Abstract
Past research has indicated that individuals with a high need for cognitive closure (NFCC) are more susceptible to priming effects in norm-absent contexts. We proposed that in norm-present contexts, whereby normative information competes with priming in affecting individuals’ understanding of the social environment, the opposite pattern would occur. In Study 1, low- rather than high-NFCC individuals showed greater prime-consistent behavior in a context with a strong norm to comply. In Study 2, when both priming and normative information were manipulated, priming dictated low-NFCC individuals’ behaviors, whereas norms guided high-NFCC individuals’ behavior. In Study 3, the effect of a single priming manipulation was observed in two consecutive contexts. While high-NFCC individuals, compared with low-NFCC ones, were less prime-consistent in the norm-present context, they were more influenced by the same priming manipulation in the norm-absent context. Our findings underscore the importance of NFCC in people’s selection of environmental cues to guide self-regulation.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
