Yes, I Can: The Interplay of Need for Cognition and Task Confidence in Cognitive Task Performance

Need for Cognition (NFC) refers to the enjoyment of and the search for intellectual challenges. Although numerous studies suggest associations between NFC and cognitive performance, the processes and factors that may mediate the relationship are not yet well understood. Based on the literature suggesting that self-efficacy (SE) expectancies mediate the relationship between NFC and cognitive performance, we sought to investigate this relationship systematically under controlled laboratory conditions. Additionally, we were interested in whether the visibility of the test subject's performance to others (i.e., the experimenter) would influence these correlations. After an online questionnaire assessing NFC, 204 participants completed a set of highly demanding intelligence tasks in the laboratory. Following the sample tasks and prior to working through the task battery, task-specific SE about solving the tasks was assessed. To examine the role of visibility, participants either worked alone or were observed by the investigator while completing the tasks. We found a moderate positive association between NFC and task-specific SE, as well as a significant small positive association between NFC and task performance. Further analyses indicated that the relationship between NFC and task performance is fully mediated by task-specific SE, without any moderation effects related to the visibility of one's own task performance to others. Our study suggests that the relationship between NFC and cognitive performance is also due to the positive influence of NFC on task-specific SE, which in turn influences cognitive performance.