Neuroticism and the facilitation of the automatic orienting of attention

The personality dimension of neuroticism (N) is of particular interest because high N (neurotic) individuals are predisposed to experience negative affect and psychopathology. This study provides a test of the hypothesis that N is associated with individual differences in attentional processes, and, more specifically, that the automatic orienting of attention occurs more readily in neurotic individuals. Subjects performed a visual search task, during which a distractor stimulus on occasion appeared in the stimulus display. Female neurotic subjects were significantly more impaired than were stable subjects in their visual search task performance by the presence of a distractor, indicating that their attention was more strongly attracted by the distractors. We suggest that the predisposition of neurotic individuals to negative affect and psychopathology may be mediated by the disruption of controlled self-regulatory processes, and a mechanism is proposed by which this impairment may be attributed in part to the facilitation of the automatic orienting of attention.