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PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL
DIFFERENCES
Individual Differences in Need for Cognitive Closure
Donna M. Webster and Arie
W.
Kruglanski
This article introduces an individual-difference measure of the need for cognitive closure. As a dis-
positional 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" discrimi-
nation between populations assumed to differ in their need for closure, (b) discriminant and con-
vergent 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.
In this article, we describe a dimension of individual differ-
ences related to persons' motivation with respect to information
processing and judgment. This motivation is referred to as the
need for
cognitive
closure.
As used here, the term
need
denotes
a motivated tendency or a proclivity rather than a tissue deficit
(for a similar use see Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). In previous the-
ory and research (Kruglanski, 1989,
1990b;
Kruglanski
&
Web-
ster, 1991) "need for closure" was defined in terms of
a
desire
for "an answer on a given topic, any answer, . . . compared to
confusion and ambiguity" (Kruglanski, 1990b, p. 337). Such
need was referred to as "nonspecific" and was contrasted with
needs for "specific
closure,"
that
is,
for particular
(e.g.,
ego-pro-
tective or enhancing) answers to one's questions.
The need for (nonspecific) cognitive closure is assumed to be
proportionate to the perceived benefits of possessing closure,
the perceived costs of lacking
closure,
or
both.
For instance, clo-
sure affords predictability and a base for action. Thus, need for
closure may arise where predictability or action seem
important.
Similarly, the absence of
closure
may seem costly in various
circumstances. Thus, under time pressure the absence of clo-
sure may imply the danger of missing an important deadline.
Hence, time pressure should elevate the need for closure. A
different cost of lacking closure may stem from perceived labors
of further information processing. Where processing is seen as
Donna M. Webster and Arie W. Kruglanski, Department of Psychol-
ogy, University of Maryland, College Park.
This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health
Grant 5R01MH 4612-02. We wish to thank Alan Heaton for his assis-
tance in the early development of the scale and Tom Ford for his assis-
tance with data analyses.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Donna M. Webster, who is now at the Department of Psychology, Uni-
versity of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
32611.
effortful or otherwise costly, the need for closure may
be,
there-
fore,
elevated. The need for closure may also be aroused when
the judgmental task appears intrinsically dull and unattractive
to the individual. Under such circumstances, closure may serve
as a means of escaping an unpleasant (hence, a subjectively
costly) activity.
Functionally opposite to the need for closure is the need to
avoid closure. Those two needs are conceptualized as ends of a
continuum ranging from strong strivings for closure to strong
resistance of closure (Kruglanski, 1989). The need to avoid clo-
sure may stem from the perceived costs of possessing closure
(e.g., envisioned penalties for an erroneous closure or perceived
drawbacks of actions implied
by
closure) and the perceived ben-
efits of lacking closure (e.g., immunity from possible criticism
of any given closure).
The foregoing discussion suggests that need for closure may
vary as a function of the situation. Indeed, situational induc-
tions of need for closure have often been used in past research.
Thus,
Kruglanski and Freund (1983) found that elevating the
need for closure through time pressure increased subjects' ten-
dency to succumb to primacy effects in impression formation,
render stereotypically driven
judgments,
and anchor judgments
on initial estimates, all presumed to represent various effects of
the need for closure on the judgmental process. Similar time-
pressure effects were obtained in research by Freund, Kruglan-
ski,
and Schpitzajzen (1985), Heaton and Kruglanski (1991),
Jamieson and Zanna
(1989),
and Sanbomatsu and
Fazio
(1990).
Webster (1993) manipulated the need for closure through
varying the perceived attractiveness of an attitude-attribution
task (Jones & Harris, 1967). When the task was perceived as
unattractive (rendering extensive processing of relevant infor-
mation costly), subjects were more likely to exhibit the "corre-
spondence bias" than when the task was perceived as moder-
ately attractive. Furthermore, when the task was perceived as
highly attractive (reducing the perceived costs of information
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1994,
Vol.
67, No. 6, 1049-1062
Copyright 1994 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/94/S3.00
1049
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