The Need for Closure Scale (NFCS; D. M. Webster & A. W. Kruglanski, 1994) was introduced to assess the extent to which a person, faced with a decision or judgment, desires any answer, as compared with confusion and ambiguity. The NFCS was presented as being unidimensional and as having adequate discriminant validity. Our data contradict these conceptual and psychometric claims. As a unidimensional scale, the NFCS is redundant with the Personal Need for Structure Scale (PNS; M. M. Thompson, M. E. Naccarato, & K. E. . When the NFCS is used more appropriately as a multidimensional instrument, 3 of its facets are redundant with the PNS Scale, and a 4th is redundant with the Personal Fear of Invalidity Scale (M. M. . It is suggested that the NFCS masks important distinctions between 2 independent epistemic motives: the preference for quick, decisive answers (nonspecific closure) and the need to create and maintain simple structures (one form of specific closure).The recognition in social and personality psychology that motivational forces powerfully influence cognition has reemerged in the past decade and a half. This resurgence is evidenced not only by the proliferation of empirical articles, edited volumes, and monographs explicating the impact of social goals on thought processes (for overviews,

s (1994) Need for Closure Scale (NFCS) confounds multiple dimensions and is redundant with existing instruments (S. L. Neuberg, T. N. Judice, & S. G. . A. W. Kruglanski and his colleagues ( 1997) dismissed these findings as "psychometric naysaying," although they presented no data that refute them. Moreover, Kruglanski et al. (1997) suggested that researchers (a) be unconcerned with the NFCS's lack of discriminant validity and (b) use the scale as if it were unidimensional. These recommendations are problematic. Using the NFCS in this manner invites interpretational ambiguity and theoretical confusion. In contrast to the Kruglanski et al. (1997) position, proper psychometric analyses play a critical role in theory testing and in the development of conceptually coherent measures of individual differences.Several years ago, Webster and Kruglanski (1994) presented their Need for Closure Scale (NFCS), an instrument designed to capture individual differences in people's desire to come to relatively quick closure in thejr decisions and judgments. Although young, the NFCS has already demonstrated impressive predictive validity: People who score high on the NFCS are more likely to exhibit impression primacy effects (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994), fall victim to the correspondence bias (Webster, 1993), assimilate new information to existing beliefs

The authors explored the role of target self-presentational goals in the expectation confirmation process within the context of simulated employment interviews. As predicted, applicants encouraged to be deferential inadvertently succumbed to their interviewers' expectation; applicants encouraged to be challenging, to advance their own agenda, did not. The challenging-motivated applicants succeeded in disconfirming negative expectations by presenting favorable information about themselves even in the face of negatively constraining interviewer questions; other theoretically relevant behaviors were not supported as mediators. Of added interest, the self-fulfilling prophecies observed for the deference-motivated applicants carried over to a 2nd interview because of changes in applicant self-perceptions following the 1st interview.

Self-fulfilling prophecy processes enable people to confirm their negative expectancies for others. The perceiver goal of ingratiation was hypothesized to alter this behavioral dynamic and thus lead perceivers to disconfirm their negative expectancies. In an interview setting, we manipulated interviewer Ss' expectancies and interaction goals. As anticipated, "no goal" interviewers were relatively cold and challenging toward their negative-expectancy applicants; as a result, these applicants performed somewhat less favorably, consistent with interviewer expectancies. In contrast, "liking goal" interviewers were relatively warm and unthreatening toward their negative-expectancy applicants; as a result, these applicants performed favorably, disconfirming interviewer expectancies. These data support a framework in which perceiver self-presentation goals are conceptualized to moderate the expectancy-confirmation process.

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