Negative affectivity is a strong predictor of self-reported cognitive difficulties in individuals without psychiatric or neurologic disorders.
Negative affectivity may confound interpretation of self-reported cognitive complaints in healthy adults; this Level 3 finding leaves open causal links and needs prospective validation.
We examined the relationship of trait personality dimensions (negative affectivity and positive affectivity) on self-report of cognitive functioning. Ninety-six subjects who were screened to be without evidence of psychiatric or neurologic disorder, and who had previously completed the Tellegen Differential Personality Questionnaire (mean interval = 2 years) were sent a self-report questionnaire of cognitive functioning (MASQ). As predicted, negative affectivity (NA) was more strongly related to self-appraisal of cognitive functioning than was positive affectivity (PA); subjects with higher NA scores acknowledged more cognitive difficulties. Negative affectivity was also a stronger predictor of cognitive self-report than was self-report of current sad mood state. The implications of these findings for the examination of self-appraisal and accuracy of self-report are discussed.
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Seidenberg et al. (1994) studied this question.
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