Temperament and attention to positive and negative trait information

Abstract

Two studies examined attention to positive and negative self-relevant trait adjectives. Subjects were presented with displays consisting of positive-neutral, negative-neutral or positive-negative adjective pairs. They responded first to a detection target appearing in the location of one of the two words, and then to a third word that either matched or did not match one of the initial words. Neither study found effects of extraversion, but both studies revealed a negative attentional bias related to neuroticism: compared to stable subjects, neurotics were fast to detect targets in the location of a negative trait adjective and slow to detect targets in the location of words paired with negative adjectives. This pattern suggests that neurotics' negative bias influences the ease of moving attention toward and engaging negative information as well as disengaging from it. In Experiment 2, neurotics were fast in responding to a third word that matched a negative word from the initial display. This suggests that neurotics formed a stronger memory representation of the negative word, perhaps as a result of their negative attentional bias.