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Physiological Correlates of the Big 5: Autonomic Responses to Video Presentations

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Abstract

Personality’s link to emotional experience has been demonstrated, but specific biological responses to emotion as a function of personality have not been well-established. Here, the association between personality and physiological responses (heart rate, skin conductance, and respiration) to emotional videos was assessed. One-hundred sixty-nine participants self-reported on their Big 5 personality traits and underwent ambulatory monitoring as they watched four brief video clips from primetime television content showing scenes containing violence, fear, sadness, and tension. Generally, the negatively-toned emotional scenes provoked increases in skin conductance response and declines in heart rate. We found that physiological outcomes depended on the particular emotional scene and on personality, most notably Extraversion and Neuroticism. Extraversion, and to a lesser degree, Neuroticism, were associated with increases in autonomic arousal responses to the scenes. Gender also interacted with personality to predict responses, such that women who scored higher on measures of Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Conscientious tended to show more physiological arousal than men. Overall, the emotional scenes evoked increases in arousal and more controlled attention. The findings are discussed in context of the limited capacity model and shed light on how personality and gender affect physiological reactions to emotional experiences in everyday life.

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Notes

  1. Age did not moderate any of our results.

  2. Participants rated how much they liked the specific House episode they were shown in the current study on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). Overall, participants enjoyed the episode; M = 4.24, SD = .83. More Agreeable people reported liking the episode more; r = .16, p < .05.

  3. In order to assure that multiple testing problems were not present, and following Sherman and Funder (2009), randomization tests were performed for each of the Big 5 traits. These tests demonstrated that the reported significant findings were greater than the number of findings that would be expected by chance.

  4. In our examination of whether physiological responses varied according to amount of Fox television watched, we found one significant correlation. The number of Fox programming hours watched per week correlated .16 with HR change to the violence-fear scene (p < .05).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Queens College, CUNY, 6530 Kissena Blvd, Queens, NY, 11367, USA

    Claudia Chloe Brumbaugh

  2. Innerscope Research, Boston, MA, USA

    Ravi Kothuri & Carl Marci

  3. University of Michigan–Dearborn, Dearborn, MI, USA

    Caleb Siefert

  4. Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA

    Donald D. Pfaff

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  1. Claudia Chloe Brumbaugh
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  2. Ravi Kothuri
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  4. Caleb Siefert
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  5. Donald D. Pfaff
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Correspondence to Claudia Chloe Brumbaugh.

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Brumbaugh, C.C., Kothuri, R., Marci, C. et al. Physiological Correlates of the Big 5: Autonomic Responses to Video Presentations. Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback 38, 293–301 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10484-013-9234-5

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