I referred to the innate human need for what psychologist Arie Kruglanski was the first to label “cognitive closure,” which he defined as “the individual’s need for a firm answer to a question and aversion to ambiguity.”[3] The sheer popularity of detective stories, a genre first brought to life in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” is testimony to the power of this basic psychological hunger, our deep-seated longing to arrive at—or be provided with—tidy solutions to vexing puzzles.
