“When the going gets tough, the tough get going”: Motivation towards closure and effort investment in the performance of cognitive tasks

Previous studies have demonstrated that the need for closure (NFC), which refers to an individual’s aversion toward uncertainty and the desire to quickly reduce it, leads to reluctance to invest effort in judgments and decision making. However, we argue that NFC may lead to either an increase or a decrease in effort depending on the availability of easy vs. difficult means to achieve closure and perceived importance of the task goal. We found that when closure could be achieved via both less and more demanding means, NFC was associated with decreased effort unless the task was perceived as important (Study 1). However, when attaining closure was possible via demanding means only, NFC was associated with increased effort, regardless of the task importance (Study 2). Moreover, NFC was related to choosing a more instrumental strategy for the goal of closure, even if this strategy required effort (Study 3). The results are discussed in the light of cognitive energetics theory. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11031-017-9613-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.


Figure 1. Raven's matrix
Participant's task is to identify the missing element that completes the pattern by selecting one of the presented options.

. Category generation
Participant's task is to list out words for a given category.

Figure 5. Memory task
Participants are first presented with 5 objects for 5 seconds. Then, objects disappear and a 5 × 5 matrix of objects is presented for 20 seconds. Participants need to find the five objects and remember their location. Next, all objects disappear and participants need to click on boxes in which the five objects were just presented.

Figure 6. Jumbled sentences
Participant's task is to arrange scrambled words into meaningful sentences. This can be done by clicking on each word with the mouse cursor and dragging it to the right position.

Participants
The sample comprised fourty-six mTurk users (30 men, 16 women). The age ranged from 21 to 51 years with the mean of M = 33.52 (SD = 7.82). Participants were given a monetary compensation of $3 for participation in the study.

Measures and Procedure
Measures and procedure was the same as in Study 2 described in the main text. The reliability of the Need for Cognitive Closure scale was equal to α = .81 (M = 4.35, SD = 0.64). Mean score on the goal importance item was equal to M = 4.04, SD = 0.82.

Results & Discussion
Descriptive statistics for performance are presented in Table 1. To test the effects of NFC and effort investment on task performance, we ran a mediation analysis with the use of the Process macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2013;model 4). The number of completed tasks was controlled for.
Using 10,000 bootstrap samples, we found an indirect effect of NFC on task performance (the number of points earned) through effort investment (time spent per task), IE = 1.84, 95% CI [0.04, 5.20]. The relationship between NFC and task performance remained nonsignificant when effort investment was entered into the regression model, DE = 2.51, 95% CI [-4.97, 5.15]. Thus, the higher NFC, the more time spent per task, which translates into more points earned in the task. The relationship was not dependent on task goal importance (the index of moderated mediation run for model 7 was non-significant and equal to IMM = 0.35, SE = 1.56, 95% CI [-2.73, 3.75]). Table 1 Descriptive statistics for effort and task performance in the additional study (N = 46

ADDITIONAL ANALYSES
Here we present additional analyses testing the double mediation model as presented in Figure 7.
Figure 7. Theoretical model tested in additional analyses.
We predicted that in Study 1 NFC and task goal importance should not be positively related. Therefore, there should be no significant effect of NFC on task performance mediated by goal importance and effort. However, such an effect should be significant in Studies 2 and 3, wherein best task performance is the only (Study 2) or best (Study 3) way to attain closure.
To test these predictions, we run a double mediation analysis (Process macro for SPSS, Hayes, 2013; model 6; 10,000 bootstrap samples). Sample sizes as well as control variables were the same as the ones described for each study in the manuscript.

Study 1
The results showed no significant effect of NFC on goal importance, b = 0.13, SE = 0.09, t = 1.37, p = .