Today, open-mindedness is widely regarded as one of the cardinal virtues. It is also a virtue that virtually everyone imagines she possesses. And yet, groans abound about the current lack of civil discourse.

It often seems that so far as public discussion goes, it is either satire or shouting matches. If intellectual receptivity is so common, why are civil and substantive discussions between people on opposite sides of the political fence so uncommon?

There are today a number of institutes and think tanks for which one of the primary aims is to improve our ability to talk with one another about matters political and moral. What will it take to facilitate the respectful interchange of ideas so fundamental to a democracy? Perhaps an enhanced ability to tolerate "cognitive dissonance."

In the late 1950s, psychologist Leon Festinger developed the theory of cognitive dissonance. Festinger argued that information and ideas that challenge a strongly held conviction will induce anxiety, which will in turn motivate mental gymnastics targeted at neutralizing the troublesome idea.

For example, apropos of the Ferguson, Mo., tragedy, someone with a core conviction that police in the United States are racist and inclined to brutality will find it hard to give a sincere hearing to evidence that, if nothing else, Officer Darren Wilson acted within the parameters of police protocol.

Or again, Festinger would predict that when a passionate denier of global warming is presented with statistics about rising sea levels and melting ice caps, she will have an impulse to figure out some way of discounting the information as spurious.

In the present age, our tolerance for cognitive dissonance has been diminished by the fact that we can find more or less whatever we want on the Internet. The shibboleth seems to be "studies show" and thanks to Google we can find a study that can be wheeled in behind virtually every position.

Our ability to entertain conflicting notions has also taken a hit from the prevalence of advocacy journalism, that is, news presented as entertainment and with a distinct left- or right-wing agenda. When a claim slips into my in-box that pulls the rug out from under my position, I only need to call upon one of my favorite pundits for a tranquilizing reinterpretation.

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was adamant: "Zealousness to learn from life is seldom found, but all the more frequently a desire, inclination and reciprocal haste to be deceived by life." And according to Festinger, most of us would prefer to pull the wool over our own eyes rather than change or edit some deeply held conviction.

If Kierkegaard and Festinger are right, what is to be done to help us transcend kindergarten-level discussions?

For one, we need to be honest with ourselves about our level of investment in an idea. If I can't imagine what would convince me that I am mistaken on an issue, then I ought at least to admit that it is a closed case for me.

For another, we live in a therapeutic age, almost narcissistically engaged in wrangling with angst. Perhaps a good new year's resolution would be the resolve to tolerate the case of nerves that comes with giving a fair hearing to an opposing view.

Human beings like chocolate a lot more than we savor ambiguity. It is human nature that when we hear something we don't want to hear, we want to hear something else to justify dismissing what we didn't want to hear. However, open-mindedness and civil discourse demand the willingness to abide in the vast gray areas of life, that is, with a measure of cognitive dissonance.

Gordon Marino is professor of philosophy at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. He wrote this exclusively for the Tampa Bay Times.