Need and Ability to Achieve Closure: Relationships with symptoms of psychopathology

Recent literature has asserted that excessive choice in everyday life may pose a burden on mental health. The present research further qualifies this claim by focusing on the role of stable individual differences in Need for (cognitive) Closure (NFC) and Ability to Achieve Closure (AAC), which tap into the cognitive-motivational aspects of decision making and choice. The effects of these two distinct components of cognitive closure on mental health and symptoms of psychopathology were investigated in a non-clinical sample (N = 304). Results from regression analyses showed strong opposite effects of NFC (positive) and AAC (negative), which independently predicted scores on the Symptom Checklist-90 and its various facet scales, together explaining up to 29% of the variance. These results attest to the idea that individual differences in the need and ability to achieve cognitive closure play a pivotal role in the potentially detrimental effects of excessive choice on mental health. Moreover, the opposite effects of NFC and AAC clarify the ambivalent findings from previous clinical studies on psychopathology that confounded these two components of cognitive closure and suggest promising directions for clinical research and therapy.