A short form for assessing individual differences in need for cognition is described.

According to the elaboration likelihood model, both situational and dispositional factors can influence the extent to which attitudes are formed through issue-relevant thinking. The results of Experiment I indicated that individuals high in need for cognition are more likely to think about and elaborate cognitively on issue-relevant information when forming attitudes than are individuals low in need for cognition. Analyses further indicated that individuals low in need for cognition acted as cognitive misers rather than as verbal dolts. In Experiment 2, individual differences in need for cognition were used to test the prediction from the elaboration likelihood model that subjects who tend to engage in extensive issue-relevant thinking when formulating their position on an issue also tend to exhibit stronger attitude-behavior correspondence. Results confirmed this hypothesis: The attitudes of individuals high in need for cognition, which were obtained in a survey completed approximately 8 weeks before the 1984 presidential election, were more predictive of behavioral intentions and reported voting behavior than were the attitudes of individuals low in need for cognition.One of the major sources of variance in attitude research is that attributable to individual differences among subjects. In discussing this feature of experimentation, Underwood and Shaughnessy (1975) noted that certain questions allow individual differences to be an integral part of theoretical thinking, and this capability provides an important means of testing the adequacy of theoretical notions. They also maintained that "no variable has been so consistently ignored as has the individualdifference variable in theory construction" (p. 151). The purpose of the present research was to refine the contemporary conceptualization of need for cognition, to examine whether the effects of need for cognition on message processing and persuasion observed in previous research are attributable simply to intelligence, and to test a self-contained individual difference assumption in the elaboration likelihood model (ELM; , 1986a, 1986b that subjects who tend to engage in extensive (in contrast to meager) issue-relevant thinking when formulating their position on an issue also tend to exhibit stronger attitude-behavior correspondence.The ELM is based on the notion that people are motivated to This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grants BNS-8217096 and BNS-8414853. Portions ofExperiment 1 wereconducted by Chuan Feng Kao to partially fulfill the requirements for a master's degree, and portions of Experiment 2 were conducted by Regina Rodriguez to partially fulfill the requirements for a senior honors thesis. We thank

The present study tested the notion that gender bias against women would be less likely to be recognized if it came from an unexpected source, a female perpetrator. One hundred ninety-six college students read 12 vignettes (embedded in 7 fillers) that described sexist actions against females. Both male and female subjects were more likely to label a critical vignette as sexist if the perpetrator of the act was male rather than female. In addition, for a given action, male perpetrators were perceived by both males and females as displaying more intense sexist behavior than female perpetrators. Furthermore, women subjects provided higher average intensity scores than male subjects when a perpetrator was identified as sexist. The results are discussed in light of research on gender stereotypes. Alternative explanations and social implications are also discussed.

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