Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

there are risks associated with a high need for closure. When people begin craving the emotional satisfaction that comes from making a decision—when they require a sensation of being productive in order to stay calm—they are more likely to make hasty decisions and less likely to reconsider an unwise choice. The “need for closure introduces a bias into the judgmental process,” a team of researchers wrote in Political Psychology in 2003. A high need for closure has been shown to trigger close-mindedness, authoritarian impulses, and a preference for conflict over cooperation. Individuals with a high need for closure “may display considerable cognitive impatience or impulsivity: They may ‘leap’ to judgment on the basis of inconclusive evidence and exhibit rigidity of thought and reluctance to entertain views different from their own,” the authors of the need for closure scale, Arie Kruglanski and Donna Webster, wrote in 1996.