This article introduces an individual-difference measure of the need for cognitive closure. As a dispositional construct, the need for cognitive closure is presently treated as a latent variable manifested through several different aspects, namely, desire for predictability, preference for order and structure, discomfort with ambiguity, decisiveness, and close-mindedness. This article presents psychometric work on the measure as well as several validation studies including (a) a "known-groups" discrimination between populations assumed to differ in their need for closure, (b) discriminant and convergent validation with respect to related personality measures, and (c) replication of effects obtained with situational inductions of the need for closure. The present findings suggest that the Need for Closure Scale is a reliable and valid instrument of considerable potential utility in future "motivated social cognition" research.

A theoretical framework is outlined in which the key construct is the need for (nonspecific) cognitive closure. The need for closure is a desire for definite knowledge on some issue. It represents a dimension of stable individual differences as well as a situationally evocable state. The need for closure has widely ramifying consequences for social-cognitive phenomena at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and group levels of analysis. Those consequences derive from 2 general tendencies, those of urgency and performance. The urgency tendency represents an individual's inclination to attain closure as soon as possible, and the permanence tendency represents an individual's inclination to maintain it for as long as possible. Empirical evidence for present theory attests to diverse need for closure effects on fundamental social psychological phenomena, including impression formation, stereotyping, attribution, persuasion, group decision making, and language use in intergroup contexts.

Three experiments investigated the relation between need for cognitive closure and persuasion. In the 1st study, Ss high on an individual-differences measure of need for closure were more resistant to persuasion by their low need-for-closure counterparts than vice versa. In the 2nd study, Ss in a noisy environment, assumed to instill a relatively high need for closure, were more resistant to persuasion than Ss in a quiet environment, but only in presence of an initial informational base for an opinion. In its absence, Ss in the noisy (vs. quiet) environment were less resistant to persuasion. The interaction between need for closure and informational base was replicated in the 3rd experiment reverting to the individual-differences measure of need for closure. The discussion considered implications of these findings for further persuasion phenomena. An essential part of the persuasion process is formation of a new judgment by the "persuadee" in response to the persuader's advocacy. If so, the process whereby all judgments are formed or modified may be expected to also underly various persuasion phenomena. This assumption is implicit in major recent models of attitude change (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). It suggests that individuals' reactions to persuasion depend both on their cognitive ability to make sense, and critically evaluate the persuasive messages, and their motivation to apply that ability toward the processing of message information. Features of ability and motivation also figure importantly in the theory of lay epistemics (Kruglanski, 1989, 1990b), concerned with processes governing subjective knowledge, that is, with formation and change of people's opinions and judgments. In the lay epistemic framework, an important ability-related element is topic-relevant information available and accessible to the individual (Higgins, King, & Mavin, 1982). Furthermore, an important motivational factor is the individual's need to have cognitive closure on a judgmental topic. How prior knowledge and need for closure combine to affect persuasion is the central issue explored in the present research. Our general assumption is that depending on prior information, need for closure may differently impact individuals' mode of information processing and that this, in turn, may affect their reactions to persuasion. The need for closure has been described as "the desire for a

Four experiments examined freely interacting groups to investigate the determinants of group members' reactions to opinion deviates and conformists. In the 1st experiment, the deviate was rejected more when he or she articulated the dissenting opinion in close proximity to the group-decision deadline versus at an earlier point in the group discussion. In the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th experiment, the deviate was rejected more when the group discussion was carried out in a noisy versus a quiet environment. Furthermore, when the conformist's contributions to the group's attempts to reach consensus were made salient (in Experiment 4), he or she was evaluated more positively in a noisy versus a quiet environment. The results were discussed in terms of the notion that group members' tendency to denigrate a deviate or extol a conformist may be stronger when their need for collective cognitive closure is heightened.

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Three experiments investigated whether the need to have (or avoid) cognitive closure affects observers' tendency to display attributional bias. Results of each experiment indicate that the overattribution bias was magnified under high need for cognitive closure and attenuated under high need to avoid closure. In Experiments 1 and 3, the relevant motivational state was manipulated situationally, whereas in Experiment 2 an individual-differences measure of the closure motivation was used. These divergent operationalizations yielded convergent results. Furthermore, when in Experiment 3 the task consisted of attributions to the situation, high need for closure augmented, and high need to avoid closure reduced, situational rather than dispositional overattributions. The results imply general motivational boundary conditions for inferential biases across judgmental contents.

S. L. Neuberg, T. N. Judice, and S. G. West (1997) faulted our work with the Need for Closure Scale (NFCS) on grounds that the NFCS lacks discriminant validity relative to S. L. Neuberg's and J. T. Newsom's (1993) Personal Need for Structure (PNS) Scale and is multidimensional, which, so they claim, renders the use of its total score inadmissible. By contrast, the present authors show that neither of the above assertions is incompatible with the underlying need for closure theory. Relations between NFCS and the PNS are to be expected, as these were designed to operationalize the very same construct (of need for closure). Furthermore, no unidimensionality of the NFCS has been claimed, and none is required to use its total score for testing various theoretically derived predictions. An instrument's ultimate utility hinges on theoretical considerations and empirical evidence rather than on questionable psychometric dogma unrelated to the substantive matters at hand.

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