Open AccessPerceptual Load and Sex-Specific Personality Traits
Author(s) -
Christiane LangeKüttner,
Andrei-Alexandru Puiu
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
experimental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.631
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 2190-5142
pISSN - 1618-3169
DOI - 10.1027/1618-3169/a000520
Subject(s) - agreeableness , psychology , big five personality traits , conscientiousness , extraversion and introversion , hierarchical structure of the big five , visual search , personality , neuroticism , openness to experience , stimulus (psychology) , alternative five model of personality , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , social psychology
Abstract. The impact of sex-specific personality traits has often been investigated for visuospatial tasks such as mental rotation, but less is known about the influence of personality traits on visual search. We investigated whether the Big Five personality traits Extroversion (E), Openness (O), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Neuroticism (N) and the Autism Quotient (AQ) influence visual search in a sample of N = 65 men and women. In three experiments, we varied stimulus complexity and predictability. As expected, latencies were longer when the target was absent. Pop-out search was faster than conjunction search. A large number of distracters slowed down reaction times (RTs). When stimulus complexity was not predictable in Experiment 3, this reduced search accuracy by about half. As could be predicted based on previous research on long RT tails, conjunction search in target absent trials revealed the impact of personality traits. The RT effect in visual search of the accelerating “less social” AQ score was specific to men, while the effects of the “more social” decelerating Big Five Inventory factors agreeableness and conscientiousness were specific to women. Thus, sex-specific personality traits could explain decision-making thresholds, while visual stimulus complexity yielded an impact of the classic personality traits neuroticism and extroversion.