authoritative sources, rather than critical analysis.