Internet Addiction in Relation to Cognitive Style in University Students

The primary aim of this study was to observe the influence of cognitive style on the extent to which individuals get addicted to the internet. It also aimed to investigate the effect of cognitive style on the choice of discipline post school. For the said purpose, 115 university students (Mean age = 23.26 years) belonging to science, commerce and humanities disciplines were contacted. Cognitive styles and internet addiction were measured by the Rational-Experiential Inventory (Pacini & Epstein, 1999) and the Internet Addiction Test (Young, 1996) respectively. Correlational analyses yielded a positive but non-significant correlation between experientiality and internet addiction and a significant negative correlation between rationality and internet addiction. Subsequent one way analysis of variance suggested significant differences between internet addiction in science and humanities students. However, non-significant differences were found between the cognitive styles of science, commerce and humanities students. The present findings provide evidence for the efficacy of cognitive behavior therapy as the preferred line of treatment for internet addiction. Moreover, they illustrate the possible link between cognitive styles and academic choices which may be validated in subsequent studies.