Extraversion and Recognition for Emotional Words: Effects of Valence, Frequency, and Task-difficulty

Abstract

In this study, memory for emotional words was compared between extraverts and introverts, employing signal detection analysis to distinguish differences in discriminative memory and response bias. Subjects were presented with a study list of emotional words in an encoding session, followed by a recognition session. Effects of task difficulty were examined by varying the nature of the encoding task and the intervals between study and test. For an easy task, with a retention interval of 5 minutes (Study I), introverts exhibited better memory (i.e., higher d′) than extraverts, particularly for low-frequency words, and response biases did not differ between these two groups. For a difficult task, with a one-month retention period (Study II), performance was poor overall, and only high-frequency words were remembered; also extraverts adopted a more liberal criterion for ‘old’ responses (i.e., more hits and more false alarms) for positive emotional-valence words. These results suggest that as task difficulty drives down performance, effects of internal control processes become more apparent, revealing differences in response biases for positive words between extraverts and introverts. These results show that extraversion can distort memory performance for words, depending on their emotional valence.