Cognitively complex persons, those viewing their social world in a multidimensional manner, were expected to prefer to base their evaluations of others on constructs describing more internal, motivational aspects of personality. Cognitively simple persons were hypothesized to prefer to use constructs describing more external, behavioral characteristics. The hypothesis was supported in a study of 72 workers in a manufacturing plant. Since the workers were required to rate their teammates as part of their job duties, the reality of the experimental task and the field-setting enhanced external validity of previous findings and helped to clarify the generality of the relationship between cognitive structure and overt behavior. Psychometric and applied implications of the findings are noted.
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