Use of Need for Closure Scale to Predict and Affect Individual Tendency for Design Fixation

Not all individuals may be equally susceptible to design fixation. I sought to identify characteristics that could predict and affect individual tendency for design fixation, and explored the use of Kruglanski’s Need for Closure Scale for this purpose. The Need for Closure Scale is an individual/dispositional difference variable, as well as an environmental variable that can be manipulated in the laboratory. I devised two experiments that involved developing concepts for which an example solution was provided. The first experiment investigated whether correlations exist between participants’ score on the Need for Closure Scale and the degree of fixation in concepts elicited. A pilot experiment and second experiment investigated whether environmentally-induced Need for Closure could be used to change participants’ likelihood to fixate. Significant results were found in the first and second experiments, supporting that Need for Closure can be used to predict and affect individual tendency for design fixation.M.A.S