The impact of background category information on the creation of social cliques: The role of need for cognitive closure and decisiveness

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of need for cognitive closure in the process of mental model creation about social relations (i.e. social cliques). We assumed that high (vs. low) need for closure participants tend to rely on background category information when forming social cliques. We predicted that this tendency to employ categorical information as a mental aid, used in order to form social cliques, would be efficient in simple task structures (where category information overlaps with the mental model structure) but would lead to increased error rates in complex task structures (where category information is inconsistent with the model structure). The results confirmed our predictions, showing especially strong effects for the decisiveness component of need for closure. The importance of individual differences in need for closure and decisiveness in social reasoning is discussed. © 2012, Versita. All rights reserved.