Individual differences in Need for Cognition influence the evaluation of circular scientific explanations

Recent advances in neuroscience research have led to increased interest in psychological findings that offer neural or neuropsychological explanations for human behavior. Researchers have found that individuals rate scientific explanations that contain-neuroscience information as more satisfying, even when the neuroscience information is irrelevant. Individual differences, such as level of expertise, have been shown to affect an individual's evaluation of an explanation. The current study examined whether the individual differences characteristic Need for Cognition (NFC) had an effect on an individual's ability to adequately evaluate a circular explanation with and without irrelevant neuroscience information with an expectation that NFC would have a moderating influence on the relationship between presence of neuroscience information in circular explanations and satisfaction with these explanations. Results indicated that the presence of neuroscience information influenced evaluations of circular explanations such that the explanations with neuroscience information tended to be rated more favorably. Results also indicated that NFC was negatively correlated with satisfaction ratings; however, no interaction effect between NFC and presence of neuroscience information was observed. These results may have important implications for the way in which researchers convey and disseminate their findings to the general public. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.