Abstract
The present study investigates the role of trait neuroticism on cognitive performance under distraction. Seventy participants were given a personality test and then undertook a number of different cognitive tasks in silence, in the presence of popular music and in background noise. It was predicted that performance on a general intelligence test, a test of abstract reasoning, and a mental arithmetic task would be adversely affected by background sounds. It was predicted that neuroticism would be negatively correlated with performance on the mental arithmetic task but only when the individuals were working in the presence of background sound. Stable vs. unstable participant's performance on a mental arithmetic task during noise was significantly higher as predicted. The results provided partial support for the hypotheses and are discussed with respect to previous findings in the literature on personality (particularly introversion–extraversion) and distraction on cognitive task performance. Limitations are noted.
Highlights
In contemporary society, listening to music while conducting daily activities is commonplace
Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT) performance was significantly positively correlated with performance on both the sentence-checking task and the mental arithmetic task – the correlations are modest
A model was constructed with background sound as a categorical variable, and neuroticism and a continuous variable
Summary
In contemporary society, listening to music while conducting daily activities is commonplace. Ransdell and Gilroy (2001) reported that the majority of college students listen to music while working on a computer. Due to the ubiquity of background sound (both music and noise) in applied settings, the effects of both types of sound on cognitive test performance have been investigated. This is a highly active research area (Gordon-Hickey & Lemley, 2012; Patston & Tippett, 2011), but fewer studies have looked at individual differences in this process. The research on when and why background sound affects productivity has tended to focus on three elements
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