" Need for cognition " makes people highly charged and innovative

Do You Have a "Need for Cognition"?

When time pressure eases, employees often lose their driving force for innovation – but that's not the case for individuals high in what's known as the need for cognition, which is essentially a dispositional tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking, says a team led by Chia-Huei Wu of the University of Western Australia. In a study of 179 employees working in a Dutch research and consultancy organization, the researchers found that a need for cognition is associated with innovation behaviors, most notably when there’s an absence of other innovation drivers such as time pressure and high job autonomy. People with a need for cognition tend to feel positively about novelty, complexity, and uncertainty; are better able to engage in information processing; and develop higher confidence in their ideas, the researchers say.