Openness is the New Mindfulness

Monday Salon Series: Openness is the New Mindfulness – How Cultivating Openness Can Foster Flourishing

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.