Survey results from 59 college students indicated that those low in need for cognition evidenced higher racial prejudice than respondents high in need for cognition.

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This article offers five pedagogical strategies for a history of psychology course to help students begin to discover their disciplinary worldviews or philosophies of psychology. Students write short, in-class, contemplative essays (microthemes) on polarities of psychology (e.g., empiricism vs. rationalism). The instructor presents selected student writing samples, peers debate their positions, and students respond to their peers' microthemes. Finally, in a detailed critical analysis assignment, students intensively reexamine selected microtheme polarities.

Rokeach (1973) developed the method of value self-confrontation (VSC) in an attempt to change people's behavior by changing the value hierarchy underlying that behavior. The present research examined the role of need for cognition, defined by Cacioppo, Petty, and Kao (1984) as an individual's tendency to engage in and enjoy effortjiul cognitive endeavors, in the VSC process. Two studies demonstrated that the VSC procedure was equally effective for collegeage participants, regardless of their level of need for cognition. The second study suggested that the equivalent value change was mediated by dixerential routes of processing, Specifically, low need for cognition participants reported a significantly greater reliance on normative information (indicative of peripheral processing) while participants high in the need for cognition reported significantly greater expenditure of cognitive effort (indicative of central route processing). Practical implications of these findings for individual and social applications of VSC and future research directions are discussed. Rokeach (1973) asserts that personal values serve as guiding principles of varying importance in one's life. A person's values are organized in a hierarchy from that value which is most important to that which is least important, thereby forming that person's value system. This value system determines subsequent attitudes that in turn influence specific behaviors. From this perspective, one alternative for changing behavior is to change the organization (that is, hierarchy) of the value system. Rokeach (1973) developed the method of value self-confrontation (VSC) in I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Julie Fox, Heather Graham, Denise Litchfield, Noel Schaus, Amy Smet, Steve Sund, and Jodi Tallman in research design and execution. I also acknowledge the helpful comments of the JSI reviewers on previous drafts of this manuscript.