Closure (psychology)

For other uses, see Closure (disambiguation).

Closure or need for closure (NFC), used interchangeably with need for cognitive closure (NFCC), are social psychological terms that describe an individual's desire for a clear, firm answer or peaceful resolution to a question or problem to avert ambiguity.[1]

The term "need" denotes a motivated tendency to seek out information. The need for closure is the motivation to find an answer to an ambiguous situation. This motivation is enhanced by the perceived benefits of obtaining closure, such as the increased ability to predict the world and a stronger basis for action. This motivation is also enhanced by the perceived costs of lacking closure, such as dealing with uncertainty.[2] A sense of closure is not usually possible with ambiguous loss, such as a missing person, and the hoped-for benefits, such as a sense of relief after the death of a person who inflicted harm, are not necessarily obtained.[3][4] Because of this mismatch between what individuals hope will happen if they achieve closure and what they actually experience, the idea of getting closure has been described as a myth.[3][5]

The level of the need for cognitive closure is a fairly stable individual characteristic. It can affect what information individuals seek out and how they process it. This need can be affected by situational factors. For example, in the presence of circumstances that increase the need for closure, individuals are more likely to use simple cognitive structures to process information.[6]

According to Kruglanski et al., need for closure exerts its effects via two general tendencies: the urgency tendency (the inclination to attain closure as quickly as possible) and the permanence tendency (the tendency to maintain it for as long as possible). Together, these tendencies may produce the inclinations to seize and then freeze on early judgmental cues, reducing the extent of information processing and hypothesis generation and introducing biases in thinking.[1]

  1. ^ a b Kruglanski, A. W.; Webster, D. M. (April 1996). "Motivated closing of the mind: 'Seizing' and 'freezing'". Psychological Review. 103 (2): 263–83. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263. PMID 8637961. S2CID 19253040.
  2. ^ Webster, D.; Kruglanski, A (December 1994). "Individual differences in need for cognitive closure". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 67 (6): 1049–62. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.67.6.1049. PMID 7815301.
  3. ^ a b Boss, Pauline (2022). The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic (First ed.). New York, NY. ISBN 978-1-324-01681-6. OCLC 1249706143.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. ^ Madeira, Jody Lyneé (2012). Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-2454-5. OCLC 794003582.
  5. ^ Boss, Pauline; Carnes, Donna (December 2012). "The Myth of Closure". Family Process. 51 (4): 456–469. doi:10.1111/famp.12005. PMID 23230978.
  6. ^ Van Hiel, A.; Mervielde, I. (2003). "The Need for Closure and the Spontaneous Use of Complex and Simple Cognitive Structures". The Journal of Social Psychology. 143 (5): 559–68. doi:10.1080/00224540309598463. PMID 14609052. S2CID 41445636.