On the Interplay of Motivational Characteristics and Academic Achievement - The Role of Need for Cognition

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

The article examines how Need for Cognition (NFC)—a stable intrinsic motivation to engage in and enjoy challenging intellectual activity—contributes to academic achievement alongside well-established motivational constructs and prior performance. Using latent change score modeling, it tests incremental prediction across subjects in a two-wave longitudinal sample of secondary school students. Findings show NFC correlates with grades, adds unique predictive value beyond prior achievement and ability self-concept, and displays mutual influence with academic achievement, suggesting skill development and self-enhancement processes.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages15

Reading Time38 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Need for Cognition and academic achievement

Motivation models and existing evidence

Gap addressed and study approach

AERA Open January-December 2023, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 1–15 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584231218961 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2024. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) On the Interplay of Motivational Characteristics and Academic Achievement: The Role of Need for Cognition Anja Strobel Chemnitz University of Technology Alexander Strobel Technische Universität Dresden Franzis Preckel University of Trier Ricarda Steinmayr Technical University Dortmund While intelligence and motivational variables are well-established predictors of academic achievement, Need for Cognition (NFC), the stable intrinsic motivation to engage in and enjoy challenging intellectual activity, has not yet been considered comprehensively in this field, especially not longitudinally. By applying latent change score modeling, we examined the incremental value of NFC, considering well-established motivational constructs and prior achievement in the prediction of academic achievement across different subjects in a longitudinal approach across two time points in a sample of secondary school students ( NT1 = 271, NT2 = 255). Correlations of NFC with grades were comparable to those of established predictors. NFC incrementally predicted academic achievement over and above prior achievement and ability self-concept. A mutual influence of NFC and academic achievement was found pointing to skill development as well as self-enhancement processes taking place in this interplay. Consequently, we propose to include NFC in models for the comprehensive explanation of academic achievement in school. Keywords: academic achievement, academic self-concept, higher education, individual differences, latent change score modeling, longitudinal, motivation, Need for Cognition, psychology, school psychology, self-concept In recent decades, a great deal of research has been conducted on the prediction of academic achievement. While meta-analyses indicate that intelligence is the strongest predictor for academic achievement (e.g., Deary et al., 2007; Roth et al., 2015; Zaboski et al., 2018), motivational variables (e.g., ability self-concept, interests, and values) have consistently been found to have incremental value for academic achievement (e.g., Kriegbaum et al., 2018; Steinmayr et al., 2019) . Initially introduced in the context of social psychology, increasingly, an additional predictor of academic achievement came into the focus of research in this field: the personality trait Need for Cognition (NFC), defined as the stable intrinsic motivation of an individual to engage in and enjoy challenging intellectual activity (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982; Cacioppo et al., 1996) . NFC has been shown to be related to academic achievement in different stages of academic life (e.g., Ginet & Py, 2000; Grass et al., 2017; Luong et al., 2017; Preckel, 2014; for a meta-analytical review see von Stumm & Ackerman, 2013) and to motivational variables as well as aspects of information processing associated with success in learning. As examples, NFC was found to be related to ability self-concept (e.g., Dickhäuser & Reinhard, 2010; Luong et al., 2017), interest in school (e.g., Preckel, 2014), or deeper processing while learning (Evans et al., 2003; Luong et al., 2017) . The enjoyment of accomplishing something, the interest in task engagement, and the intrinsic value of working on atask have been suggested to be relevant to learning and academic achievement and have been integrated into models of achievement motivation (e.g., Wigfield & Eccles, 2000; see also Wigfield & Cambria, 2010, for a review) . Surprisingly, Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https:

FAQs

What is Need for Cognition (NFC) in this study?

NFC is defined as a stable intrinsic motivation to engage in and enjoy challenging intellectual activity. The article treats it as an additional predictor of academic achievement.

How did the study test NFC’s role in academic achievement?

It applies latent change score modeling to examine incremental value across subjects over two time points in secondary school students, while accounting for prior achievement and motivational constructs.

Does NFC predict academic achievement beyond prior performance?

Yes. NFC incrementally predicts academic achievement over and above prior achievement and ability self-concept, with correlations comparable to established predictors.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam