Humans have a need for closure that varies from individual to individual. Some of us don’t mind too much if the internet cuts out before the last minute of a March Madness game while for others of us, the madness would multiply far beyond the basketball game. Closure helps us conceptualize, frame, and learn lessons from events in our lives. A lack of closure leaves things open and ambiguous, with unclear conclusions and conflicting lessons to be drawn.
In Vices of the Mind, Quassim Cassam writes about the need for closure and how it can build into the epistemic vice of closed-mindedness. He writes, “The need for closure comes in two forms, non-specific and specific. The non-specific need for closure is the desire for a confident judgement on an issue as compared to confusion and ambiguity. A need for specific closure is the desire for a particular answer to a question.”
Closure can build into closed-mindedness because once we have made a judgement, we don’t want to accept new information. Once we feel that we have a specific answer, we don’t want to take on new perspectives, reconsider information in a new light, or listen to others who may disagree with us. The more certain we feel, the more we strongly we wish to hold to our conclusions. According to Cassam’s quote, the greater our need for closure, the greater the potential for us to become closed-minded in our decision-making.
“Open-minded individuals have a lower need for closure,” writes Cassam. More open-minded people are less likely to be paralyzed by a lack of information. They are more likely to accept ambiguity, make progress, and adjust when new information arises or as new perspectives are formed. In other words, they can facilitate knowledge by adjusting and adapting to new information and data. Closed-minded people obstruct knowledge by adopting a stance of certainty and ignoring new information as it becomes available.
The need for closure itself isn’t a bad thing. An open-minded person can still feel a need for closure, and that need can drive them to seek more information, to learn more, and to develop new lessons to use in future situations. It can be a motivational driving force for good. At the same time, it can push people to become recalcitrant, to adopt simple and incomplete answers, and to drive people into self-destructive behaviors seeking closure that can never be attained. Our choice (or unconscious disposition) to be closed-minded or open-minded can greatly influence whether our need for closure drives us toward virtue or vice.
Novel Learning 