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Updated: Dec 12, 2025

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Published on: March 31, 2023
Investigating Connections between Need for Cognitive Closure and Climate Change Concern in College Students
Margaret Orr1, Alan Stewart2, Andrew Grundstein3
1Department of Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA.
Abstract:
Understanding how people's worldviews and individual personality differences affect their thinking about anthropogenic climate change is critical to communication efforts regarding this issue. This study surveyed University of Georgia students to investigate the role that need for cognitive closure plays in level of climate change worry. The relationship between these two was found to involve suppression-a subset of mediation-by the social dimension of political conservatism. Political conservatism was also found to play a mediating role in the relationship between need for cognitive closure and support for governmental and personal climate solutions. However, social conservatism played this mediator role in women, and functioned as a suppressor for men. These findings help inform audience segmentation and creation of climate-related messages based on audience worldview and personality.
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Previously dominated by behaviorism, which prioritized observable behaviors and largely ignored mental processes, psychology transformed in the 1950s. Cognitive psychologists argue that understanding how we think and process...

