Motivated search for common ground: Need for closure effects on audience design in interpersonal communication

A key assumption of communication theory is that successful communicators t ailor their messages to the knowledge of their audience. This study examine d the extent to which such adjustments depend on a communicator's need for cognitive closure. Participants high or low in the need for closure created descriptions of abstract figures either for themselves or for another stud ent. After several weeks, participants tried to match their own and others' descriptions to the correct figures. Descriptions written by participants high (vs. low) in the need for closure were shorter, more figurative, and l ess likely to be successfully identified by others. Furthermore, the differ ences in length, content, and identifiability between descriptions written fm oneself and for others were generally smaller for high (vs. low) need fo r clo stare participants. These results suggest that audience design is not a fixed aspect of interpersonal communication but depends on variables aff ecting the knowledge construction process at large.