Abstract
This study was designed to demonstrate the need for caution in using the Rep test as an instrument for measuring the personality trait known as “cognitive complexity”, given that situational factors prevailing at the time of testing can easily influence cognitive complexity scores. Forty-nine female undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either a short rating time or long rating time group. Subjects in the short time group were instructed to complete the Rep test as quickly as possible while those in the long time group were allowed to take as much time as necessary to complete their ratings. The results indicated that cognitive complexity scores of the short rating time group were lower than those of the long rating time group, thus confirming the susceptibility of these scores to situational factors at the time of testing. However, the results also suggested that subjects emphasized the evaluative dimension during the first stage and the remaining dimensions during the second stage of social judgment processing. This suggested that the Rep test could play an important role in the development of stage models of person perception and that “cognitive complexity” could be approached from the perspective of “social cognition” research.
