Understanding the role of Need For Closure in individuals’ reactions to cognitive inconsistency

The present research is framed in Kruglanski and colleagues’ new theory that inconsistency leads to negative affect only under certain circumstances (Kruglanski et al., 2018). We conducted an experiment that shows that Need for Closure (NFC), defined as the desire for epistemic certainty, can moderate affective reactions to cognitive inconsistency. Furthermore, we find that individuals who are high on NFC experience more negative affect upon encountering an inconsistent (vs. consistent) cognition, regardless of whether the inconsistent cognition leads to a positive or negative outcome. However, for individuals who are low on NFC, their affect depends on whether the outcome of the cognition is positive or negative, regardless of whether that outcome is consistent or inconsistent with their expectations. We will discuss implications of these findings.