Disparate roads to certainty processing strategy choices under need for closure

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a programme of research addressing an intriguing inconsistency in research findings about cognitive processes under a high need for cognitive closure (NFC). While early studies demonstrated that individuals who seek closure opt for closed-minded cognitive strategies, a growing body of research has identified a number of circumstances in which individuals who are high in NFC engage in effortful, open-minded information processing to an even greater extent than their low NFC counterparts. This has posed the challenge of delineating the circumstances under which people motivated to reduce uncertainty (i.e., attain closure) engage in effortful and open-minded cognition from those situations in which they rely on simplistic, low-effort strategies. This also calls for theoretical advancement in NFC theory. We discuss our proposed solution to this puzzle and the implications of this model for real-world social phenomena.

KEYWORDS:

• Need for closure
• goal to achieve certainty
• effortless and effortful information processing strategies

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Gabriela Czarnek, Marcin Bukowski, Paulina Szwed, Joanna Grzymała – Moszczyńska, and Sindhuja Sankaran who have been involved in working on the most of the studies reviewed in the paper, Lucas Mazur and members of the Centre for Social Cognitive Studies for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ In all studies described in this paper, NFC was measured by a scale. In many cases, it was the original 42-item scale developed by Webster and Kruglanski (1994). In the Polish studies, the scale was the one adapted by Kossowska (2003), in the Italian studies it was the one adapted by Pierro and Kruglanski (2005), and in Flemish studies it was the one adapted by van Hiel and Roets (2007). In some of studies reported here, the researchers used a 15-item version adapted by Roets and Van Hiel (2011) or the Polish version of it adapted by Kossowska et al. (2012). The short version of the NFC scale has been shown to provide researchers with a useful tool for assessing the NFC construct when practical considerations prohibit the use of the original full scale. It has been concluded that the two versions of the scale may be used interchangeably (see Kossowska et al., 2012; Roets & Van Hiel, 2011).

² We also performed the meta-analysis with the effects obtained while using the NFC index composed from the subscales that were used in the articles (in some of the studies, the closed-mindedness subscale was removed due to its low reliability). The results were virtually the same in both the control conditions (r = – .25, p < .001, 95% CI [–.35, –.14]) and in the lowered expectancy conditions (r = .25, p < .001, 95% CI [.17, .32]).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Center Poland [grant number 2011/02/A/HS6/00155].