The role of need for cognitive closure and emotions in shaping the human social interactions and driving the intergroup decision behaviour

In this thesis author investigates the role of need for closure (NCC) and emotions in shaping intergroup relations. The thesis consists of two separate parts that correspond with three studies. In the first part (Study1c with preliminary Studies 1 a and b) author assumes that level of NCC is associated with the acceptance or rejection of the offers from outgroup proposers who differ in perceived similarity to the ingroup. Specifically, the author expects that high NCC individuals will more frequently reject offers from the outgroups than low NCC individuals, and it will be especially true for dissimilar and Disgust/Anger/Fear-eliciting outgroups. The results confirmed hypotheses. In the second part (Study 2) author tests the role of NCC in bargaining behaviour in the ingroup-outgroup context using fMRI method expecting different neural activation among high and low NCC individuals while playing in Ultimatum Game. The author found cerebellar activation in conflicting situations (i.e., offer 4:6 by Outgroup proposers; offer 1:9 by Ingroup proposers, and offer 4:6 by Ingroup proposers) among high NCC (vs. low NCC) individuals. In part three (Study 3) author tests a group-effect on emotional contagion, hypothesized that being emotionally contaminated by a facial expression could interfere with a mere cognitive task in terms of accuracy and Reaction Times (RTs). The results didn’t confirm it.