Selective attention to stressful distracters: effects of neuroticism and gender

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Abstract

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.

Section snippets

Subjects

A total of 87 undergraduates, 26 males and 61 females, participated for monetary compensation or entry into a lottery system.

Overview

In the dichotic listening task, the participant was instructed to shadow (repeat aloud) three neutral passages played to the attended ear. Simultaneously, distracter words were played to the unattended ear. One neutral passage was paired with neutral distracter words, another with social-stress distracter words, and the third with academic-stress distracter words. At the

Exclusion of participants

Ten of the 87 participants were excluded from the final analysis. One participant's data set was eliminated because he was incorrectly instructed to shadow the channel to which the wordlist, not the passage, was being presented. The other nine participants were excluded due to unusually long probe RTs; in most cases, this occurred when a participant neglected to respond to an entire set of probes during a passage. As a result, there was a large gap between the mean RTs of these nine individuals

Discussion

This study demonstrates that gender and personality influenced selective attention to stress-related distracters. Neuroticism was associated with greater attention to stressful distracters, but this pattern was only evident in males. High-neurotic males were slower to respond to visual probes presented simultaneously with stressful distracters (compared to neutral distracters), suggesting these individuals paid greater attention to the stressful distracters and thus had fewer attentional

Acknowledgements

Marilyn Boltz is gratefully acknowledged for helpful comments, including the suggestion to examine sex differences.

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