The Big Five Factors of Personality and the Need for Cognition

he goal of the present study was to examine the relationship between personality characteristics and a need for cognition. A sample of 109 female and 82 male studensts from various universities in Shiraz completed the Big Five Personality Factors Questionnaire (Goldberg, 1999) and the Need for Cognition Scale (Cacioppo, Petty, Kao, 1984). Finding demonstrated that the need for cogni- tion is correlated positively with openness to experience, conscientiousness and extraversion and negatively with neuroticism and no correlation with agreeableness. But just the openness to experience could predict the need for cog- nition (r2=0.18). The implications of the research about the need for cognition are discussed.