This book describes the experience of over twenty-five years in educational psychology. The experience is told by its main authors and this makes of this text one of reference for the specialization in educational psychology of the Universidad Católica de Colombia.Likewise, this book opens the door to the 21st century with a new approach that recognizes and assimilates the vertical development of education, psychology and related disciplines. This takes back what has been learned and paves the way for the consolidation of a post-grade training proposal of high quality and relevance for the improvement of the quality of education within the country.

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Four studies are reported in which a scale to assess the need for cognition (i.e., the tendency for an individual to engage in and enjoy thinking) was developed and validated. In Study 1 a pool of items was administered to groups known to differ in need for cognition. Members of a university faculty served as subjects in the high-need-for-cognition group, whereas assembly line workers served as subjects in the low-need-for-cognition group. The criteria of ambiguity, irrelevance, and internal consistency were used to select the items for subsequent studies. A factor analysis was performed on the selected items and yielded one major factor. In 'Study 2 the scale was administered to a more homogeneous population (400 undergraduates) to validate the factor structure obtained in Study 1 and to determine whether the scale tapped a construct distinct from test anxiety and cognitive style. The factor structure was replicated in Study 2, responses to the need for cognition scale were predictably and weakly related to cognitive style, and responses were unrelated,to test anxiety. In Study 3, 104 subjects completed need for cognition, social desirability, and dogmatism scales and indicated what their American College Test scores were. Results indicated that need for cognition was related weakly and negatively to being close minded, unrelated to social desirability, and positively correlated with general intelligence. Study 4 replicated the major findings of Study 3 and furnished evidence of thj predictive validity of the Need for Cognition Scale: Attitudes toward simple an complex versions of a cognitive task appeared indistinguishable until the subjects' need for cognition was considered. The theoretical utility of the construct and measure of need for cognition are discussed. Studies of cognition have tended to focus enjoy thinking. The notion of such a dispoon two issues: the nature of knowledge and sition emerged fairly early in the history of the character of the underlying processes personality and social psychology (e.g., Asch, that enable the acquisition and use of this 1952;Maslow, 1943; Murphy, 1947;Sarnoff knowledge (e.g., Blumenthal, 1977; Wyer & Katz, 1954) and was developed most el-& Carlston, 1979). In this study we proposed oquently in the experiments on the "need for to investigate a related phenomenon. We cognition" by Cohen, Stotland, and Wolfe sought to identify differences among indi-(1955) and by Cohen (1957).' viduals in their tendency to engage in and The "Need" for Cognition The research was supported by University Faculty. , Scholar Award A240. Cohen et al. (1955) described the need for We are indebted to Charlotte Lowell for her assis-cognition as "a need to structure relevant tance in the first study, John Mueller and Martin Hee-situations in meaningful, integrated ways. It sacker for their assistance in the second study, and Claudia French for her aid in the third and fourth studies. We also wish to thank William Robinson, Richard ' The Cohen, Stotland, and Wolfe (1955) and Cohen McCard, Robert ...

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

Need for cognition in contemporary literature refers to an individual's tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavors. Individual differences in need for cognition have been the focus of investigation in over 100 empirical studies. This literature is reviewed, covering the theory and history of this variable, measures of interindividual variations in it, and empirical relationships between it and personality variables, as well as individuals' tendencies to seek andengage in effortful cognitive activity and enjoy cognitively effortful circumstances. The article cotacludes with discussions of an elaborated theory of the variable, including antecedent conditions; interindividual variations in it related to the manner information is acquired or processed to guide perceptions, judgments, and behavior; and the relationship between it and the 5-factor model of personality structure. Speaker A: "If v,e don't accomplish reform, health care costs will soar, ballooning our deficits. But it doesn't seem like any of these reform plans cut costs convincingly. As soon as any plan seems to cut costs, some lobby group clobbers it with scare TV ads. We seem incapable as a society of coherently discussing the substance of our economy. The actual numbers are so big, so complex... ?' Speaker B: "Get real!" Speaker A: "I am! I'm talking about reality! I'm talking about substance!" Speaker B: "Substance isn't real! Polls are real! Election results are real! Who's up. Who's down. That's what's real! Substance is incomprehensible! The purpose of substance is to provide statistical factoids to politicians to toss at one another in partisan battles. Whichever one sounds best wins. And that's what's real!" (Stamaty, 1994, p. 17) Psychology, with its emphasis on information processing, is replete with theories based on the notion that people, if not commonly enjoying, are at least commonly engaging in active information search and effortful problem solving as they steer their course through their environment (e.g., Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Whitley & Frieze, 1985). Nearly equally prevalent are psychological theories based on the notion that information acquisition, problem solving, and judgments result much of the time from automatic or preattentive processes or from only cursory attention to the substantive details of the informative environment (e.g.

A key aim of social psychology is to understand the psychological processes through which independent variables affect dependent variables in the social domain. This objective has given rise to statistical methods for mediation analysis. In mediation analysis, the significance of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables has been integral in theory testing, being used as a basis to determine (1) whether to proceed with analyses of mediation and (2) whether one or several proposed mediator(s) fully or partially accounts for an effect. Synthesizing past research and offering new arguments, we suggest that the collective evidence raises considerable concern that the focus on the significance between the independent and dependent variables, both before and after mediation tests, is unjustified and can impair theory development and testing. To expand theory involving social psychological processes, we argue that attention in mediation analysis should be shifted towards assessing the magnitude and significance of indirect effects.

It was suggested that there are two basic routes to persuasion. One route is based on the thoughtful consideration of arguments central to the issue, whereas the other is based on peripheral cues in the persuasion situation. To test this view, undergraduates expressed their attitudes on an issue after exposure to a counterattitudinal advocacy containing either strong or weak arguments that emanated from a source of either high or low expertise. For some subjects, the communication was high in personal relevance, whereas for others it was low. Interactions of the personal relevance manipulation with the argument quality and expertise manipulations revealed that under high relevance, attitudes were influenced primarily by the quality of the arguments in the message, whereas under low relevance, attitudes were influenced primarily by the expertise of the source. This suggests that the personal relevance of an issue is one determinant of the route to persuasion that will be followed. In a recent review of the numerous approaches to attitude change that have developed over the past 35 years, Petty and Cacioppo (1981) suggested that these many approaches could be seen as proposing two distinct routes to persuasion. One, called the central route, views attitude change as resulting from a diligent consideration of issuerelevant arguments. The approaches that fall under this route have emphasized such factors as the comprehension, learning, and retention of message arguments (e.g., Eagly, 1974; McGuire, 1968; Miller & Campbell, 1959); the self-generation of arguments (e.g., The data reported here are based in part on a master's thesis conducted by the third author under the supervision of the first two authors. The advice of thesis committee members Russell Geen, Donald Granberg, and Larry Siegel is acknowledged with thanks. We also thank Stan Wilensky and Don Fry for providing access to the University of Missouri learning lab facilities.

A pilot study and an experiment were conducted to test the view that the number of arguments in a message could affect agreement with a communication by serving as a simple acceptance cue when personal involvement was low but could affect agreement by enhancing issue-relevant thinking when personal involvement was high. In addition to manipulating the personal relevance of the communication topic in each study, both the number and the quality of the arguments in the message were-varied. In the pilot study, when the issue was of low relevance, subjects showed more agreement in response to a message containing six arguments (3 strong and 3 weak) than to messages containing either three strong or three weak arguments. Under high involvement, however, the six-argument message did not increase agreement over the message containing only three strong arguments. In the full experiment, subjects received either three or nine arguments that were either all cogent or all specious under conditions of either high or low involvement. The manipulation of argument number had a greater impact under low than under high involvement, but the manipulation of argument quality had a greater impact under high than under low involvement. Together, the studies indicated that increasing the number of arguments in a message could affect persuasion whether or not the actual content of the arguments was scrutinized.Persuasion is defined by the presentation of persuasive arguments, and the accumulated research in social psychology has generally supported the view that increasing the number of arguments in a message enhances its persuasive impact (e.g., Eagly & Warren, 1976;Maddux & Rogers, 1980;Norman, 1976). Previous analyses of this effect have suggested that increasing the number of arguments in a message enhances persuasion by giving people more information to think about. More specifically, people are postulated to generate favorable issue-relevant thoughts in response to cogent issue-relevant arguments, and the more Portions of this article were presented at a symposium during the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, August 1982, in Washington, DC.The authors would like to thank Kathy Morris, Rob Greene, and Nancy Stabler for their considerable help in conducting and coding the research reported here, and Alice Eagly and Shelly Chaiken for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.