The Motivated Gatekeeper of Our Minds

For over three decades, the need for closure (NFC) construct has played a pivotal role in research programs addressing the motivational underpinnings of knowledge formation, judgment and decision making, and social and group cognition. In recent years, NFC research has entered a new phase with notable developments in both fundamental and applied research. The substantial progress in the domain of basic NFC research pertains to investigators’ renewed interest in NFC's essentials, including its motivational nature, its role in the mobilization of task investment, the interplay between closure needs and abilities with implications for the measurement of NFC, its relation to cognitive depletion, its effects on memory phenomena, and its genetic and neural correlates. The second major development pertains to efforts to expand NFC research from the lab environment to real-world settings, including work on NFC effects on groups and organizations, its influence on the development and counteraction of prejudice, and its role in violent extremism. In this chapter, both developmental trends are discussed, highlighting their contributions to an advanced understanding of the motivational underpinnings of human cognition and behavior.