The relationship between general intelligence and media use among university students

Abstract

Students’ information selection process might be influenced by their choice of media sources, their learning contexts and motivation to use certain media as well as their general intelligence, which is crucial for information processing. This study examines the relationship between thegeneral fluid intelligence and the media use of 709 first-year business & economics students from 44 universities in Germany for two different learning purposes: informing oneself about B&E topics and preparing for lectures and exams. Accordingly, the motivator information seeking is divided into curiosity driven and goal driven information seeking. Three types of media sources were included: common news sources, specialized economics sources and university sources. Results from regression analyses and group comparisons indicatethat the frequency of media use correlates with generalfluid intelligence for some common news sources and specialized economics sources, for example, tabloids and economic newspapers, even after controlling for several sociodemographic variables including gender, age, and parents’ educational background.