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Case closed. Sort of.

What's so thrilling about an unsolved murder case?

BY MICHELLE CHEN

After about 20 years, the high-profile Martin Tankleff murder case has drawn to an end. Tankleff is a free man, no one else has been charged with the crime, yet he hasn't been fully exonerated by the state. End of story?

If you still feel unsettled, you're not the only one. To some, the overturning of his conviction is a just conclusion to the case; others read it as a twist in a bigger mystery.

Arie Kruglanski, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, has uncovered psychological underpinnings in the tension people feel over unsolved crimes and other disturbing uncertainties in life: it's all driven by a fundamental "need for closure."

A desire to have a clear conclusion to any story is natural, Kruglanski says. Whether you're anxiously turning the pages of a detective novel or mulling over the conspiracy theories that have kept the Kennedy assassination alive for decades.

To Sarah Weinman, a writer, critic and blogger specializing in crime fiction, the public fascination with the Tankleff case resonates with the magnetism of a good mystery novel. "As long as something is unresolved, there's still the potential for resolution. There's still suspense," she says. "Suspense is a very powerful, very provocative emotion or feeling."

But we vary in our desire for conclusiveness. "Some people, because of their temperament or because of the way they were brought up, find uncertainty more unpleasant than other people," says Kruglanski. That could play out in their social interactions and politics as well--in ways that society may view as positive or negative.

People with a high need for closure tend to be more decisive and have a stronger commitment to ideas and cultural traditions, and perhaps greater loyalty in personal relationships, Kruglanski notes.

Yet closure-oriented people are also associated with a tendency to "hold onto prejudices and stereotypes," and may also gravitate toward passionate nationalism and religious devotion.

Social circumstances can influence the need for closure, he says, as when the events of September 11, 2001 sparked a high sense of uncertainty in the American public; in search of a decisive leadership figure, people rallied around the Bush administration in a patriotic fervor.

Still, Kruglanski believes everyone seeks closure to some degree, "otherwise they'll never reach a judgment." And in the case of a sensational murder case, people seem to become fixated on the whodunit itself, whether or not they really care about the mystery ultimately getting solved. For some, he says, "it's kind of titillating to have the uncertainty raised, in order [that] at the end there will be a resolution. Other people may just enjoy the uncertainty."

Take this quick survey, based on Kruglanski's research, to see where you fall on the "need for closure" scale. It might help the verdict go down a little easier.