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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

DIMENSIONS OF CREATIVITY, DEPENDENCY AND

INDEPENDENCY FROM THE FIELD, NEED AND ABILITY TO ACHIEVE COGNITIVE CLOSURE

ANDREA BARANOVSKÁ,

ERICH PETLÁK,

DOMINIKA

DOKTOROVÁ

University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, J. Herdu 2,
Trnava, Slovakia
email:

andrea.baranovska@ucm.sk,

epetlak@gmail.com

dominika.doktorova@ucm.sk

Abstract: The issue of cognitive structures in the system of psychological philosophies
is wide-spectral and inspected from various aspects of inter-individual differences.
The focal question of theme is a process; which people use to acquire assurance in the
complex of unsorted information which they meet with everyday. In terms of our work
we focused on latter, unexplored relationships of need and ability to acquire this
assurance in regard with dependence-independence on field and level of creativity.
Our research haven't acknowledged any statistically important relationships between
figural dimension of creativity, the need of acquiring assurance and the ability of
reaching it, except of statistically important positive relationship between the
independence on field and the ability to acquire enclosure.

Keywords: Need of enclosure, the ability to achieve closure, creativity, independence
on field.

1 Introduction

Cognitive sciences represent a set of several scientific fields that
deal with the process of learning, coding, handling and
subsequently using the information received from various
aspects. Cognitive psychology presents a subdivision of
cognitive psychology that deals with inter-individual differences
in cognitive processes (in perception, feeling, memory, attention,
cognition and speech) of individuals. It is based on the
conviction of several authors that the level and quality of
individual cognitive processes are not homogeneous. This is
demonstrated by research based on an examination of the
abstract intelligence, similarly to the tests aimed at estimation of
a latent level of individual cognitive abilities and processes. A
specific area of cognitive processes is represented by processes
of coding and storing the received information connected with
decision making. Over the last twenty years, the concepts of the
need and ability to achieve a cognitive structure are highly
dominant in this specific area. The concepts of the need for
cognitive structure and the ability to achieve it are based on the
issues of cognitive structuring. Cognitive structuring assumes
that every person is daily exposed to many stimuli affecting
individual which must be regularly selected and filtered into a
meaningful whole. The meaningful whole is represented by the
cognitive structures. These are classified categories of received
information which may be schemes, scenarios, prototypes as
well as common words and sentences. Modern studies clearly
show that some people can create cognitive structures easier and
can also separate adequate information from inadequate or
inconsistent and are better while constructing the cognitive
structures. These people can make decisions faster. Our study
aims to expand the connection between the need and the ability
to achieve a cognitive structure with the cognitive styles of
dependence and independence from the field. The issue of
cognitive structures in the system of psychological philosophies
is wide-spectral and in abroad, but also in Slovakia, is very well
embedded and inspected from various aspects of inter-individual
differences. One of the first who markedly developed and
committed to the issue of cognitive structures were Frenkel-
Brunswik (1949), Bunder (1962) and Neuberg and Newson
(1993). They described how huge amount of unsorted impulses,
which people filter with two basic strategies, have impact on
them every day. One of these strategies is creating the cognitive
barriers - when impulses are completely filtered and don´t enter
the process of coding and saving the information to long-term
memory. The second strategy is the process of cognitive
structuring, when relevant information is selectively filtered
from irrelevant and afterwards saved to long-term memory in the
form of meaningful structure. Then it is connected with already
existing cognitive structures.

The work of Neuberg and Newson (1993), which was linked to
the work of Thompson et al. (1989), who created the PNS
(Personal need for structure) scale, had a great success and
started series of following works of authors like Bar-Tal et al.
(1994, 1997, 1999), Sarmány-Schuller (2000, 2001, 2002),
Sollárová and Sollár (2003) etc., who widened the knowledge of
concept of cognitive structures with new constructs: the need for
cognitive structure and the ability of acquiring it. Bar-Tal et al.
(1994) states that need for cognitive structure and the ability of
reaching it represent the basic components of the whole process
of acquiring the assurance by creating meaningful cognitive
structure. The need of cognitive structure represents desire of
every individual to evade uncertainty by creating the cognitive
structure. The ability to achieve cognitive structure is unfolded
by the extent of how individual believes that one can use the
process of processing information, which is consistent with his
level of need for the cognitive structure. People with high need
of cognitive structure are capable:
1. evading the information, which can´t be categorized or
grasped to their already existing cognition (created cognitive
structures), and/or
2. organizing their cognition to fulfilling their already existing
cognitive structure.
Three years before publishing the work of Neuberg and Newson,
Bar-Tal and his colleagues and also Slovak authors, was
publishing work of Kruglanski (1990), who used term concepts
of the need and the ability to achieve closure instead of concepts
of the need and the ability to achieve cognitive structure. He
defined the need for closure (NFC) as a desire to get any answer
to assigned topic within the process of deciding, which reduces
confusion and chaos from assigned topic. All of this in
consequence eases absolute decision in the process of deciding.
A year after Neuberg´s and Newson´s work Kruglanski with
Webster (1994) made single-dimensional scale NFC (42 items)
with 5 facets:
1. preference of order (life orderliness);
2. preference of prediction (the ability to predict what happens
next);
3. decisiveness (to be decisive, to be able to decide stably in
various situations);
4. discomfort from ambiguity (of perceived impacts);
5. rigidity (unwillingness to change already achieved attitudes).
According to them the whole theoretic construct of NFC is
formed from 2 components: tendency to achieve closure
(meaningful whole) as fast as possible and tendency to remain
(even rigidly) at achieved closure.

Neuberg with his colleagues (1997), among whom was also
a co-author of PNS scale Thompson, accepted the concept of the
need for closure and proposed bi-dimensional NFC structure
instead of former single-dimensional NFC structure. In first
dimension they linked items from facets: preference of order,
preference of prediction, discomfort from ambiguity and rigidity;
the second dimension was made from items of decisiveness
facet. The first dimension was supposed to represent the
tendency to achieve closure as quickly as possible; the second to
represent the tendency to remain at already achieved closure.
This whole new interpretation of two dimensions achieved in
factor analysis was critically assaulted and discussed in the next
series of works (more in Kruglanski, De Grada, Mannetti, Atash
and Webster, 1997; Neuberg, West, Judice and Thompson,
1997) until the year 2006, when Roets, Van Hiel and Cornelis
proposed an alternative interpretation. According to it the second
dimension is not different from the first in representing the
tendency to remain at already achieved closure, but in having
items which represent in the context of the ability to decide; and
thus with their meaning they get through rather more to the
ability to achieve closure in the process of deciding (the scale
AACS, which was made by Bar-Tal, 1994), than to the need for
closure. Roets and Van Hiel (2007) managed to confirm this new
alternative perspective in a study, in which they created very
new revised version of the NFC scale, where items from facet

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