You Don't Have to Decide Now! - The Rush to Closure

What do you see in the picture above?  If you see a triangle, you're like most of us.  Now look more carefully.  There are no lines forming a triangle.  The fact that we see one is because our minds crave closure.  We don't like ambiguous drawings any more than life situations we can't figure out.  Our brains have a biological need to define the world.

When I first met with my faculty adviser during freshman orientation in college, he asked me what I wanted as my major.  "I don't know; I just got here" was not an acceptable answer.  He needed closure, so I picked chemistry. Four years later I graduated with a degree I've never used.

The George W. Bush Administration went to war in Iraq, convinced, it told us, that Saddam Hussein was producing weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  While the United Nations asked for more time for its inspectors to reach a conclusion, there was a rush to closure.  That costly war, whose impact is still being felt, found no WMD. 

We see the rush to closure in personal situations: people pressed to buy timeshares, speed dating, doctors who diagnose too quickly.  On a national level, we saw it, for example, in the 1992 Ruby Ridge and 1993 Branch Davidian tragedies, both due partly to impatience among federal officials unwilling to try less lethal means of ending these standoffs.  We saw it as well in the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters, both associated with managers who refused to keep their minds open to examine more options. 

Closure is necessary. Without it, decisions never get made and little gets done.  So, we often admire people who are decisive, calling them "closers."  Certainty sells - even when  it is premature. Yet, it's premature closure we need to avoid.  The rush to closure chokes off thinking. It is heightened when we are under stress or tired.  A brain under pressure or depleted of energy thinks less well. 

We vary in our need for closure, psychologically and genetically.  Arie Kruglanski and his colleagues created a Need for Closure Scale that assesses the desire for predictability, order and structure, discomfort with ambiguity, decisiveness, and close-mindedness.  Genetic research suggests that people with a shorter allele of the 5-HTTLPR gene (associated with greater emotional response to threat) have a higher level of the need for closure and greater discomfort with uncertainty.

As Jamie Holmes author of Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, put it in reporting on a conversation with Kruglanski, the rush to closure can overcome a group as well as individuals: "In stressful situations, we trust people in our social group more and trust outsiders less . . . When our need for closure is high, we tend to revert to stereotypes, jump to conclusions and deny contradictions."

There are ways to manage the rush to closure.  Knowing yourself is essential.  If your need for closure is high, take steps to slow yourself down.  Reduce the pressure to decide.  Avoid decision situations that shout "high stress, high emotion." If you can't, make a tentative decision but set it aside and revisit it after calming down.

Decision processes can be designed to avoid the rush to closure.  During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy set up a work group to provide alternatives.  He purposely absented himself from some of their deliberations to reduce the pressure to decide.  He refused to accept the initial recommendation to bomb and invade Cuba - the closure choice of his generals - until his team came up with better options.

Realize the pressure of cognitive dissonance.  Once we reach a decision, we tend to search only for facts that fit the decision.  The disparity between what we decided and what emerges as reality is very uncomfortable.  Invite trusted others to question your decision and the assumptions behind.  This can open thinking not done in the rush to closure.

In the early stages of the Revolutionary War, George Washington wanted to attack the British head-on in hopes of an early victory, yet his army of state militia and poorly trained Continentals was no match for British regulars.  His desire for closure got the better of him, resulting in costly  defeats, until he had an epiphany: he didn't need to win the war, he just needed not to lose it.  That strategy wore down the British until the French joined the American forces.  Pushing back the need for closure was a masterstroke.  The rest is history.  As it was for him, so it could be for us - the difference between failure and success.