Individual differences in need for cognitive closure.

Abstract

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.

Understanding Responses to Political Conflict: Interactive Effects of the Need for Closure and Salient Conflict Schemas.

“…While these results are certainly instructive, they suffer from a few weaknesses. The archival nature of the data forced us to improvise with regard to the measurement of the need for closure: instead of using the contemporary Need for Closure Scale, which was not published until the mid-1990s (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994), we relied on a conceptually-similar proxy measure.…”

“…They were fairly similar in content to contemporary individual-difference measures of the need for closure and served as an adequate proxy. While there were 22 rigidity items in all, only those that mapped onto the content domain of the contemporary Need for Closure Scale (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994) were used to create the actual measure. Each of these items was answered on a 1-to-7 scale ranging from -disagree very much‖ to -agree very much.‖ (see Appendix A).…”

“…A refusal to compromise with or even acknowledge the prerogatives of opponents reinforces a simple view of the world in which the ingroup is right and outsiders are wrong, and it allows to avoid the tedious, closuredelaying process of having to adjudicate between competing interests and work out an integrative agreement (Bar-Tal, 1998;Golec, 2002a,b;Kruglanski &Webster, 1996;Schaller, Boyd, Yohannes, O'Brien 1995;Suedfeld & Tetlock, 1977;Suedfeld, Tetlock & Ramirez, 1997). Moreover, the goal of competition -the defeat of one's opponents -suggests a finality and certainty consistent with the desires of those high in the need for closure (Jost et al, 1999(Jost et al, , 2003Kruglanski & Webster, 1996;Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). Thus, while competition has the potential for destructive consequences, it may also provide decision-makers with a kind of epistemic satisfaction.…”

Seeking structure in social organization: Compensatory control and the psychological advantages of hierarchy.

“…Study 4 assessed the effects of both a personal control threat manipulation and a chronic individual difference measure directly related to the need for structure-Personal Need for Structure (PNS; Neuberg & Newsom, 1993; see also Webster & Kruglanski, 1994)-on preferences for hierarchy. If hierarchy is preferred in part because of the structure it confers on the social world, then people who chronically seek out structure-those high in PNS-should prefer hierarchy more strongly than people less predisposed to prefer structure.…”

Diagnostic hypothesis generation and human judgment.

“…Because TMAX is a retrieval parameter that determines how long the model searches semantic memory, it can be used to model task characteristics, such as time pressure, and individual variables, such as effort or motivation (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). Indeed, both time pressure and motivation have been shown to be important for determining how many hypotheses participants generate and the confidence they have for a chosen hypothesis (cf.…”