Need for closure relations with Authoritarianism, conservative beliefs and racism: The impact of urgency and permanence tendencies

Abstract

Previous research has shown that Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation mediate the relationship between need for closure (NFC) and conservative beliefs and racism. These results did not apply to the NFC facet scale Decisiveness. However, the Decisiveness scale has been reported to have a questionable validity, and the recent development of a new scale inspired a reassessment of these previous studies. The present results obtained in two Flemish undergraduate samples (N = 164 and 162) show that both the new Decisiveness scale and the other NFC facet scales correlate with conservatism and racism, and that both these relationships are mediated by social attitudes (i.e., RWA and SDO). In the discussion it is argued that not only permanence needs, but also the urgency need reflected in Decisiveness, are important in order to understand right-wing ideology.