Personality-Attention Link in Emotional Oculomotor Go/No-Go Task: A Comparative Study of Performance of Varying Degrees of Extraversion and Neuroticism

Abstract

Personality and attention are interlinked, as how we respond to the environment is truly dependent on who we are. How we move our eyes, where we look at is of significance in attentional paradigms. Selective visual attention is of significance in visual field. It usually occurs without conscious awareness, and spontaneous reactions are formed which can be seen through eye movement tasks. There are quite a number of researches done on personality and attention. The present study, however, describes about different degrees of extraversion and neuroticism, and how they respond to different set of stimuli favoring each one of them. For this study an emotional variant of oculomotor go/no-go task was chosen. The Eyesenck personality questionnaire (EPQ-R) 90 item was used to measure the extraversion and neuroticism traits. The participants age range varied from 20 to 40 years (M=24.8, S.D=4.04).The present study aims to compare high and low degrees of extraversion and neuroticism with different set of emotional stimuli that may function as trait-congruent system. The results of the study revealed significant differences in degrees of dimensions of personality. Where high extraverts were more responsive towards high emotionally arousing pictures, high neurotics showed an inclination towards unstable emotional stimuli. The impact of extraversion was the highest, among all on high emotionally arousing stimuli. This study endeavors how the tasks that demand deliberate inhibition may be overruled if the stimuli in hand is arousing or matches the interest of person. The present study is beneficial in understanding the intricacies of personality and eye movement tasks.