Neuroticism and affective priming: Evidence for a neuroticism-linked negative schema

Abstract

Neuroticism has been hypothesized to systematically relate to semantic memory networks favoring negative affect, but no studies using affective priming tasks have established this link. The present two studies, involving 145 undergraduate participants, sought to provide initial evidence along these lines. Study 1 used a task in which participants were asked to judge their emotions in the past, whereas Study 2 used a perceptual identification task in which participants merely had to identify the word in question. In both studies, neuroticism was positively correlated with negative affective priming, but not positive affective priming. The studies suggest that neuroticism systematically relates to the inter-connectivity of negative affect within semantic memory systems, whether involving the self-concept (Study 1) or not (Study 2). These results are novel and important in understanding individual differences in neuroticism and their affective processing correlates.