From struggles with the recent DOGE cuts, I came across a concept that I think will be useful for many – that is, the ‘need for cognitive closure’. Stay with me for a moment while I use my experience and lay out why I think this concept is important and how it can help leaders and staff going through the volatility associated with these massive changes.
To understand the context in which I found this concept, I’ll start with my story.
I was laid off permanently from a middle management position with a conservation-based nonprofit in January 2026. This was a result of the ill-informed and intentionally ignorant efforts of the DOGE team – evident in their testimony across many channels these days. I managed a prisons-based conservation program (11 prisons in four states) where the funding was cut off abruptly, leaving crews of incarcerated adults without meaningful employment and four staff members unemployed or facing uncertain futures.
The thirty previously awarded grants and contracts terminated blew such a large hole into our organization that it will take some time for recovery. The program I managed was one of four at the organization – ultimately all our programs were impacted with more than 50% of our permanent staff being laid off or lost to attrition warranted by the uncertainty.
I was in Reno with two staff members– working on transferring materials from one location to another – when the call came. “Stop work immediately” was the word from the Department of Interior agencies we worked with. Never mind the more-than-human organisms that we cared for.
But what did that exactly mean – were we stranded in Reno? What about all the materials and the multiple years of investments made at the two prisons where we work in Nevada? What do we do with all these things? Beyond the general guidance of DOI policy, calls and emails to overwhelmed (or silenced) agency personnel were met with – crickets. Anything valued at less than $10K (in our case, everything), left behind. And partners – now they were responsible for cleaning up our work – ugh! Who pays for that – not to mention the potential animosity it creates.
Ultimately, we left behind materials from an operation that spanned nine years and an over $5 million investment by US taxpayers toward conserving sagebrush steppe habitat and captive rearing of a critically endangered butterfly. Hoop houses, greenhouse tables, pots, trays and covers, tampers (for filling trays), soil, fertilizers, hoses, wands, lights, humidifiers, monitors, and so much more – I estimate about 3 tractor trailer loads – left behind.
As a leader, watching this unfold without an ability to understand and control the outcome was excruciating. We were plunged into uncertainty from many angles while our leadership struggled to understand how we could keep operating, for how long and where – and then, what were the programming priorities amid that uncertainty?
The chaos began in October 2024 with some of our agreements being underfunded through late September 2025. But the real ‘fun’ began at the start federal fiscal year in October 2025. By late October, the organization began its layoffs. Some of us were kept on trying to chart a new path forward and this involved some internal restructuring and repurposing – the longevity of which was unknown. Tensions were high as a result, tempers short and communication lacking.
Our normally friendly, open culture transformed into one where conformity pressure increased, communication collapsed, toxic positivity was heightened, hierarchies became rigid, there was mild hostility to ‘outgroups’ and a fair amount of rigidity to new ideas. We always had some level of performative friendliness. But for me, this took on darker aura – one that was strongly conformative and hostile. The ideological rigidity that I observed was particularly concerning to me in a scientifically oriented org – it seemed that many of us were stuck in judgement. I wondered how similar this was to becoming radicalized?
I don’t think I was immune to this either and confess that as a leader, I was not at my best. I watched real time the trust I had attempted to build completely dissolve. My attempts to focus on the future and build culture up through ritual were met with silence and my response was terse communication as I navigated the uncertainty.
The need for cognitive closure arises:
So about 6 months after the start of this debacle and my team’s dissolution, I realized the struggle with a new lens- something that I haven’t seen people talk much about. It’s a concept called the “need for cognitive closure” (NCC) and I think it might help others navigate better. Originally developed by psychologist Arie Kruglanski, it is the mind’s drive toward a definite answer (ANY answer) over the discomfort of not knowing. Like many things psychological, it exists on a spectrum. At one end, a mind stays perpetually open, weighing possibilities until paralysis sets in. At another end, a mind seizes on a conclusion and locks the door behind it. Most of us live somewhere in the middle – but circumstances can push us to extremes – though we may not notice when or even why. It’s important to note that NCC is situationally induced and not a fixed personality defect.
Keep in mind (haha!) that this is an efficiency mechanism by the brain. That “gray-mattered -engine” is trying to conserve cognitive resources. Its cost is accuracy. This is especially true in the often complex OR novel situations such as DOGE induced among many. Essentially, it’s pattern matching by the brain to something familiar when it shouldn’t be doing so.
Another concept nested in NCC is also relevant – and that’s correspondence bias. Kruglanski and Webster showed that under high NCC pressure, people over attribute behavior to character rather than circumstance. This is seeing what someone did and concluding that’s who they are, rather than considering the situation that produced the behavior. This is why the organizational stress can become so personal. People weren’t just defending conclusions about strategy – they were forming conclusions about each other’s integrity, loyalty and character – and that is a bigger wound. I felt this one personally. Some staff drew conclusions from my poor communication that I had no integrity or loyalty. This situation produced the behavior – but the behavior became the verdict. That’s correspondence bias in action and it’s a hard wound that has more closure now.
Additionally, Kruglanski notes ‘resistance to persuasion paradox’. Lacking information, high NCC pressure makes people less resistant to persuasion because any closure is welcome. Instead, if people already have a conclusion in place, high NCC makes you dig into your position strongly (more resistant)– because accepting new information would mean giving up closure you already have. One imagines the brain revolting over that. I saw this happen, too when my decisions about our direction were overtaken by decisions from the leadership. Suddenly, those positions (of the leadership) strengthened and I struggled to understand why they were so immovable.
In my organization, both dynamics likely played out sequentially. In the early chaos of “stop work immediately” with little guidance or clarity, people were desperate for any resolution. So, the first coherent story about what happened and what to do next had enormous influence – people seized on it. As positions hardened about our strategies and priorities – everyone shifted to higher resistance – those who might have been once open now were immovable.
Kruglanski describes two stages in the process of NCC he called “seize and freeze”. As the mind accelerates toward resolution, it seizes. This isn’t laziness, it’s working hard – but the target has shifted from accuracy to closure. Once a conclusion forms, freezing begins. The mind stops gathering information and starts defending what it has. New data gets filtered, reframed or quietly discarded. From the inside, this can feel like clarity. From the outside, it can look like stubbornness, rigidity or worse. Huh – this was what I observed! We had gone from researching solutions to a single solution – and now everyone was supposed to be on board!
What triggers it? If YOU have been caught up in the federal funding collapse, you’ll recognize these triggers:
1. Time pressure;
2. Mental fatigue;
3. Cognitive overload;
4. Emotional threat; and
5. Environmental chaos.
Essentially, the greater the uncertainty in the world outside, the more urgently the brain seeks firm footing inside. I think it’s really important to note that this is NOT a character flaw. It’s a survival mechanism – efficient, ancient and poorly suited to the complexity of what we’re navigating now.
Here is where it’s harder to talk about and yet applies to us a community-oriented species. NCC doesn’t stay at the individual level. Kruglanski’s research showed that when collective NCC spikes across a group, predictable social dynamics follow: conformity pressure increases, hierarchies are upheld more rigidly than normal, outgroups become threatening and ideological positions harden. Yikes – watching a genuinely open, scientifically minded culture close around itself was like watching a wound trying to heal!
I’ll be honest – I was not outside of this. I had conclusions as I was defending my own fatigue-driven shortcuts, my own moments of freezing when I should have stayed curious. Leadership under these conditions asks something almost inhuman of people – to remain open and generative precisely when EVERY instinct is screaming for resolution and safety. I did not always manage it. Looking back, I can see the places where I seized on a story about what was happening and stopped active listening. I hope I didn’t cause harm from those moments, but I can’t be certain.
What I can say is that recognizing the mechanism – even after the fact – has changed something. It moved me from a narrative of bad faith and confusion toward something more like grief and understanding. This isn’t absolution for anyone, including myself – just a more accurate map of what happened to a group of people under impossible pressure, doing their imperfect best with brains that were trying to maintain efficiency in the face of uncertainty and limited resources.
How can we navigate the need for cognitive closure better?
Webster and Kruglanski mention five faces that NCC wears, showing up as lived experience -some may recognize themselves in this. Leaders may consider that seeing these things intensify in your team – that’s NCC spiking collectively and it’s a signal to act. These are:
- Preference for order – wanting clear rules, structure and defined roles
- Preference for predictability – discomfort with not knowing what to expect
- Discomfort with ambiguity – finding uncertainty itself aversive, even physically so
- Decisiveness – urgency to reach a conclusion quickly and confidently
- Closed-mindedness – unwillingness to have existing conclusions challenged by new information or differing opinions
Further, their research suggests a few things that can interrupt the seize and freeze cycle of NCC. This includes:
1. Slowing down deliberatively – even a brief pause can disrupt automaticity;
2. Accountability structures – knowing that you’ll have to explain your reasoning to others who hold different views;
3. Perspective-taking prompts like being asked – what would someone who disagrees say?;
4. Curiosity as a cultivated practice – treating not-knowing as interesting rather than threatening;
5. Psychological safety – creating an environment where being wrong isn’t catastrophic reduces defensive closure.
I would also add these thoughts:
- Be radically candid about the situation from the beginning with as much relevant detail as you can. In this case, giving relevant detail about the impacts on the individual would help to shore up the psychological safety question and make group response a little tougher.
- Along communication lines – naming this phenomenon is also important. Most people don’t recognize when they’ve formed a position (conclusion) and this is why communication from leadership in a crisis matters so much. The window when people are genuinely open is brief and early. To miss it means you are now pitted against any positions that have closed in the absence. Silence or delay doesn’t create neutrality – it creates a vacuum that something will fill.
- Building ritual – even if not done prior. For us, this could look something like a picnic that has a restoration planting done at the same time. It’s not enough to just do these things – you have to actively talk about why while you’re doing it, as well. It’s not just fun, it’s creating shared goals and meaning. This would help meet the slowing down recommendation.
- Critiques – take a page from the architectural and artistic worlds by having critiques of work. An example could be joint presentations on what your staff think is the best path forward. Good critique sessions have space to explain your reasoning and a back and forth with the audience toward refinement. Given that we were an org with many differing views, this would help toward accountability across the org while also building bridges between worlds.
- Encourage the development of curiosity by having staff explore questions they don’t know answer to – one thing I’ve done is to encourage the use of the primary literature to answer questions. Brief annotations can be written to make use of this often-dense writing and shared among staff for easily accessible ‘knowledge drops’.
Thanks for staying with me. But the disruption isn’t over.
More organizations, teams, leaders and staff are going to find themselves exactly where we were – plunged into uncertainty, brains scrambling for footing, cultures quietly hardening around themselves as wounds to close. And the science of NCC doesn’t erase what was lost to those who’ve already gone through it. The loss of programs, partnerships, the culture and relationships. But, it does offer something that blame and confusion can’t – a way to hold the experience without being defined by it. The conditions that produce this aren’t going away anytime soon. My hope in writing this is that someone, somewhere recognizes what’s happening a little sooner than I did. Name it out loud. Slow down long enough to stay curious. In the right moment, this could be everything and may represent the surest path to coming to terms with the tough times we face while also helping the organization remain fluid enough to iterate past their current situation.
© 2026 Karen C. Hall, Ph.D. This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Literature:
1. Donna M. Webster & Arie W. Kruglanski. 1994. Individual Differences in Need for Cognitive Closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 64:6. Pages 1049-1062.
2. Daniel T. Gilbert & Patrick S. Malone. 1995. The Correspondence Bias. Psychological Bulletin. 117:1. Pages 21-38.
A word about the picture above: I often try to use metaphor from nature as a subtle means of connecting you in a different way to the content. In this case, this is a pic of the wings and back of a Peregrine Falcon. The two colors of feathers are in transition – molting from a juvenile to an adult peregrine. Kind of like the growth I experienced here.