Evoked cardiac response correlates of cognitive processing and dimensions of personality: Eysenck’s concept of psychoticism revisited

The effects of agreeableness (A) and conscientiousness (C), as defined in the NEO-FFI scale, were examined in two components of the evoked cardiac response (ECR) elicited in response to innocuous auditory stimuli presented under IRRELEVANT and RELEVANT cognitive task conditions. The IRRELEVANT condition produced a simple cardiac deceleration, ECR1, while the RELEVANT condition produced a biphasic response dominated by a secondary cardiac acceleration. The difference in response, ECR2, is associated with differential cognitive processing. Our previous work noted differences as a function of Eysenck’s P scale, and this was used as a criterion to evaluate the A and C effects. Differences in levels of A were found to affect ECR1, while differences in C affected ECR2. The finding that the physiological correlates of A and C were different from each other is interpreted in terms of different mechanisms underlying these two big factors.