TASK 1: Need for Cognition (NfC) (8 points)

Okay everyone, let’s discuss a variable called “The Need for Cognition.” There has been a lot of research on this concept and as you can tell, it is a personality variable (another word is “individual difference” variable) that identifies how much people have a “need to know or think.” Basically, it is a continuum where some of us could have a lower NC and some of us medium and some high.

Regardless, it is an interesting variable for social psychologists too in that it could have some strong relationships with other factors such as how we vote, how we are influenced by advertisements, how we might form impressions of people, how easily we might form stereotypes and prejudice etc.

Here is what you have to do for this task:

1. Go to the following site and find a discussion as well as the 18 items short "Need for Cognition" survey: http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/ncs/

Use the following FIVE point scale to answer each item:

1 = extremely uncharacteristic

2 = somewhat uncharacteristic

3 = uncertain

4 = somewhat characteristic

5 = extremely characteristic

Before you read over the discussion, fill out your responses for each item from the survey on a separate piece of paper for yourself. Then read the discussion they provide and figure out how to get your overall score. You will need to consider both the following;

(a) items are scored on a 1- 5 scale

(b) some of the items will need to be reverse-scored.

2. Now that you have your own score, you need to figure out what your score basically means — determine if you fall in a high, medium, or low category. Give good thought to this and explain!

Based on #1 and #2, come back here and discuss this process. Tell us your score and HOW you figured it out. Discuss the score – is your score "high", "medium", or "low" and importantly, HOW did you determine that? Does your score seem accurate to you and why? What positive or negative consequences do you find regarding high or low scores for yourself or for others? Where does this concept fit into our readings for the week etc. Remember, consider questions or issues that are your own as well.

3. Lastly, go the UMUC library database (if you didn’t know, you can access via the classroom by clicking the “Resources” tab on the top bar and selecting “library”). Go to PSYCINFO and do a search with “need for cognition” and find one research article that peaked your interest (please don't just select the first one that comes up :).

You do not need to understand everything in the article or for that matter spend too much time reading the study (although I hope you’ll read it out of pure interest;). I mainly want you to see how many different relationships have been studied and to pick one. Include a paragraph and tell us what you found and why this was a topic that interested you. Summarize the study so we know what was done and what they found. Also, make sure to provide a proper APA formatted citation for the source.

As you can probably tell, I’m also trying to make sure you practice how to access the library and to make you write out your citation in proper style in preparation for your paper.!

Anyway, that’s it for this one! 😉 Keep in mind that the larger portion of this write-up is on #1 and #2 and it is adequate for a 7-10 line paragraph on #3.