Turkish adaptation of the need for cognition scale and its correlation with performance measures

Abstract

The need for cognition scale has been devised by Cacioppo and Petty (1984) in an attempt to measure people's tendency to think and enjoy thinking. In the Turkish adaptation of this scale significant test-retest reliability and internal consistency were found but these were lower than the coefficients obtained with the original scale. Factor analysis indicated that the same factor structure was maintained to a large extent. There was no relationship between need for cognition scale scores and performance measures such as university entrance subtest scores and course grades. The results were discussed for their implications about whether need for cognition is a cognitive or attitude scale.