Validation of the need for cognition scale and its application to attitude change.

The goal of the present research was to validate the Spanish version of the Need for Cognition Scale (NC, Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). This Scale measures the extent in which people is chronically motivated to think. In the first study, 561 university students, professors and staff personnel completed the NC scale. Confirmatory factor analysis supports a two factor structure, with a positive factor related to the tendency to elaborate and the other negative, related with the tendency to avoid and reject situations of elaboration. In contrast with low NC participants, the number of thoughts generated by high NC participants was higher. It was also found that professors showed higher scores in NC than students and workers did. In a second study, 82 participants were asked to read a persuasive message, to list their cognitive responses and attitudes and then, answered to the NC scale. Findings from the first study were replicated. With regard to attitude change, results showed that compared with low NC participants, people with higher scores in the scale thought more about the content of the message, generated more cognitive responses, recalled more arguments, and were more persuaded by the strong than the weak version of the persuasive message.