How students build their performance expectancies: The importance of need for cognition

Individual differences in need for cognition (NFC) have been found to correspond with differences in information processing. Individuals with lower NFC process information using a peripheral route compared to individuals higher in NFC. These differences may effect the formation of performance expectancies. Based on previous work demonstrating that the formation of performance expectancies can be understood as an information-processing event and that inferring expectancies from the specific self-concept requires cognitive motivation, we tested whether students with higher NFC had performance expectancies in a specific subject that more strongly depended on their specific self-concept. Three hundred seventy-five students from grade 8 and 9 reported their NFC, their performance expectancies for the final report card in Mathematics and German, the general self-concept, and specific self-concepts in Mathematics and German. Multiple linear regressions supported the interaction hypothesis concerning performance expectancies in Mathematics and German. The higher the students’ NFC, the stronger performance expectancies were related to the corresponding specific self-concept. Individual differences in NFC influence motivational processes and should be included in models describing the relation between self-concepts and students’ beliefs like expectancies.