When thinking you’re good makes you dumber: An investigation of consumers’ earned dogmatism

While dogmatism has been regarded as a personality trait in consumer research, this study delves into earned dogmatism, specifically dogmatism acquired by consumers through the accumulation of knowledge on a particular subject, leading to closed-minded cognition. Through a series of experiments, we demonstrate that subjective knowledge correlates with closed-mindedness. The data also indicate that objective knowledge moderates the relationship between subjective knowledge and closed-minded cognition, such that individuals exhibiting the highest degree of closed-mindedness are those with a significant miscalibration of their knowledge, characterized by low objective knowledge and high subjective knowledge. Finally, our findings underscore the paradox in which dogmatic individuals engage in word-of-mouth about a subject despite their closed-mindedness toward it. While previous research has demonstrated that consumer knowledge can have negative consequences for individuals, we suggest that these detrimental effects may also extend to the brands themselves, potentially leading to the dissemination of outdated or misleading information.