Selective attention to stressful distracters: effects of neuroticism and gender

This study examined the influence of trait neuroticism and gender on selective attention, under the hypothesis that neurotic individuals would be more likely to direct attention towards stress-related distracters. Eighty-seven undergraduates completed a dichotic listening task paired with visual probes in a dual-task paradigm. The task was to shadow neutral passages in the attended ear and respond to visual probes, while ignoring distracters (neutral, academic stress, or social stress words) in the unattended ear. Analysis of reaction times to the visual probes indicated that, consistent with predictions, neurotic individuals were slower to respond to probes in the presence of stressful distracters, but, counter to predictions, this pattern was only evident in males. High neurotic females exhibited the reverse pattern, responding more quickly to probes in the presence of stressful distracters. Thus, results reveal that the relationship between neuroticism and selective attention bias is moderated by gender, indicating possible gender differences in strategies applied to the task.