Maryland Metacognition Seminar: "The Psychology of Closed Mindedness: How Individual Cognition Shapes the Social Process" by Arie Kruglanski

Location: Room 3258, A. V. Williams Building.

Speaker: Arie Kruglanski, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park.

Abstract:
The way our mind works profoundly affects our social behavior and has far reaching consequences for societal phenomena in the real world. This thesis is demonstrated by research on the need for the cognitive closure, defined as the desire for certainty and the eschewal of ambiguity. Need for closure (NFC) is affected by socialization practices and by situational circumstances and it impacts individuals’ behavior on intrapersonal, interpersonal, group and intergroup levels. Research demonstrates close relations between NFC and political ideology, immigrants’ assimilation, and support for decisive leadership.

Biography:
Throughout Dr. Kruglanski's career as a social psychologist his interests have centered on how people form judgments, beliefs, impressions and attitudes and what consequences this has for their interpersonal relations, their interaction in groups and their feelings about various "out groups". In connection with these interests he has formulated a theory of lay epistemics that specified how thought and motivation interface in the formation of subjective knowledge. The work has branched in several directions (1) research on epistemic motivations, (2) a unified conception of the parameters of human judgment that offers an integrative alternative to previous theorizing in a variety of social judgment domains, (3) a "motivation as cognition" research program that resulted in our recent theory of goal systems. His interest in motivation has also led to a fruitful collaboration with Tory Higgins on (4) the regulatory mode theory in which they distinguish between two fundamental aspects of self-regulation having to do with "locomotion" and "assessment." Dr. Kruglanski's interest in goals, belief formation, and group processes has led to my involvement in the social psychology of terrorism.