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The effects of Need for Cognition on Internet use revisited
Computers in Human Behavior Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 361–371 www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh
The effects of Need for Cognition on Internet use revisited Or Kaynar a, Yair Amichai-Hamburger
b,*
a
b
Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel Bezeq International Research Center for Internet Psychology, Sammy Ofer School of Communications, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya 46150, Israel Available online 27 March 2007
Abstract The Internet is the biggest information carrier of our times. However, there is little understanding of the interaction between the different behaviors of the various Internet users, and the variety of ways in which information in the Internet should be presented. This work continues previous research [Amichai-Hamburger, Y., Kaynar, O., & Fine, A. (2005). The effects of need for cognition on Internet use. Unpublished manuscript.] that examined the preferences of participants with varying level of Need for Cognition (NFC) [Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 116–131.] in internet sites varying in their interactivity. This article seeks to broaden the understanding of the behavior of people varying in NFC outside of research situations. We hypothesized that people high in NFC will use information services in the Internet relatively more than those with a low NFC. Furthermore, we hypothesized that people with a high NFC will perceive the informational characteristics of a website as the most important in the creation of a successful and convincing Internet site. Fifty experienced Web surfers filled out an Internet uses questionnaire in which they stated the amount of time they spend per week in 30 different Internet services. This data was later submitted to a Factor Analysis which revealed three major uses: professional, social and leisure. The participants filled out also a preferences questionnaire in which they stated their perceived importance of different characteristics in the creation of a successful and persuasive Internet site. Results support our hypothesis regarding the correlation between NFC and professional services use, and the perceived importance of information in creating a persuasive site. Several other findings are also discussed. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Internet; Personality; Need for Cognition
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +972 9 9527649; fax: +972 2 9527650. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Amichai-Hamburger).
0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2007.01.033
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1. Introduction The Internet is the fastest growing technology today, in terms of the number of users. VERISIGN, an Internet security company, estimates that the number of Internet users today is more than 900 million around the world. According to this data, the information traffic on the Internet doubles every 12–18 months. This is an unprecedented rate, achievable due to the Internet’s availability and accessibility on one hand, and on its abundance of information on the other. Despite its clear impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of users around the globe, our knowledge regarding the Internet’s psychological influence on its users is far from satisfying. Amichai-Hamburger (2005) suggests that this is a result of the lack of communication and knowledge exchange between Internet designers and psychologists. He emphasizes that this is particularly regrettable since the Internet’s unique abilities enables the creation of services tailored specifically for every user’s unique preferences and tendencies. In order to achieve this goal, Amichai-Hamburger argues that research should focus on the interaction between the Internet and its users personalities and preferences. Following this line of research we may review Amichai-Hamburger and Ben-Artzi (2000) work, which demonstrated the interaction between introversion, neuroticism and the use of Internet services. The researchers found a positive correlation between neuroticism, introversion and the use of Internet social services among women. Maldonado, Mora, Garcia, and Edipo (2001) evaluated computer-mediated messages and found that introvert subjects send messages with an extrovert tone. Their messages contained more information than those sent by extrovert subjects. These findings emphasize two important generalizations that are found in many of the works conducted on the relationship between personality and the Internet: The first is that in most cases the user’s behavior in the Internet does not duplicate his behavior in the ‘real world’, and in some cases the Internet behavior even contradicts the ‘real world’ behavior. The other generalization is that in a great number of cases, the Internet behavior enables the user to improve his psychological well-being because of the anonymity and high degree of control that characterizes most of the experience in the Internet. Another example for these intriguing relations between ‘real world’ behavior and online behavior may be found in Amichai-Hamburger, Fine, and Goldstein (2004) research that studied the interaction between the Need for closure, situational stress and behavior in a commercial site. The need for closure is a stable disposition which relates to the individual tendency toward epistemological needs. People who have a high need for closure are motivated to avoid uncertainties, and tend to ‘freeze’ the epistemic process when needed to form an opinion (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983). They often get locked in conceptions and ignore contradicting information. People with a low need for closure are predisposed to ‘unfreeze’ many alternative hypotheses and to test their hypothesis as often as possible. It was found that although the subject’s behavior in the Internet matched their expected behavior in a non-stressful condition, in a stressful time bound condition, the results countered the researchers initial hypothesis, and subjects with a high need for closure surfed in the research site for a longer period than subjects with low need for closure. These findings demonstrate once more the apparent difference between people’s behavior in the Internet and their behavior outside of the Internet. The Internet is, first and foremost, an information distribution tool. People vary in their tendency to engage and enjoy information handling and cognitive endeavors. Cacioppo
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and Petty (1982) named this tendency ‘Need for cognition’. It is considered a stable trait that may be influenced by certain situational factors (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996). The differences in this tendency range from individuals described as having a ‘low need for cognition,’ i.e. those who do not enjoy cognitive efforts and when dealing with complicated issues will prefer to rely on the opinion of others, preferably experts. They are also people who acquire information by using simple clues offered by their environment. When receiving a message, these individuals tend to accommodate their reaction to the speaker’s physical attractiveness (Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman, 1981) or the number of arguments included in the message (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984). On the other end of the scale are individuals found to have a ‘high need for cognition.’ These are described as having a natural motivation to seek knowledge, and so will acquire more information and engage in it (Verplanken, Hazenberg, & Palene´wen, 1992). They are highly intrinsic, motivated, and curious (Olson, Camp, & Fuller, 1984), with a strong need for control over their environment (Thompson, Chaiken, & Hazelwood, 1993). The different behaviors of people varying in their need for cognition has been tested in numerous situations, such as information recall, various cognitive tests, and knowledge tests (Cacioppo et al., 1996). This tendency was recently tested in an Internet environment by Amichai-Hamburger, Kaynar, and Fine (2007). The researchers used two experimental Internet sites, varying in the presence of hyper-links in them, to examine whether subjects varying in need for cognition use hyperlinks in a different proportion, and whether there were differences in subjects’ preferences and willingness to return to the interactive (hyper-links containing site) vs. the ‘flat’ (not containing hyper-links site) site. Results demonstrated a tendency of subjects with a low need for cognition to want to return to the interactive site in favor of the ‘flat’ site. This tendency was not found among subjects with high need for cognition. The researchers hypothesized that these findings are aligned with Petty and Cacioppo’s (1981) elaboration likelihood model (ELM), according to which in situations of low personal relevancy people with a low need for cognition will be affected by ‘peripheral’ attributes of a message, that is attributes that are not inherent to the strength or veracity of the arguments in the message, such as the number of the arguments, the appearance of the message bearer and other heuristics. This affect will not be apparent in people with a high need for cognition that seek the ‘central’ route for persuasion which is based on the argument merits and veracity. The researchers claimed that the ‘interactive’ site is more attractive in appearance than the ‘flat’ site, and therefore served as a peripheral cue for subjects with a low need for cognition and not for people with a high need for cognition. However, the researchers could not prove directly whether people with a high need for cognition do search for information in the Internet more than people with a low need for cognition, and whether they see the ‘informational’ attributes, or content, to be more important for creating a persuasive and successful Internet site than other ‘non-informational’ attributes, such as the graphic interface of the site, the character who presents the information and so on. The present research is intended to deal with these questions. In addition, we hypothesize that since people with a high need for cognition seek information actively and enjoy engaging in activities involving information, and since the Internet is mostly an information technology, people with a high need for cognition will have bigger Internet experience than people with a low need for cognition in terms of total Internet experience and frequency of usage, and that people with a high need for cognition will spend more time in information services in the Internet than in other services.
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2. Method 2.1. Participants Fifty people, aged between 20 and 56 (M = 27.72), took part in this study (22 females and 28 males). All participants were volunteers. As a precondition to their enrollment for the study, all participants had to have prior experience in Internet use. The vast majority (34) had more than two years experience with the Internet. 2.2. Tools Need for cognition scale: Need for cognition was measured using the 18-item need for cognition scale (NCS) developed by Petty and Cacioppo (1984). Participants were asked to rate each statement on a scale of 1–5 (1 – agree strongly and 5 – disagree strongly). This scale produced fairly high levels of internal consistency of a = 0.72. Internet uses questionnaire: In order to measure the amount of time subjects spend in different services of the Internet we used the Internet service scale (ISS) developed by Amichai-Hamburger and Ben-Artzi (2000). The ISS includes a list of 30 different Internet services (e.g. ‘‘Using Email for work purposes’’). The subjects were requested to quote the number of minutes they invest in using the specified Internet services during a week. In addition the subjects were given five blank fields in order to add Internet uses that were not stated in the list. Hamburger and Ben-Artzi’s data provided, after a principal component factor analysis with Varimax rotation, three major factors that were identified as Information services, social services, and leisure services. Hills and Argyle (2003) found four major factors after the same analysis: work related services, social services, use-athome services, and leisure services. In the present study, we sought to validate one of these models, in addition to our previous hypothesis regarding the correlation between need for cognition and information related services. Preference questionnaire: We used a questionnaire consisting of 18 questions in order to measure the importance that subjects ascribe to information in creating a good Internet site. The questionnaire consisted of two major sections: In the first subjects were asked to rate the important different aspects of an Internet site (e.g. ‘‘unique visual features’’) on a scale of 1–5 (1 = not important at all, 5 = very important) in creating a successful Internet site, in the second they were asked to rate the same aspects in creating a persuasive Internet site. The items were later categorized as ‘‘information based’’ vs. ‘‘peripheral based’’ and each subject was graded on each category. The information based items reached an internal consistency of a = 0.82, and the peripheral based items reached internal consistency of a = 0.71. Demographic details questionnaire: The demographic section of the questionnaire included items referring to participants’ gender, age, years of education, length of prior Internet experience, average time of daily use on the Internet, and number of Internet entrances per week. 2.3. Procedure The participants were given the questionnaires in alternate order to counterbalance the order effect. After completion of the questionnaires filling, participants were fully debriefed as to the rationale and objectives of the research.
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3. Results 3.1. Confirmatory factor analysis In order to examine our hypothesis that people with a high need for cognition spend in the Internet more time in information services than in other services, and in order to validate the structure of Internet uses factors, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis for the Internet uses questionnaire (Amichai-Hamburger & Ben-Artzi, 2000). A principal components factor analysis with a Varimax rotation was conducted. Four items were not included in the analysis because no participant stated he uses them (using E-mail for romantic purposes, using ICQ to create new connections, downloading games, and on-line gambling). The preliminary un-rotated analysis came up with six factors with eigenvalue > 1, that are accountable altogether for 78.9% of the total variance. In order to increase the reliability of the analysis we canceled seven items that had a loading higher than 0.40 on two factors or more: chat with people who have common interests, using E-mail for connecting friends, on-line games, professional software downloading, using news sites and using adult content sites. A principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation that was conducted on the 19 items left came up with three factors with eigenvalue > 1, that are accountable altogether for 58.6% of the total variance. Table 1 displays the item factor loadings on the solution found. Factor 1 accounts for 34.5% of the total variance and contains eight items (with loadings higher than 0.40). The items in this factor contain using Chat and Real time messaging (ICQ) to establish connection with friends and occurring participants, using on-line discussion groups (forums) for exchanging information, for common interest issues, for discussions over daily issues, and for acquisition of general information. This factor was named Social Services due to the fact that almost all the items included in him, excluding acquisition of general information, deal with communicating others via the Internet. Internal reliability for this factor is a = 0.91. Factor 2 accounts for 13.8% of the total variance and contains five items. The items in this factor contain using E-mail and real time messaging (ICQ) for work purposes, getting information for studies and buying food and other things in the internet. This factor was named Professional Services due to the fact that it includes items relating to needs deriving from work – work, studies, or on-line shopping. Internal reliability for this factor is a = 0.70. Factor 3 accounts for 10.4% of the total variance and contains three items. The items in this factor are downloading music, participation in auctions or special sales and online banking. This factor was named Leisure Services due to the fact that it includes services that are usually used by people on their free time. Internal reliability for this factor is a = 0.45, and might be low because of the small number of items contained in the factor. We calculated a grade for each participant on each item by summing up the hours the participant spent in services included in the factors. Due to the fact that both Social Services and Professional Services include items related to information, we tested the correlation between Need for Cognition and each of these factors. The correlation between Need for Cognition and information usage factors: In order to analyze the correlation between Need for Cognition and the usage of information services in the Internet, two simple Pearson correlations were conducted, The first between Need for Cognition (NFC) and using social services, and the second between NFC and using
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Table 1 Principal components factor analysis with Varimax rotation on the Internet uses questionnaire: factors and item loadings Factor/item name
Item loadings 1
Social services Real time debating/chat E-mail for studies Real time messaging (ICQ) with friends Real time messaging (ICQ) with occasional Participants Information exchange discussion groups (Forums) Discussion groups over daily issues Common interest forums Getting information in general
2
0.92 0.86 0.94 0.72 0.95 0.86 0.96 0.61
Professional services E-mail for work Real time messaging (ICQ) for work Getting information for studies Food shopping Other shopping
0.71 0.71 0.47 0.73 0.64
Leisure services Downloading music Auctions public sales participation On line banking Explained variance (%)
3
0.62 0.44 0.77 34.5
13.8
10.4
professional services in the Internet. Table 2 presents the correlation values for both analysis. The analysis demonstrated a marginal difference between Need for Cognition and using professional services (r = 0.205, p = 0.07). A correlation between Need for Cognition and using social services was not demonstrated. The analysis demonstrated that social services and professional services in the Internet are indeed defined and separate in terms of use, and the correlation between them is low. In order to test the hypothesis that there are correlations between Need for Cognition, the perceived importance of information in Internet sites to create a successful site, and the perceived importance of information in Internet site to create a persuasive site. Table 3 presents the correlations between these variables. Table 4 presents the correlations
Table 2 Pearson correlations between Need for Cognition (NFC) and using social services and professional services in the Internet Need for cognition Need for cognition Using social services *
p < 0.1.
Using social services 0.043
Using professional services 0.205* 0.161
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Table 3 Pearson correlations between the need for cognition, the perceived importance of information, the perceived importance of environmental characteristics in creating a successful and a persuading Internet site 1 1. Need for Cognition 2. The perceived importance of information in creating a successful Internet site 3. The perceived importance of environmental characteristics in creating a successful Internet site 4. The perceived importance of information in creating a persuading Internet site 5. The perceived importance of information in creating a successful Internet site * **
2 0.18
3
4 *
0.23 0.25*
5 *
0.26 0.30*
0.23* 0.01
0.10
0.25* 0.50**
p < 0.05. p < 0.001.
between the specific items presented to subjects and Need for Cognition. According to our hypothesis we found a significant correlation between Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of information in Internet site to create a persuasive site (r = 0.26, p < 0.05), so that subjects with a high Need for Cognition tend to see information as an important factor in creating a persuasive Internet site. No significant correlation was found between Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of information in Internet sites to create a successful site. We conducted Pearson correlations between the Need for Cognition, and the perceived importance of various environmental characteristics such as the graphic user interface (GUI), unique visual elements, etc. in creating a successful Table 4 Pearson correlations between the Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of various Internet site characteristics on creating a successful or persuading Internet site Need for Cognition The influence of unique visual characteristics in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of the logical order of information presented in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of the person presenting the information in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of technological advanced features in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of a logical theme in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of the price of the product presented in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of the GUI (graphic user interface) in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of information amount in creating a successful Internet site The influence of interesting information in creating a successful Internet site The influence of clear and sufficient explanations in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of unique visual characteristics in creating a successful Internet site The influence of the logical order of information presented in creating a successful Internet site The influence of challenging and inspiring information presented in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of an interesting site operation in creating a successful Internet site * **
p < 0.05. p < 0.01.
0.08 0.17 0.06 0.28** 0.1 0.33** 0.45** 0.11 0.11 0.35** 0.05 0.31* 0.23 0.27
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Internet site, and in creating a persuading Internet site. We found a negative correlation (r = 0.23, p < 0.05) between the Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of environmental characteristics in creating successful Internet sites. In addition, we found a surprising positive correlation between Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of environmental characteristics in creating a persuading Internet site (r = 0.23, p < 0.05). We found a strong positive correlation between the two elements that we tested, the informational element and the environmental element, and between these elements and creating successful Internet site. 4. Discussion Our main hypothesis dealt with the connection between Need for Cognition and usage of various kinds of information services existing in the Internet. We hypothesized that participants with a high Need for Cognition are using information services in the Internet to a greater extent than their low Need for Cognition counterparts. We hypothesized that the greater usage reflects both in a higher rate of usage of such sites and in spending more time in information sites during their entries. In order to distinguish between information services and other services, we conducted a Factor Analysis for the 30 items that are included in the Internet uses questionnaire. This analysis demonstrated three factors, or service clusters: 1. Using social services – such as Chat rooms (Chats), On-line forums on common interest subjects, and general knowledge acquisition. 2. Using professional services – such as using real-time messaging (ICQ) and Email for work related purposes, and acquiring information for study purposes. 3. Using leisure services – such as music downloading and on-line banking. Factors 1 and 2 contain both services related to information, so that our quest to find a single factor dealing exclusively with information was not met. The items included in the social services factor deal mainly with general information and information acquired for no particular reason, while the items in the professional services factor deal with items connected to dimensions in one’s life that usually require information handling, such as studies and work. Our findings demonstrate the former findings of Hills and Argyle (2003), who found four factors in a similar factor analysis on the same questionnaire: 1. Work related factor – such as acquiring information needed for work, using E-mail for work related purposes, finding addresses, and news sites. 2. Social needs related factor – such as acquiring general information, acquiring information related to studies, using E-mail to maintain contact with friends. 3. Use-at-home services factor – such as on-line shopping, surfing in adult content sites, and on-line banking. 4. Leisure services factor – such as chat rooms and on-line gaming. Our findings replicate Hills and Argyle’s findings almost entirely, excluding Hills and Argyle’s distinction between use-at-home services and leisure services that was not demonstrated in our sample. A possible explanation for this difference may be the time difference
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between the collecting of our sample and Hills and Argyle’s sample. Hills and Argyle’s data were collected during 2001–2002, when services such as on-line shopping only started to emerge, and on-line shopping, especially food shopping, was still relatively rare. Our data was collected two years later, and demonstrates a strong correlation between work related items, such as using real-time messaging and Emailing on work related topics, and on-line food shopping. Thus it is reasonable to hypothesize that on-line food shopping is not perceived by our participants as a leisure activity, but rather as a necessity, a need created by the nature of their work and lack of time or will to shop in other ways. This is a pattern of ‘Internet needs shopping’, in contrary to ‘Internet leisure shopping’. Our finding, that leisure services are not correlated with professional services (r = 0.076) may support this hypothesis – The more one uses professional services in the Internet, the less he uses leisure services, probably due to lack of free time. This was also found by Hills and Argyle – their study demonstrated a strong correlation between using work factor services and spending time in the Internet in work at general. Our findings support the ‘location based’ approach of Hills and Argyle for Internet service clustering: The use of Internet services cannot be examined by merely the type of service, but the location in which the site is being used is very important as well. The use of professional services is usually done at work or study location, while the use of social and leisure services is usually located in one’s home. This use pattern might change in the upcoming years with the massive introduction of laptop computers, and the fast development of wireless Internet networks such as Wi-Fi. The ability to use the same computer for different needs in different environments, such as using a laptop at home for work purposes, might change the Internet use pattern presented in our study. Our first hypothesis was only partially supported – We found a marginal correlation between Need for Cognition and professional services, and no correlation between Need for Cognition and social services use. A possible reason for these findings may lie in our definition of social services as information services. Our social services factor includes mainly items that enable the user to maintain his social connections on-line, such as Chat rooms, real-time messaging systems, and on-line Forums enabling the exchange of opinions between Internet users. These services, although enabling the user to acquire information on his social environment, may reflect Cacioppo and Petty’s (1982) description of the way people low in Need for Cognition organize their view of the world: Social comparison, listening to the opinions of important others, etc. These services comply very partially with Cacioppo and Petty’s definition of Need for Cognition as a tendency to engage in ‘‘. . .Effortful cognitive activity’’, a definition that describes professional services better. Furthermore, other studies did not find correlations between sociability and Need for Cognition (Cheek & Buss, 1981), they found positive a correlation between Need for Cognition and internal locus of control (Crowley & Hoyer, 1989), and negative correlation between Need for Cognition and self-monitoring (Miller, Omens, & Delvadia, 1991). These findings suggest that people high in Need for Cognition are not necessarily with high social capabilities, and therefore we can try to explain the low correlation between Need for Cognition and use of social services in the Internet. However, the confusion regarding the nature of ‘‘Information’’ in the Internet, as a media constructed by different types of information (verbal, visual, audio, etc.), requires further clarification in the future. The hypothesis regarding the correlation between Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of information in creating a successful and persuasive Internet site were partially demonstrated. We found a positive correlation between the perceived importance of
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information in creating a persuasive site and Need for Cognition, however, we did not find a positive correlation between the perceived importance of in formation in creating a successful site and Need for Cognition. This finding suggests that our participants differentiated successful Internet sites from persuading Internet sites. We also found a negative correlation between the perceived importance of environmental characteristics (such as GUI and technological advancements) in creating a successful Internet site and Need for Cognition. A surprising finding is the positive correlation between the perceived importance of environmental characteristics in creating a persuasive site and Need for Cognition. It seems that the results received for a successful Internet site are closer to our hypothesis than the results regarding the creation of a persuasive site – our participants did not differ between information and environmental characteristics in creating such a site. A possible explanation lies, again, in this study’s inability to distinguish between textual information and other types of information included in Internet sites. In this sense it is interesting to note the strong positive correlation found between Need for Cognition and the influence of the GUI (graphic user interface) in creating a persuasive Internet site (r = 0.45, p < 0.01). It is obvious that participants with a high Need for Cognition are aware of the importance of graphic-visual elements in an Internet site in creating a persuasive site. Furthermore, excellence in creating graphically rich sites may imply excellence in other aspects, such as information quality. The current study demonstrates the many facets information has in the Internet, and its vast variety and influence on users. Since we depend more and more on the Internet as information provider, it is important to continue and investigate ways to improve the quality of information in the Internet, and better ways to transfer it to users. References Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2005). Personality and the Internet. In Y. Amichai-Hamburger (Ed.), The social net: Human behavior in cyberspace (pp. 27–55). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Amichai-Hamburger, Y., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2000). The relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and the different uses of the internet. Computers in Human Behavior, 16, 441–449. Amichai-Hamburger, Y., Fine, A., & Goldstein, A. (2004). The impact of Internet interactivity and need for closure on consumer preference. Computers in Human Behavior, 20, 103–117. Amichai-Hamburger, Y., Kaynar, O., & Fine, A. (2007). The effects of need for cognition on Internet use. Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 880–891. Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 116–131. Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., Feinstein, J. A., & Jarvis, W. B. G. (1996). Dispositional differences in cognitive motivation: the life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 197–253. Cheek, J. M., & Buss, A. (1981). Shyness and sociability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 330–339. Crowley, A. E., & Hoyer, W. D. (1989). The relationship between need for cognition and other individual difference variables: a two-dimensional framework. Advances in Consumer Research, 16, 37–43. Hills, P., & Argyle, M. (2003). Uses of the Internet and their relationships with individual differences in personality. Computers in Human Behavior, 19, 59–70. Kruglanski, A. W., & Freund, T. (1983). The freezing and unfreezing of lay-inferences: effects on impressional primacy, ethnic stereotyping, and numerical anchoring. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 448–468. Maldonado, G. J., Mora, M., Garcia, S., & Edipo, P. (2001). Personality, sex and communication mediated through the Internet. Annuario de Psicologia, 32, 51–62.
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Miller, M. L., Omens, R. S., & Delvadia, R. (1991). Dimensions of social competence: personality and coping style correlates. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 955–964. Olson, K., Camp, C., & Fuller, D. (1984). Curiosity and need for cognition. Psychological Reports, 54, 71–74. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1981). Attitudes and persuasion: Classic and contemporary approaches. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1984). The effects of involvement on response to argument quantity and quality: central and peripheral routes to persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 69–81. Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Goldman, R. (1981). Personal involvement as a determinant of argument-based persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 847–855. Thompson, E. P., Chaiken, S., & Hazelwood, J. D. (1993). Need for cognition and desire for control as moderators for extrinsic award effect: a person X situation approach to the study of intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 987–999. Verplanken, B., Hazenberg, P. T., & Palene´wen, G. R. (1992). Need for cognition and external information search. Journal of Research in Personality, 26, 128–136.
The effects of Need for Cognition on Internet use revisited Or Kaynar a, Yair Amichai-Hamburger
b,*
a
b
Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel Bezeq International Research Center for Internet Psychology, Sammy Ofer School of Communications, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya 46150, Israel Available online 27 March 2007
Abstract The Internet is the biggest information carrier of our times. However, there is little understanding of the interaction between the different behaviors of the various Internet users, and the variety of ways in which information in the Internet should be presented. This work continues previous research [Amichai-Hamburger, Y., Kaynar, O., & Fine, A. (2005). The effects of need for cognition on Internet use. Unpublished manuscript.] that examined the preferences of participants with varying level of Need for Cognition (NFC) [Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 116–131.] in internet sites varying in their interactivity. This article seeks to broaden the understanding of the behavior of people varying in NFC outside of research situations. We hypothesized that people high in NFC will use information services in the Internet relatively more than those with a low NFC. Furthermore, we hypothesized that people with a high NFC will perceive the informational characteristics of a website as the most important in the creation of a successful and convincing Internet site. Fifty experienced Web surfers filled out an Internet uses questionnaire in which they stated the amount of time they spend per week in 30 different Internet services. This data was later submitted to a Factor Analysis which revealed three major uses: professional, social and leisure. The participants filled out also a preferences questionnaire in which they stated their perceived importance of different characteristics in the creation of a successful and persuasive Internet site. Results support our hypothesis regarding the correlation between NFC and professional services use, and the perceived importance of information in creating a persuasive site. Several other findings are also discussed. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Internet; Personality; Need for Cognition
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +972 9 9527649; fax: +972 2 9527650. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Amichai-Hamburger).
0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2007.01.033
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1. Introduction The Internet is the fastest growing technology today, in terms of the number of users. VERISIGN, an Internet security company, estimates that the number of Internet users today is more than 900 million around the world. According to this data, the information traffic on the Internet doubles every 12–18 months. This is an unprecedented rate, achievable due to the Internet’s availability and accessibility on one hand, and on its abundance of information on the other. Despite its clear impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of users around the globe, our knowledge regarding the Internet’s psychological influence on its users is far from satisfying. Amichai-Hamburger (2005) suggests that this is a result of the lack of communication and knowledge exchange between Internet designers and psychologists. He emphasizes that this is particularly regrettable since the Internet’s unique abilities enables the creation of services tailored specifically for every user’s unique preferences and tendencies. In order to achieve this goal, Amichai-Hamburger argues that research should focus on the interaction between the Internet and its users personalities and preferences. Following this line of research we may review Amichai-Hamburger and Ben-Artzi (2000) work, which demonstrated the interaction between introversion, neuroticism and the use of Internet services. The researchers found a positive correlation between neuroticism, introversion and the use of Internet social services among women. Maldonado, Mora, Garcia, and Edipo (2001) evaluated computer-mediated messages and found that introvert subjects send messages with an extrovert tone. Their messages contained more information than those sent by extrovert subjects. These findings emphasize two important generalizations that are found in many of the works conducted on the relationship between personality and the Internet: The first is that in most cases the user’s behavior in the Internet does not duplicate his behavior in the ‘real world’, and in some cases the Internet behavior even contradicts the ‘real world’ behavior. The other generalization is that in a great number of cases, the Internet behavior enables the user to improve his psychological well-being because of the anonymity and high degree of control that characterizes most of the experience in the Internet. Another example for these intriguing relations between ‘real world’ behavior and online behavior may be found in Amichai-Hamburger, Fine, and Goldstein (2004) research that studied the interaction between the Need for closure, situational stress and behavior in a commercial site. The need for closure is a stable disposition which relates to the individual tendency toward epistemological needs. People who have a high need for closure are motivated to avoid uncertainties, and tend to ‘freeze’ the epistemic process when needed to form an opinion (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983). They often get locked in conceptions and ignore contradicting information. People with a low need for closure are predisposed to ‘unfreeze’ many alternative hypotheses and to test their hypothesis as often as possible. It was found that although the subject’s behavior in the Internet matched their expected behavior in a non-stressful condition, in a stressful time bound condition, the results countered the researchers initial hypothesis, and subjects with a high need for closure surfed in the research site for a longer period than subjects with low need for closure. These findings demonstrate once more the apparent difference between people’s behavior in the Internet and their behavior outside of the Internet. The Internet is, first and foremost, an information distribution tool. People vary in their tendency to engage and enjoy information handling and cognitive endeavors. Cacioppo
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and Petty (1982) named this tendency ‘Need for cognition’. It is considered a stable trait that may be influenced by certain situational factors (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996). The differences in this tendency range from individuals described as having a ‘low need for cognition,’ i.e. those who do not enjoy cognitive efforts and when dealing with complicated issues will prefer to rely on the opinion of others, preferably experts. They are also people who acquire information by using simple clues offered by their environment. When receiving a message, these individuals tend to accommodate their reaction to the speaker’s physical attractiveness (Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman, 1981) or the number of arguments included in the message (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984). On the other end of the scale are individuals found to have a ‘high need for cognition.’ These are described as having a natural motivation to seek knowledge, and so will acquire more information and engage in it (Verplanken, Hazenberg, & Palene´wen, 1992). They are highly intrinsic, motivated, and curious (Olson, Camp, & Fuller, 1984), with a strong need for control over their environment (Thompson, Chaiken, & Hazelwood, 1993). The different behaviors of people varying in their need for cognition has been tested in numerous situations, such as information recall, various cognitive tests, and knowledge tests (Cacioppo et al., 1996). This tendency was recently tested in an Internet environment by Amichai-Hamburger, Kaynar, and Fine (2007). The researchers used two experimental Internet sites, varying in the presence of hyper-links in them, to examine whether subjects varying in need for cognition use hyperlinks in a different proportion, and whether there were differences in subjects’ preferences and willingness to return to the interactive (hyper-links containing site) vs. the ‘flat’ (not containing hyper-links site) site. Results demonstrated a tendency of subjects with a low need for cognition to want to return to the interactive site in favor of the ‘flat’ site. This tendency was not found among subjects with high need for cognition. The researchers hypothesized that these findings are aligned with Petty and Cacioppo’s (1981) elaboration likelihood model (ELM), according to which in situations of low personal relevancy people with a low need for cognition will be affected by ‘peripheral’ attributes of a message, that is attributes that are not inherent to the strength or veracity of the arguments in the message, such as the number of the arguments, the appearance of the message bearer and other heuristics. This affect will not be apparent in people with a high need for cognition that seek the ‘central’ route for persuasion which is based on the argument merits and veracity. The researchers claimed that the ‘interactive’ site is more attractive in appearance than the ‘flat’ site, and therefore served as a peripheral cue for subjects with a low need for cognition and not for people with a high need for cognition. However, the researchers could not prove directly whether people with a high need for cognition do search for information in the Internet more than people with a low need for cognition, and whether they see the ‘informational’ attributes, or content, to be more important for creating a persuasive and successful Internet site than other ‘non-informational’ attributes, such as the graphic interface of the site, the character who presents the information and so on. The present research is intended to deal with these questions. In addition, we hypothesize that since people with a high need for cognition seek information actively and enjoy engaging in activities involving information, and since the Internet is mostly an information technology, people with a high need for cognition will have bigger Internet experience than people with a low need for cognition in terms of total Internet experience and frequency of usage, and that people with a high need for cognition will spend more time in information services in the Internet than in other services.
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2. Method 2.1. Participants Fifty people, aged between 20 and 56 (M = 27.72), took part in this study (22 females and 28 males). All participants were volunteers. As a precondition to their enrollment for the study, all participants had to have prior experience in Internet use. The vast majority (34) had more than two years experience with the Internet. 2.2. Tools Need for cognition scale: Need for cognition was measured using the 18-item need for cognition scale (NCS) developed by Petty and Cacioppo (1984). Participants were asked to rate each statement on a scale of 1–5 (1 – agree strongly and 5 – disagree strongly). This scale produced fairly high levels of internal consistency of a = 0.72. Internet uses questionnaire: In order to measure the amount of time subjects spend in different services of the Internet we used the Internet service scale (ISS) developed by Amichai-Hamburger and Ben-Artzi (2000). The ISS includes a list of 30 different Internet services (e.g. ‘‘Using Email for work purposes’’). The subjects were requested to quote the number of minutes they invest in using the specified Internet services during a week. In addition the subjects were given five blank fields in order to add Internet uses that were not stated in the list. Hamburger and Ben-Artzi’s data provided, after a principal component factor analysis with Varimax rotation, three major factors that were identified as Information services, social services, and leisure services. Hills and Argyle (2003) found four major factors after the same analysis: work related services, social services, use-athome services, and leisure services. In the present study, we sought to validate one of these models, in addition to our previous hypothesis regarding the correlation between need for cognition and information related services. Preference questionnaire: We used a questionnaire consisting of 18 questions in order to measure the importance that subjects ascribe to information in creating a good Internet site. The questionnaire consisted of two major sections: In the first subjects were asked to rate the important different aspects of an Internet site (e.g. ‘‘unique visual features’’) on a scale of 1–5 (1 = not important at all, 5 = very important) in creating a successful Internet site, in the second they were asked to rate the same aspects in creating a persuasive Internet site. The items were later categorized as ‘‘information based’’ vs. ‘‘peripheral based’’ and each subject was graded on each category. The information based items reached an internal consistency of a = 0.82, and the peripheral based items reached internal consistency of a = 0.71. Demographic details questionnaire: The demographic section of the questionnaire included items referring to participants’ gender, age, years of education, length of prior Internet experience, average time of daily use on the Internet, and number of Internet entrances per week. 2.3. Procedure The participants were given the questionnaires in alternate order to counterbalance the order effect. After completion of the questionnaires filling, participants were fully debriefed as to the rationale and objectives of the research.
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3. Results 3.1. Confirmatory factor analysis In order to examine our hypothesis that people with a high need for cognition spend in the Internet more time in information services than in other services, and in order to validate the structure of Internet uses factors, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis for the Internet uses questionnaire (Amichai-Hamburger & Ben-Artzi, 2000). A principal components factor analysis with a Varimax rotation was conducted. Four items were not included in the analysis because no participant stated he uses them (using E-mail for romantic purposes, using ICQ to create new connections, downloading games, and on-line gambling). The preliminary un-rotated analysis came up with six factors with eigenvalue > 1, that are accountable altogether for 78.9% of the total variance. In order to increase the reliability of the analysis we canceled seven items that had a loading higher than 0.40 on two factors or more: chat with people who have common interests, using E-mail for connecting friends, on-line games, professional software downloading, using news sites and using adult content sites. A principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation that was conducted on the 19 items left came up with three factors with eigenvalue > 1, that are accountable altogether for 58.6% of the total variance. Table 1 displays the item factor loadings on the solution found. Factor 1 accounts for 34.5% of the total variance and contains eight items (with loadings higher than 0.40). The items in this factor contain using Chat and Real time messaging (ICQ) to establish connection with friends and occurring participants, using on-line discussion groups (forums) for exchanging information, for common interest issues, for discussions over daily issues, and for acquisition of general information. This factor was named Social Services due to the fact that almost all the items included in him, excluding acquisition of general information, deal with communicating others via the Internet. Internal reliability for this factor is a = 0.91. Factor 2 accounts for 13.8% of the total variance and contains five items. The items in this factor contain using E-mail and real time messaging (ICQ) for work purposes, getting information for studies and buying food and other things in the internet. This factor was named Professional Services due to the fact that it includes items relating to needs deriving from work – work, studies, or on-line shopping. Internal reliability for this factor is a = 0.70. Factor 3 accounts for 10.4% of the total variance and contains three items. The items in this factor are downloading music, participation in auctions or special sales and online banking. This factor was named Leisure Services due to the fact that it includes services that are usually used by people on their free time. Internal reliability for this factor is a = 0.45, and might be low because of the small number of items contained in the factor. We calculated a grade for each participant on each item by summing up the hours the participant spent in services included in the factors. Due to the fact that both Social Services and Professional Services include items related to information, we tested the correlation between Need for Cognition and each of these factors. The correlation between Need for Cognition and information usage factors: In order to analyze the correlation between Need for Cognition and the usage of information services in the Internet, two simple Pearson correlations were conducted, The first between Need for Cognition (NFC) and using social services, and the second between NFC and using
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Table 1 Principal components factor analysis with Varimax rotation on the Internet uses questionnaire: factors and item loadings Factor/item name
Item loadings 1
Social services Real time debating/chat E-mail for studies Real time messaging (ICQ) with friends Real time messaging (ICQ) with occasional Participants Information exchange discussion groups (Forums) Discussion groups over daily issues Common interest forums Getting information in general
2
0.92 0.86 0.94 0.72 0.95 0.86 0.96 0.61
Professional services E-mail for work Real time messaging (ICQ) for work Getting information for studies Food shopping Other shopping
0.71 0.71 0.47 0.73 0.64
Leisure services Downloading music Auctions public sales participation On line banking Explained variance (%)
3
0.62 0.44 0.77 34.5
13.8
10.4
professional services in the Internet. Table 2 presents the correlation values for both analysis. The analysis demonstrated a marginal difference between Need for Cognition and using professional services (r = 0.205, p = 0.07). A correlation between Need for Cognition and using social services was not demonstrated. The analysis demonstrated that social services and professional services in the Internet are indeed defined and separate in terms of use, and the correlation between them is low. In order to test the hypothesis that there are correlations between Need for Cognition, the perceived importance of information in Internet sites to create a successful site, and the perceived importance of information in Internet site to create a persuasive site. Table 3 presents the correlations between these variables. Table 4 presents the correlations
Table 2 Pearson correlations between Need for Cognition (NFC) and using social services and professional services in the Internet Need for cognition Need for cognition Using social services *
p < 0.1.
Using social services 0.043
Using professional services 0.205* 0.161
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Table 3 Pearson correlations between the need for cognition, the perceived importance of information, the perceived importance of environmental characteristics in creating a successful and a persuading Internet site 1 1. Need for Cognition 2. The perceived importance of information in creating a successful Internet site 3. The perceived importance of environmental characteristics in creating a successful Internet site 4. The perceived importance of information in creating a persuading Internet site 5. The perceived importance of information in creating a successful Internet site * **
2 0.18
3
4 *
0.23 0.25*
5 *
0.26 0.30*
0.23* 0.01
0.10
0.25* 0.50**
p < 0.05. p < 0.001.
between the specific items presented to subjects and Need for Cognition. According to our hypothesis we found a significant correlation between Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of information in Internet site to create a persuasive site (r = 0.26, p < 0.05), so that subjects with a high Need for Cognition tend to see information as an important factor in creating a persuasive Internet site. No significant correlation was found between Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of information in Internet sites to create a successful site. We conducted Pearson correlations between the Need for Cognition, and the perceived importance of various environmental characteristics such as the graphic user interface (GUI), unique visual elements, etc. in creating a successful Table 4 Pearson correlations between the Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of various Internet site characteristics on creating a successful or persuading Internet site Need for Cognition The influence of unique visual characteristics in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of the logical order of information presented in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of the person presenting the information in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of technological advanced features in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of a logical theme in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of the price of the product presented in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of the GUI (graphic user interface) in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of information amount in creating a successful Internet site The influence of interesting information in creating a successful Internet site The influence of clear and sufficient explanations in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of unique visual characteristics in creating a successful Internet site The influence of the logical order of information presented in creating a successful Internet site The influence of challenging and inspiring information presented in creating a persuasive Internet site The influence of an interesting site operation in creating a successful Internet site * **
p < 0.05. p < 0.01.
0.08 0.17 0.06 0.28** 0.1 0.33** 0.45** 0.11 0.11 0.35** 0.05 0.31* 0.23 0.27
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Internet site, and in creating a persuading Internet site. We found a negative correlation (r = 0.23, p < 0.05) between the Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of environmental characteristics in creating successful Internet sites. In addition, we found a surprising positive correlation between Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of environmental characteristics in creating a persuading Internet site (r = 0.23, p < 0.05). We found a strong positive correlation between the two elements that we tested, the informational element and the environmental element, and between these elements and creating successful Internet site. 4. Discussion Our main hypothesis dealt with the connection between Need for Cognition and usage of various kinds of information services existing in the Internet. We hypothesized that participants with a high Need for Cognition are using information services in the Internet to a greater extent than their low Need for Cognition counterparts. We hypothesized that the greater usage reflects both in a higher rate of usage of such sites and in spending more time in information sites during their entries. In order to distinguish between information services and other services, we conducted a Factor Analysis for the 30 items that are included in the Internet uses questionnaire. This analysis demonstrated three factors, or service clusters: 1. Using social services – such as Chat rooms (Chats), On-line forums on common interest subjects, and general knowledge acquisition. 2. Using professional services – such as using real-time messaging (ICQ) and Email for work related purposes, and acquiring information for study purposes. 3. Using leisure services – such as music downloading and on-line banking. Factors 1 and 2 contain both services related to information, so that our quest to find a single factor dealing exclusively with information was not met. The items included in the social services factor deal mainly with general information and information acquired for no particular reason, while the items in the professional services factor deal with items connected to dimensions in one’s life that usually require information handling, such as studies and work. Our findings demonstrate the former findings of Hills and Argyle (2003), who found four factors in a similar factor analysis on the same questionnaire: 1. Work related factor – such as acquiring information needed for work, using E-mail for work related purposes, finding addresses, and news sites. 2. Social needs related factor – such as acquiring general information, acquiring information related to studies, using E-mail to maintain contact with friends. 3. Use-at-home services factor – such as on-line shopping, surfing in adult content sites, and on-line banking. 4. Leisure services factor – such as chat rooms and on-line gaming. Our findings replicate Hills and Argyle’s findings almost entirely, excluding Hills and Argyle’s distinction between use-at-home services and leisure services that was not demonstrated in our sample. A possible explanation for this difference may be the time difference
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between the collecting of our sample and Hills and Argyle’s sample. Hills and Argyle’s data were collected during 2001–2002, when services such as on-line shopping only started to emerge, and on-line shopping, especially food shopping, was still relatively rare. Our data was collected two years later, and demonstrates a strong correlation between work related items, such as using real-time messaging and Emailing on work related topics, and on-line food shopping. Thus it is reasonable to hypothesize that on-line food shopping is not perceived by our participants as a leisure activity, but rather as a necessity, a need created by the nature of their work and lack of time or will to shop in other ways. This is a pattern of ‘Internet needs shopping’, in contrary to ‘Internet leisure shopping’. Our finding, that leisure services are not correlated with professional services (r = 0.076) may support this hypothesis – The more one uses professional services in the Internet, the less he uses leisure services, probably due to lack of free time. This was also found by Hills and Argyle – their study demonstrated a strong correlation between using work factor services and spending time in the Internet in work at general. Our findings support the ‘location based’ approach of Hills and Argyle for Internet service clustering: The use of Internet services cannot be examined by merely the type of service, but the location in which the site is being used is very important as well. The use of professional services is usually done at work or study location, while the use of social and leisure services is usually located in one’s home. This use pattern might change in the upcoming years with the massive introduction of laptop computers, and the fast development of wireless Internet networks such as Wi-Fi. The ability to use the same computer for different needs in different environments, such as using a laptop at home for work purposes, might change the Internet use pattern presented in our study. Our first hypothesis was only partially supported – We found a marginal correlation between Need for Cognition and professional services, and no correlation between Need for Cognition and social services use. A possible reason for these findings may lie in our definition of social services as information services. Our social services factor includes mainly items that enable the user to maintain his social connections on-line, such as Chat rooms, real-time messaging systems, and on-line Forums enabling the exchange of opinions between Internet users. These services, although enabling the user to acquire information on his social environment, may reflect Cacioppo and Petty’s (1982) description of the way people low in Need for Cognition organize their view of the world: Social comparison, listening to the opinions of important others, etc. These services comply very partially with Cacioppo and Petty’s definition of Need for Cognition as a tendency to engage in ‘‘. . .Effortful cognitive activity’’, a definition that describes professional services better. Furthermore, other studies did not find correlations between sociability and Need for Cognition (Cheek & Buss, 1981), they found positive a correlation between Need for Cognition and internal locus of control (Crowley & Hoyer, 1989), and negative correlation between Need for Cognition and self-monitoring (Miller, Omens, & Delvadia, 1991). These findings suggest that people high in Need for Cognition are not necessarily with high social capabilities, and therefore we can try to explain the low correlation between Need for Cognition and use of social services in the Internet. However, the confusion regarding the nature of ‘‘Information’’ in the Internet, as a media constructed by different types of information (verbal, visual, audio, etc.), requires further clarification in the future. The hypothesis regarding the correlation between Need for Cognition and the perceived importance of information in creating a successful and persuasive Internet site were partially demonstrated. We found a positive correlation between the perceived importance of
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information in creating a persuasive site and Need for Cognition, however, we did not find a positive correlation between the perceived importance of in formation in creating a successful site and Need for Cognition. This finding suggests that our participants differentiated successful Internet sites from persuading Internet sites. We also found a negative correlation between the perceived importance of environmental characteristics (such as GUI and technological advancements) in creating a successful Internet site and Need for Cognition. A surprising finding is the positive correlation between the perceived importance of environmental characteristics in creating a persuasive site and Need for Cognition. It seems that the results received for a successful Internet site are closer to our hypothesis than the results regarding the creation of a persuasive site – our participants did not differ between information and environmental characteristics in creating such a site. A possible explanation lies, again, in this study’s inability to distinguish between textual information and other types of information included in Internet sites. In this sense it is interesting to note the strong positive correlation found between Need for Cognition and the influence of the GUI (graphic user interface) in creating a persuasive Internet site (r = 0.45, p < 0.01). It is obvious that participants with a high Need for Cognition are aware of the importance of graphic-visual elements in an Internet site in creating a persuasive site. Furthermore, excellence in creating graphically rich sites may imply excellence in other aspects, such as information quality. The current study demonstrates the many facets information has in the Internet, and its vast variety and influence on users. Since we depend more and more on the Internet as information provider, it is important to continue and investigate ways to improve the quality of information in the Internet, and better ways to transfer it to users. References Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2005). Personality and the Internet. In Y. Amichai-Hamburger (Ed.), The social net: Human behavior in cyberspace (pp. 27–55). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Amichai-Hamburger, Y., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2000). The relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and the different uses of the internet. Computers in Human Behavior, 16, 441–449. Amichai-Hamburger, Y., Fine, A., & Goldstein, A. (2004). The impact of Internet interactivity and need for closure on consumer preference. Computers in Human Behavior, 20, 103–117. Amichai-Hamburger, Y., Kaynar, O., & Fine, A. (2007). The effects of need for cognition on Internet use. Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 880–891. Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 116–131. Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., Feinstein, J. A., & Jarvis, W. B. G. (1996). Dispositional differences in cognitive motivation: the life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 197–253. Cheek, J. M., & Buss, A. (1981). Shyness and sociability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 330–339. Crowley, A. E., & Hoyer, W. D. (1989). The relationship between need for cognition and other individual difference variables: a two-dimensional framework. Advances in Consumer Research, 16, 37–43. Hills, P., & Argyle, M. (2003). Uses of the Internet and their relationships with individual differences in personality. Computers in Human Behavior, 19, 59–70. Kruglanski, A. W., & Freund, T. (1983). The freezing and unfreezing of lay-inferences: effects on impressional primacy, ethnic stereotyping, and numerical anchoring. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 448–468. Maldonado, G. J., Mora, M., Garcia, S., & Edipo, P. (2001). Personality, sex and communication mediated through the Internet. Annuario de Psicologia, 32, 51–62.
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