Personality and Cognitive Processing of Affective Information

Several studies have demonstrated that the personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism are positively correlated with susceptibilities to positive and negative affect, respectively. These findings are often explained in terms of Jeffrey Gray's theory of personality, which predicts that extraverts and neurotics are differentially susceptible to stimuli that generate positive and negative emotional states. The current research provides a further test of Gray's theory using a series of cognitive tasks with positive and negative stimuli. In Study 1, participants completed a word-fragment completion task, a reaction-time task and a recall task. Results showed that extraversion was generally related to performance when stimuli were positive but not when stimuli were negative or neutral. Study 2 replicated these findings and demonstrated that the relationships between personality and performance were not mediated by current mood state. Discussion focuses on integrating a cognitive analysis of personality with existing biological theories.