ArticleBMC medical education2020
Need for cognitive closure, tolerance for ambiguity, and perfectionism in medical school applicants.
Article in BMC medical education, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence, Digital Tools, and Management Strategies for Depression in Medical Students: A Narrative Review.Advances in medical education and practice · 2026Review
- Personality traits predict the need for cognitive closure in advanced undergraduate medical students.BMC medical education · 2024Article
- Unraveling symptom interplay: a network analysis of procrastination in gifted students.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Information literacy in the digital age: information sources, evaluation strategies, and perceived teaching competences of pre-service teachers.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- The association between perfectionism and academic procrastination among undergraduate nursing students: The role of self-efficacy and resilience.Nursing open · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPhysicians have to deal with uncertainty on a daily basis, which requires high tolerance for ambiguity. When medical decisions have to be made in ambiguous situations, low levels of need for cognitive closure and high levels of adaptive perfectionism are beneficial. It might be useful to measure such personality traits during medical school selection processes. In our study, we explored the expression of need for cognitive closure, tolerance for ambiguity, and perfectionism in medical school applicants who participated in a multiple mini-interview selection process with respect to the final decision of admission or rejection.
methodsAfter participating in the multiple mini-interview procedure (HAM-Int) at Hamburg Medical School in August 2019, 189 medical school applicants filled out a questionnaire including the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale by Hewitt and Flett (MPS-H), the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale by Frost (MPS-F), the Tolerance for Ambiguity Scale (TAS), the 16-Need for Cognitive Closure Scale (16-NCCS), and sociodemographic data. After the final admission decision, the scores of need for cognitive closure, tolerance for ambiguity, and perfectionism of admitted and rejected applicants were compared. We also assessed the predictive power of need for cognitive closure and age for the admission decision in a binary logistic regression model.
resultsCompared to the admitted applicants, the rejected applicants showed a significantly higher need for cognitive closure (p = .009). A high need for cognitive closure correlated significantly positively with maladaptive perfectionism (p < .001) and significantly negatively with tolerance for ambiguity (p < .001). Low need for cognitive closure and older age were associated with a positive admission decision.
conclusionsRegarding the personality traits need for cognitive closure, tolerance for ambiguity, and perfectionism we identified interesting differences and correlations of relevance for physicians' daily work in medical school applicants who were admitted or rejected after participating in a multiple mini-interview selection procedure. Further studies are needed to investigate these characteristics and their development longitudinally in medical students and to correlate them with students' medical performance.
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