Need for cognition in the big-five factor structure

The short Need for Cognition Scale (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984) and the NEO-FFI (Costa & McCrae, 1992) were completed by 85 undergraduates to investigate the relationship between need for cognition and the domains of the big-five factor model of personality. Significant positive direct relationships were obtained between need for cognition and the big-five domains of openness to experience and conscientiousness. These findings are consistent with the conceptualization of need for cognition as the tendency to enjoy and engage in effortful thought. There also was a significant first-order negative correlation between need for cognition and the neuroticism domain. This finding is consistent with the role of need for cognition hypothesized within cognitive-experiential self-theory (Epstein, 1994).