The current research aims to identify the level of extension of the sense of self and the cognitive style (complexity - simplification) among university students, as well as the significance of the difference according to gender (males - females), as well as the correlation between the two variables, and in order to verify this, the researcher has constructed The measure of the extension of the sense of self based on the theory of Alport 1961, as the number of its final paragraphs reached (28) paragraphs, and the cognitive style scale (complexity - simplification) prepared by (Abdullah 2017) was adopted, as the scale consisted of (32) paragraphs in its final form. To verify their psychometric properties, and the two tools were applied to a sample of (160) male and female students who were selected by a stratified randomized method from four colleges at the University of Baghdad, for the academic year 2019-2020, and the results of the research showed the following:
- The research sample of university students have an extended sense of self
- There is a statistically significant difference between (males and females) in the extension of the sense of self in favor of males.
- The members of the research sample of university students possess a method of cognitive simplification.
- There is a statistically significant difference between (males and females) in the cognitive style (complexity - simplification) and in favor of females.
- There is an inverse correlation between the extension of the sense of self and the style of cognitive complexity
- There is a direct correlation between the extension of the sense of self and the style of cognitive simplification
