Cognitive and Social Consequences of the Need for Cognitive Closure

Beyond Discrete Categories: Studying Multiracial, Intersex, and Transgender Children Will Strengthen Basic Developmental Science

“…Abstractly speaking, representing a whole group of individuals as belonging in one of two groups requires just a single bit of binary data, while representing them as lying on a continuum requires more cognitive resources to make graded decisions and more mnemonic resources to store those distinctions. This "heuristics" account has been supported in the adult literature, where individualdifferences tendencies to prefer simpler, more "black and white" solutions has been linked to greater category-based stereotyping (e.g., Crawford & Skowronski, 1998;Webster & Kruglanski, 1997), greater dislike for category-ambiguous social stimuli (Dickter & Kittel, 2012), and greater essentialism of social categories (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011;i.e., greater belief that category membership is based on deep, enduring internal properties). While it is not as well explored in children, Gaither, Schultz, et al (2014) found that children who more strongly endorsed social category essentialism tended not to use a multiracial categorization option, suggesting they favored a simpler dichotomous category space.…”

Cierre cognitivo, sexismo y religiosidad: diferencias y similitudes entre grupos de adolescentes con distinta cultura

“…En suma, en la necesidad de cierre cognitivo existen diferencias individuales que son susceptibles de ser evaluadas y medidas. Concretamente, Webster y Kruglanski (1994Kruglanski ( , 1998 han elaborado y aplicado una escala para evaluar este constructo que ha sido traducida a numerosas lenguas y ha mostrado validez discriminante con manipulaciones situacionales y otros constructos de interés. Posteriormente, Roets y Van Hiel (2007) realizaron algunas modificaciones a la escala original y, más recientemente, en 2011, validaron una versión breve de 15 ítems de dicho instrumento.…”

Intelligence and Cognitive Control

“…We have considered the motivation toward closure because it represents a ubiquitous aspect of human functioning affecting all judgments and decision making in social and nonsocial contexts. Prior research has demonstrated that situational constraints on individuals' cognitive ability, such as time pressure, noise, mental fatigue, or alcoholic intoxication (for a review see Kruglanski, 2004) induce a momentary need for cognitive closure that significantly affects their manner of mental functioning (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996;Webster & Kruglanski, 1998). Accordingly, we have hypothesized increase in need for closure in conjunction with limitations that reflect diminishing resources, such as those having to do with basic cognitive skills.…”