Synonyms
Definition
An individual difference variable which describes a person’s desire to engage in cognitively challenging tasks and effortful thinking.
Introduction
The Need for Cognition (NfC) is a psychological construct that concerns an individual’s tendency and enjoyment in seeking, evaluating, and integrating multiple relevant sources of information toward making sense of their surroundings. It captures the extent to which individuals chronically engage in effortful reflection in arriving at an opinion (cognizers; high NfC) or tend to form an opinion based on cursory or superficial aspects (cogmisers; low NfC). This individual differences variable is typically measured with self-report scales. The most commonly used are the long- and short-form Need for Cognition scales (Cacioppo and Petty 1982; Cacioppo et al. 1984), although the Typical Intellectual Engagement scale has been shown to measure a similar construct (Woo et al. 2007; in von Stumm...
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References
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Bauer, B., Stiner, E. (2020). Need for Cognition. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1093
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1093
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