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Need to Evaluate Scale

NESThe chronic tendency for individuals to engage in evaluative responding — to form opinions and assess the positive and/or negative qualities of objects, people, and events. NES captures individual differences in the propensity to evaluate, not the direction or extremity of those evaluations.

16 items 1996 α 0.82–0.87 Free Jarvis, W.B.G. & Petty, R.E.

What it measures

High NES individuals form opinions readily and spontaneously, report more evaluative thoughts, and are more likely to engage with attitude objects encountered incidentally. Conceptually distinct from NFC — NES reflects the tendency to evaluate (form judgments), while NFC reflects the tendency to think deeply. NES is correlated with NFC (r=0.35) and desire for control (r=0.22) but not with social desirability, locus of control, or self-monitoring. Predicts spontaneous evaluative thought generation, attitude formation toward social and political issues, and recall of autobiographical evaluative content.

Representative items

I form opinions about everything.
It is very important to me to hold strong opinions.
I often prefer to remain neutral about complex issues. (R)
If something does not affect me, I do not usually determine if it is good or bad. (R)
I pay a lot of attention to whether things are good or bad.

Citation

Jarvis, W.B.G., & Petty, R.E. (1996). The need to evaluate. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(1), 172–194.

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