Need for Cognitive Closure decreases risk taking and motivates discounting of delayed rewards

The Need for Cognitive Closure (NCC, Kruglanski & Webster, 1996) is a motivational force describing a general tendency to form clear judgments and to reach firm decisions. Since individuals high in NCC have an intolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity, as well as a preference for predictability, we hypothesized that they would show more risk aversion and reduced propensity to choose delayed rewards compared to individuals low in NCC. In Study 1, we showed that individuals high in NCC perceived specific activities as riskier, and therefore, showed lower willingness to engage in those activities than individuals high in NCC. In Study 2, high NCC individuals, compared to low NCC individuals made less risky choices in the cold version of the Columbia Card Task (CCT) – a task considered to involve deliberate decision making processes. In Study 3, we found the same relationship between the NCC and risk taking in a task involving more affective decision-making processes - the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). We also employed a delay discounting task to assess the impact of NCC on inter-temporal choices. In line with our expectations, individuals high in the NCC opted for smaller but certain, or temporally more proximal, options.