Differences In Need For Closure Research Articles

Does framing climate change policies to fit with epistemic needs for predictability reduce conservatives’ opposition?

AbstractA short‐term obstacle to united political action to fight climate change in various countries is opposition to pro‐environmental policies among conservatives. Three preregistered studies test the hypothesis that because conservatives have a higher need for closure than liberals (Hypothesis 1), framing pro‐environmental policies in a way that appeals to the need for closure, reduces conservatives’ opposition to these policies (Hypothesis 2). Study 1 confirms Hypothesis 1. Next, two studies test Hypothesis 2 and find that conservatives are less opposed to pro‐environmental policies proposed by a politician (Study 2) or an NGO (Study 3) if these policies are framed in a way that appeals to the need for closure, while the opposite is the case for liberals. Across these two studies, we also test the underlying process but find no evidence for the idea that differences in need for closure mediate the effect (Hypothesis 3a). Instead, the effect is primarily driven by inferences about group membership and ingroup bias (Hypothesis 3b, non‐preregistered). That is, these data suggest that framing policies to appeal to closure needs reduces conservatives’ opposition because they infer that the policy is proposed by a fellow conservative.

Multivariate morphological brain signatures enable individualized prediction of dispositional need for closure.

Need for closure (NFC) reflects stable individual differences in the desire for a quick, definite, and stable answer to a question. A large body of research has documented the association between NFC and various cognitive, emotional and social processes. Despite considerable interest in psychology, little effort has been made to uncover the neural substrates of individual variations in NFC. Herein, we took a data-driven approach to predict NFC trait combining machine learning framework and the whole-brain grey matter volume (GMV) features, which represent a reliable brain imaging measure and have been commonly employed to explore neural basis underlying individual differences of cognition and behaviors. Brain regions contributing to the prediction were then subjected to functional connectivity and decoding analyses for a quantitative inference on their psychophysiological functions. Our results indicated that multivariate patterns of GMV derived from multiple regions across distributed brain systems predicted NFC at individual level. The contributing regions are distributed across the emotional processing network (e.g., striatum), cognitive control network (e.g., lateral prefrontal cortex), social cognition network (e.g., temporoparietal junction) and perceptual processing network (e.g., occipital cortex). The current study provided the first evidence that dispositional NFC is embodied in multiple large-scale brain networks, helping to delineate a more complete picture about the neuropsychological processes that support individual differences in NFC. Beyond these findings, the current interdisciplinary approach to constructing and interpreting neuroimaging-based prediction model of personality traits would be informative to a wide range of future studies on personality.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11682-021-00574-w.

Defending the Sex/Gender Binary: The Role of Gender Identification and Need for Closure

In the Western world, gender/sex is traditionally viewed as binary, with people falling into one of two categories: male or female. This view of gender/sex has started to change, triggering some resistance. This research investigates psychological mechanisms underlying that resistance. Study 1 (N = 489, UK) explored the role of individual gender identification in defense of, and attempts to reinforce, the gender/sex binary. Study 2 (N = 415, Sweden) further considered the role of individual differences in need for closure. Both gender identification and need for closure were associated with binary views of gender/sex, prejudice against nonbinary people, and opposition to the use of gender-neutral pronouns. Policies that aim to abolish gender/sex categories, but not policies that advocate for a third gender/sex category, were seen as particularly unfair among people high in gender identification. These findings are an important step in understanding the psychology of resistance to change around binary systems of gender/sex.

Group-centrism in the absence of group norms: The role of need for closure in social projection

The need for closure (NFC) promotes group-centrism, referring to the pursuit of a shared reality in a group, commonly achieved through conformity to and introjection of group norms. The present study expands this perspective by examining how NFC motivates projection of one’s own norms on groups, as an alternative means to achieve epistemic security in the absence of clear group norms. In Study 1 (N = 261), individual differences in NFC predicted social projection onto an incidental crowd, providing evidence for the generic effect of NFC on social projection. In line with the assertion that the epistemic value of a collectivity is a function of the degree to which the collectivity matters for the individual, Study 2 (N = 239) and Study 3 (N = 223) revealed that NFC effects on social projection were strengthened for in-groups and disappeared for out-groups. Furthermore, mediation analyses demonstrated that essentialist entitativity beliefs mediate the relationship between NFC and in-group projection.

Need for Closure Effects on Affective and Cognitive Responses to Culture Fusion

This research examined how affective and cognitive responses to culture fusion, a specific type of culture mixing that features the blending of different cultures or parts thereof into a new entity, are influenced by individual differences in Need for Closure (NFC). Two studies showed that individuals high (vs. low) in NFC felt less favorable toward culture fusion (i.e., the affective response), both at an abstract level (i.e., society structure models; Study 1, N = 191) and at a more concrete level (i.e., food stimuli; Study 2, N = 257). In addition, high NFC individuals tended to assign culturally fused stimuli to one discrete culture, rather than acknowledging them as culturally hybrid (i.e., the cognitive response). Furthermore, mediation analyses showed that the relationships between NFC and responses toward culture fusion were mediated by Right-Wing Authoritarianism. These findings are interpreted in terms of the threat to epistemic security needs posed by culture fusion.

Need for cognitive closure may impede the effectiveness of epistemic belief instruction

The present article examines the effects of need for cognitive closure on epistemic belief instruction efficacy. Individual differences in need for closure were assumed to interfere with the mechanisms postulated in Bendixen's (2002) process model of epistemic change and thus impede intervention effectiveness. A short-term epistemic belief intervention drawing on both the presentation of diverging (i.e., controversial) information and on constructivist teaching approaches (i.e., moderated discussion) was developed. Instruction primarily aimed at reducing absolute and multiplicistic beliefs in psychology freshmen. In a pretest-posttest field-experimental study, 83 psychology freshmen were randomly assigned to the intervention group or one of two control groups (learning strategies instruction group or untreated control group). As expected, epistemic belief intervention reduced both absolute and multiplicistic beliefs. With regard to multiplicistic beliefs, high need for closure significantly reduced instruction efficacy. Our findings thus highlight the crucial importance of considering individual differences in epistemic belief instruction.

The impact of background category information on the creation of social cliques: The role of need for cognitive closure and decisiveness

The impact of background category information on the creation of social cliques: The role of need for cognitive closure and decisivenessThis article focuses on the role of need for cognitive closure in the process of mental model creation about social relations (i.e. social cliques). We assumed that high (vs. low) need for closure participants tend to rely on background category information when forming social cliques. We predicted that this tendency to employ categorical information as a mental aid, used in order to form social cliques, would be efficient in simple task structures (where category information overlaps with the mental model structure) but would lead to increased error rates in complex task structures (where category information is inconsistent with the model structure). The results confirmed our predictions, showing especially strong effects for the decisiveness component of need for closure. The importance of individual differences in need for closure and decisiveness in social reasoning is discussed.

Safety Climate and Relational Conflict in the Eyes of Team Members: Examining the Role of Need for Closure

This study was aimed at examining the safety climate and relational conflict within teams at the individual level. A sample of 372 respondents, divided into 50 teams, was used to test our hypothesis. It was proposed – and discovered – that team members' individual differences in need for closure mitigated the negative relationship between perceptions of team safety climate and team relational conflict. The implications of our findings and the study's limitations are discussed.

The Relationship between Perceptions of Safety Climate and Relational Conflict within R&D Teams: Taking Need for Closure as a Moderator

This study examines the safety climate for innovation within teams at the individual level. A sample of 165 respondents in 25 R&D teams was used to test our hypothesis. We proposed and found that team members’ individual differences in need for closure mitigated the negative relationship between perceptions of team safety climate and team relational conflict. We discuss the implications of our findings and the study’s limitations.

Individual differences in need for closure and voting behaviour

Two longitudinal studies investigated the relationship between dispositional need for closure and voting behaviour. It was hypothesized that need for closure was linearly related with voting for more conservative Italian parties. The first study ( N = 243) was conducted during the 2004 European elections. The second study ( N = 489) was conducted during the 2005 Italian Regional elections. Participants completed a measure of need for closure approximately four weeks before election day. After the elections participants reported their vote. Results of both studies provide evidence for a linear trend connecting need for closure and voting for conservative parties. Findings were discussed in light of the Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition approach.

Epistemic motives and cultural conformity: Need for closure, culture, and context as determinants of conflict judgments.

Three studies support the proposal that need for closure (NFC) involves a desire for consensual validation that leads to cultural conformity. Individual differences in NFC interact with cultural group variables to determine East Asian versus Western differences in conflict style and procedural preferences (Study 1), information gathering in disputes (Study 2), and fairness judgment in reward allocations (Study 3). Results from experimental tests indicate that the relevance of NFC to cultural conformity reflects consensus motives rather than effort minimization (Study 2) or political conservatism (Study 3). Implications for research on conflict resolution and motivated cultural cognition are discussed.

The role of cognitive inhibition in motivation toward closure

This research examines the role of cognitive inhibition in individual differences in need for cognitive closure. It was expected that cognitive inhibition is related to need for closure and its four facets (preference for order, predictability, intolerance of ambiguity and closed-mindedness) (Experiment 1). It was also assumed that under cognitive load, high need for closure participants would show an increased level of inhibition to compare to the low need for closure ones (Experiment 2). Across these experiments, individual differences in need for closure correspond to the ability to handle irrelevant information efficiently; that individuals scored high (vs. low) in need for closure revealed this process more strongly, also in a more cognitively demanding condition.

Effects of Epistemic Motivations on the Use of Accessible Constructs in Social Judgment

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that the use of primed constructs to interpret target information will be increased under high need for closure and decreased under high need to avoid closure. Supporting this hypothesis, Experiment I found that subjects high in need for closure (induced by increasing cognitive load) were more likely to characterize an ambiguous target in terms of primed traits. Subjects high in need to avoid closure (induced by stressing the importance of impression accuracy) were less likely to characterize the target in terms of primed traits. Experiment 2 found that subjects high in dispositional need for closure were more likely to characterize the target in terms of primed traits than subjects low in dispositional need for closure. By grouping subjects based on individual differences in need for closure, Experiment 2 provides convergent validity for the hypothesis and rules out alternative interpretations for the results of Experiment 1.