Cognitive Constraints: Worldview

Research on one epistemic motive, the need for cognitive closure (and the related need to avoid cognitive closure), suggests that Jost et al. (2003a) are remiss in ignoring the potential influence of culture on epistemic and other motives. It should be noted that Jost et al. (2003a) do not claim to have a complete model. It should also be noted that the coauthors themselves have presented variations on this model (Jost, Frederico, & Napier, 2009; Kruglanski 2004). I argue that a more complete model would take as its starting point personal worldview—as defined by Golec and Van Bergh (2007). The authors divide personal worldviews into three categories—the traditionalist, the modernist, and the postmodernist.

The traditionalist should believe in an absolute, transcendental truth that cannot be known through rational inquiry. The modernist should believe in an absolute truth that can only be known through rational inquiry. The postmodernist should believe that no absolute truth can be known, even in theory.

One assumption of the Worldview Model is that cultures and individuals will have a strong orientation towards a single worldview. This assumption has not been empirically tested but appears to be logical. Each worldview is fundamentally contradictory with each other worldview. However, this model also suggests that individuals may actively choose between the structuring logics of each worldview when defending existing beliefs or originating new beliefs. When making these choices, individuals may defend beliefs using a worldview that is different from the worldview that they generally prefer. They should be especially likely to ignore the conflict between worldviews when their need for closure is elevated.

Finally, the Worldview model predicts that worldview will be inherited and that participating in any particular culture will socialize individuals into a particular, dominant, worldview.

The Worldview Model predicts a moderating effect of worldview on the need for cognitive closure:

• Individuals in traditionalist cultures should have higher needs for closure when considering information that could challenge their transcendental, absolute truth.
• Individual cultures should vary as to what kinds of information could challenge this truth.
• Individuals in modernist cultures should have higher closure needs across a variety of tasks, with modernist individuals believing that they have a personal responsibility to discover the truth.  Modernist individuals may, however, when faced with individual uncertainty, have elevated needs to avoid closure. 
• In societies where individuals may have traditionalist or modernist orientations, both traditionalists and modernists will offer alternate interpretations of events in a variety of domains, challenging each other’s worldviews and elevating each other’s needs for specific closure.
• Individuals may temporarily shift from traditionalist to modernist orientations when doing so fulfills strong epistemic needs.  If these epistemic needs are consistently elevated, longer-term changes in worldview-orientation could result.
• Some beliefs may be so widely held in society that individuals refuse to challenge them, even if they are based in a rejected worldview.  Traditionalists, for examples, may embrace the concept of free will as a transcendental truth while modernists accept the concept without examining it too closely, or examining it closely, rejecting it, but choosing to act as if they believe in it. Both modernists and traditionalists should have elevated needs for closure about such foundational beliefs.  Modernists should seek to avoid closure when presented with arguments against free will that, based in the modern worldview, would normally be highly acceptable. 
• Individuals in a postmodernist society should have an elevated need to avoid closure, accept when defending themselves against modernist or traditionalist authorities.

Empirical tests of this model have not been conducted.