The Balanced Profile: Moving Between the Plan and Improvisation

The balanced profile: when a plan helps and when it gets in the way

The balanced profile describes people whose need for certainty, what psychology calls the need for cognitive closure, isn’t anchored at an extreme but sits in the middle range of the scale, and shifts according to what each specific situation demands.

The name is a label from our quiz. The underlying concept, on the other hand, has forty years of research behind it.

What the need for cognitive closure is

Social psychologist Arie Kruglanski uses need for cognitive closure to mean the desire for a firm answer to a question, any answer, as opposed to confusion and ambiguity. Kruglanski and Webster (1996) place it on a continuum: at one end, a strong need to close; at the other, a strong need to avoid closure, to keep options open.

To measure it as a trait, Webster and Kruglanski (1994) published a 42-item scale with five facets (preference for order, preference for predictability, decisiveness, discomfort with ambiguity, and closed-mindedness), which we explain in more detail in the structured profile. Roets and Van Hiel (2011) later validated a short 15-item version.

In the middle range of that scale, it’s possible to hold a firm decision without revisiting it over and over, and also to leave a door open when the situation allows or calls for it. This isn’t a lukewarm halfway point between two extremes, but a less pronounced starting point that leaves more room for what the context requires.

How it shows up day to day

• A change of plan isn’t especially unsettling, but improvising isn’t the default either when something important is at stake.
• Both a tight structure and an open-ended situation are tolerated well.
• Often acts as a bridge between more structured people and more spontaneous ones, because both logics make sense.
• The amount of planning follows what’s at stake, more than an automatic habit.

An example: planning a vacation with friends. Someone with this profile books the flight and accommodation in advance, because improvising there gets expensive, and leaves each afternoon’s plans open. If the group loves planning, they accept a more detailed itinerary without feeling hemmed in; if the group loves improvising, they make sure the essentials are tied down.

A trait, but also a state

The part of Kruglanski’s model that best describes this profile is that the need for closure isn’t only a stable trait: it’s also a state that context raises or lowers in anyone. Some of the studies that show this:

• Time pressure. Kruglanski and Freund (1983) had participants make judgments with or without time pressure. Under pressure, they were swayed more by the first information they received, relied more on ethnic stereotypes, and anchored more on an initial number.
• Noise. Kruglanski and Webster (1991) had groups deliberate in a room with background noise or in silence. With noise, and as the decision deadline approached, groups rejected a member who argued a dissenting opinion more strongly.
• Fatigue. Webster, Richter, and Kruglanski (1996) found that mentally tired people formed their impression of someone more from the first thing they read about them.
• Fear of being wrong. In the opposite direction, when participants were told their judgment would be evaluated and that mistakes were costly, the need for closure dropped and those biases shrank (Kruglanski and Freund, 1983).

Something useful for this profile follows from this: one’s own balance can tip toward an extreme without anyone noticing, especially during periods of rush, noise, or exhaustion, when the need for closure tends to rise in almost everyone.

What this flexibility doesn’t guarantee

Sitting in the middle range doesn’t mean deciding better in every situation. It means a starting point less biased toward closing early or toward postponing, and what gets done with it depends on each case.

Precisely because there’s no single pattern, it can be hard to know ahead of time in which situations planning works better and in which improvising does. It’s easy to take one’s own flexibility for granted without noticing when it’s working and when the moment to decide is simply being allowed to slip by. Making the criterion explicit (“I’ll settle this now because changing it later would be costly,” “I’ll leave this open because information is still missing”) helps keep the decision intentional rather than a product of inertia.

In work teams or family decisions, this profile can temper both the excess rigidity and the excess improvisation of other people, although that depends a great deal on each group.

Want to confirm exactly where you sit? Take the routine or spontaneity quiz.

Sources

• Kruglanski, A. W. (2004). The Psychology of Closed Mindedness. Psychology Press.
• Kruglanski, A. W., & Freund, T. (1983). The freezing and unfreezing of lay-inferences: Effects on impressional primacy, ethnic stereotyping, and numerical anchoring. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19(5), 448-468. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(83)90022-7
• Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1991). Group members’ reactions to opinion deviates and conformists at varying degrees of proximity to decision deadline and of environmental noise. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(2), 212-225. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.61.2.212
• Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing”. Psychological Review, 103(2), 263-283. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263
• Roets, A., & Van Hiel, A. (2011). Item selection and validation of a brief, 15-item version of the Need for Closure Scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(1), 90-94. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.09.004
• Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(6), 1049-1062. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.67.6.1049
• Webster, D. M., Richter, L., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1996). On leaping to conclusions when feeling tired: Mental fatigue effects on impressional primacy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 32(2), 181-195. doi:10.1006/jesp.1996.0009