Monday Salon Series: Openness is the New Mindfulness

Openness is the New Mindfulness Flyer

How Cultivating Openness
Can Foster Flourishing
Monday October 27, 2025
7:00 – 8:30 pm (PST)
Presenter: Jonathan Schooler
Concord Hall, 1407 Chapala Street,
Santa Barbara, CA
Live and Live-streaming*
Free and Open to All

This lecture/discussion explores how cultivating the personality trait of openness could foster
individual and community flourishing. Dr. Jonathan Schooler presents evidence that openness
to experience—linked to creativity, intellectual humility, reduced prejudice, and concern for
humanity’s future—can be systematically enhanced through targeted interventions. The
presentation reveals how simple daily practices—asking meaningful questions, breaking
routines, and engaging with art—cultivate the open-mindedness essential for reducing
authoritarianism, enhancing cross-cultural understanding, and building thriving societies.

Jonathan Schooler, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain
Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara, Director of UCSB’s Center
for Mindfulness and Human Potential, and Acting Director of the Sage Center for the
Study of the Mind. His research intersects philosophy and psychology, including the
relationship between mindfulness and mind-wandering and theories of
consciousness.
For more information: http://www.worldculture.org