Cognitive Closure Requires Experimental Research On A Two-stage Model

In the face of unknown and ambiguous situations,a person will feel anxious and fearful,or attracted and mysterious.This aversion to uncertainty and the need to seek certain answers to end the sense of ambiguity is the need for cognitive closure.A large number of studies have confirmed that need for cognitive closure play a considerable role in individual,interpersonal and group phenomena,and is basically related to important knowledge-building processes in human affairs:on the individual level,it influence the formation of social judgments,attitudes and impressions.On the interpersonal level,it affect communication and persuasion,empathy and negotiation behavior,and on the group level,it will lead to the formation of consensus and the formation of members' stable social reality.Need for cognitive closure can be divided into two cognitive stages:"seizing" and "freezing"."Seizing" represents an urgent tendency of the individual to get answers;"Freezing" represents a permanent tendency to remain closure.This study attempt to separate the two stages of need for cognitive closure.In this research,three studies were conducted to explore the effects of need for closure on behavior in different practice situations by using a self-designed program.The first study found the relationship between general self-efficacy and need for cognitive closure.Study two using a computer task to separate two stages of need for cognitive closure,considering the number of searching as the "seizing" behavior indicator and the number of changing answers as the "freezing" behavior indicator,observing the difference between high and low level of the need for cognitive closure in"seizing" and "freezing" phases.A 2(need for cognitive closure:high,low)×2(practice:repeating group,non-repeating group)design was applied to control whether or not participants saw the questions in the test part that they are familiar with in the practice part,so that the individuals with high need for cognitive closure are more likely to click on a reference answer in order to stay away from cognitive confusion and get a definitive result.In study 3,the same process as in study 2 was adopted,and achievement motivation was introduced to explain the internal mechanism of the behavioral difference between people with high need for cognitive closure and those with low need for cognitive closure.The results are as follows:(1)the decision-making dimension of need for cognitive closure is positively correlated with general self-efficacy;(2)when the questions in formal tests are not repeated in practice,individuals with high need for cognitive closure are eager to find the answers to the questions and reach the closure state,which will increase their search volume;(3)in the context of non-repeated practice,the relationship between need for cognitive closure and "seizing" behavior is mediated by the motivation to avoid failure,because of the strong motivation to avoid failure,individuals with high need for cognitive closure produce more "seizing" behavior.This study differentiates the two stages of need for cognitive closure,discusses the motivational role of it,and enriches the research on the nature of need for cognitive closure and its behavioral results.In the process of task execution,in order to avoid failure and stay away from chaos,individual with high need for cognitive closure make efforts to achieve cognitive closure.This paper will discuss how practice and need for closure affect people's behavior and what is the mechanism that affect their behavior in this process.