People attend to the world differently: The modulation of personality traits on the modes of attentional selection

Abstract

People have different personality traits, which are the core features to distinguish individuals from one another. Moreover, a growing number of studies have called to establish the framework of the personality and cognition such as attention, memory, etc. Moreover, attentional selection, including space- and object-based attention, is a fundamental human behavior with important cognitive function. However, it is still unclear whether and how personality traits modulate different types of attentional selection. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to explore the issues mentioned above by differentiating space- and object-based attention. The results showed that space-based effect was observed for both low- and high-extraversion groups and there was no significant difference between them; but the object-based effect was obtained for low-extraversion, but not for high-extraversion groups. The same pattern with neuroticism for space-based effect was found. However, the object-based effect was observed for high-neuroticism, but not for low-neuroticism groups. The results suggested that personality traits can modulate only object-based attention by way of altering attentional scope. The present study can not only explain the fundamental accounts underlying the instability of object-based attention and can further support sensory enhancement theory, but also can provide new evidence for adaptive personality-attention framework.