Attributional complexity, thinking styles and preference for cognitive consistency in relation to some psychosocial characteristics and academic achievement in student teachers

The purpose of the study was to examine the attributional complexity, thinking styles and preference for cognitive consistency in relation to some psychosocial characteristics and academic achievement in student teachers. A total of 335 fourth grade (193 females, 142 males) Dokuz Eylül University students from different departments of the Faculty of Education at Buca participated to the study. Data were collected by Person Perception Questionnaire, Rational-Experiential Thinking Styles Inventory and Preference for Consistency Scale which were adapted to Turkish bye the researcher. The information related to the subjects' psychosocial characteristics were gathered through a questionnaire prepared for this purpose and the Cumulative Grade Point Averages of the students were taken from the student affairs service. In the analyses, besides all the needed simple statistical techniques, several Pearson correlations, t tests, oneway analyses of variances and Tukey's tests of significance were used in terms of the types of data groups. The results confirmed the expectations that attributional complexity is significantly related to need for cognition (rational thinking) and doesn't correlate with faith in intuititon (experiential thinking) and academic achievement; prefence for cognitive consistency is significantly related to experiential thinking and academic achievement does not in relation with experiential thinking. On the other hand, the expected significant relationships between attributional complexity and preference for cognitive consistency, preference for cognitive consistency and rational thinking, preference for cognitive consistency and academic achievement, rational thirking and academic achievement were not confirmed. Also, the analyses of the data related to the dependent (attributional complexity, thinking styles, preference for cognitive consistency and academic achievement) and independent (psychosocial characteristics) variables showed that; the relationships between attributional complexity and sex, the number of close friends, perceived loneliness level, perceived level of self adequacy in intelligence and aptitude, decision- VImaking style and the level of social adjustment; the relationships between rational thinking (need for cognition) and subject area, socio-economic status (SES), the parenting styles, perceived level of self adequacy in intelligence and aptitude, decision making style, self adequacy in problem solving abilities and the level of social adjustment; the relationships between experiential thinking (faith in intuition) and SES, perceived level of self adequacy in intelligence and aptitude, decision-making style and self adequacy in problem solving abilities; the relationships between preference for cognitive consistency and sex, perceived level of self adequacy in intelligence and aptitude, decision-making style and the level of social adjustment; the relationships between academic achievement and sex, subject area, the number of close friends and parenting styles were significant. The results were discussed in terms of their educational implications and some recomendations were given for educators, counselors, psychologists and researchers. VII