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Neuroticism and Emotion Regulation Predict Attention Performance during Positive Affect

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Abstract

Most studies of personality and attention have focused on negative affect and psychopathology. We predicted that to the extent that personality characteristics involve the ability to control emotion and attention, the same principles would apply whether the circumstances involved negative or positive affect. Participants completed a dual-task attention experiment under conditions of positive affect, involving both low and high arousal. It was found that self-reported poorer attentional control, higher levels of neuroticism, and more difficulties in emotion regulation predicted greater differences in performance between low and high arousal conditions. Rumination styles did not predict differences in performance among these conditions. The demonstration of disruptions in attention by arousal during positive affect raises important questions about the interactions among individual differences, arousal, and mechanisms of attention.

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Notes

  1. These analyses were also reported in Saxton et al. (2015).

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Acknowledgements

A special thank you is extended to several students who assisted in the collection of data, including Alison Brorby, Sean Hatten, James Murphy, and Nichole Venable.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, 58108-6050, USA

    Tharaki Siyaguna, Samantha K. Myhre, Brandon T. Saxton & Paul D. Rokke

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  1. Tharaki Siyaguna
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  2. Samantha K. Myhre
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  3. Brandon T. Saxton
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  4. Paul D. Rokke
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Correspondence to Tharaki Siyaguna.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors declare that we have no conflicts of interest either financially or personally.

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Siyaguna, T., Myhre, S.K., Saxton, B.T. et al. Neuroticism and Emotion Regulation Predict Attention Performance during Positive Affect. Curr Psychol 38, 1542–1549 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9701-x

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