Beyond openness: Mapping need for cognition across Big Five domains and facets in university students

Abstract

Need for cognition (NFC) is closely associated with openness-related personality traits, but broad domains may obscure a more selective facet-level pattern. We examined NFC in 1551 university students using the Big Five Inventory–2 and a split-sample discovery–validation design. In discovery, three domains (Open-Mindedness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion) and four facets (Productiveness, Intellectual Curiosity, Assertiveness, and Creative Imagination) met the selected magnitude threshold. In held-out validation, all three domains remained independently associated with NFC, whereas at the facet level only Assertiveness, Intellectual Curiosity, and Productiveness did so. Complementary latent models indicated positive associations of NFC with both Intellectual Curiosity and Assertiveness, although a bifactor decomposition of Open-Mindedness was inadmissible and correlated-factor model fit was mixed. Overall, the findings support the particular importance of intellectual openness while indicating that NFC is also embedded in a selective cross-domain configuration involving agentic and goal-directed characteristics.