Cognitive Engagement and Subjective Well-Being in Adults: Exploring the Role of Domain-Specific Need for Cognition

Need for Cognition (NFC) is an investment trait reflecting interindividual differences in intrinsically motivated engagement in cognitive endeavors. While other motivational constructs like the ability self-concept are typically conceptualized domain-specific, NFC was initially conceived to describe domain-general behavior. Building on a previous study reporting the relevance of domain-specific aspects of NFC in the school context (Keller et al., 2017), we investigated the domain-specificity of NFC in predicting various aspects of subjective well-being across three samples with N = 1074 participants and subsamples of students and employed participants ranging from n = 140 to n = 346. Our findings revealed positive associations of both domain-general and domain-specific NFC with positive affect, life satisfaction, as well as job and study-related satisfaction. In part, domain-specific NFC was more strongly related to domain-specific life satisfactiono compared to domain-general NFC. Additionally, we found evidence for small incremental values of domain-specific NFC over and above domain-general NFC in predicting subjective well-being. Confirming previous research, self-control and the emotion regulation strategy reappraisal partially mediated the prediction of well-being by NFC. Our results indicate that additionally considering NFC as domain-specific can meaningfully complement the domain-general conceptualization.