Department of Psychology, Bremen University, Germany.
Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
Exp Psychol. 2021 May;68(3):149-164. doi: 10.1027/1618-3169/a000520.
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 = 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.
性别特定人格特质的影响经常在心理旋转等空间视觉任务中被研究，但关于人格特质对视觉搜索的影响知之甚少。我们调查了大五人格特质（外向性、开放性、宜人性、尽责性和神经质）和自闭症量表（AQ）是否以及如何影响 65 名男性和女性样本的视觉搜索。在三个实验中，我们改变了刺激的复杂性和可预测性。正如预期的那样，当目标不存在时，潜伏期会更长。突显搜索比结合搜索更快。大量干扰项会减慢反应时间（RT）。当实验 3 中刺激的复杂性不可预测时，这会将搜索准确性降低约一半。根据先前关于长 RT 尾巴的研究可以预测，在目标不存在的试验中进行结合搜索会显示出人格特质的影响。在视觉搜索中，加速的“不太社交”的 AQ 分数的 RT 效应是特定于男性的，而“更社交”的减速大五人格特质宜人性和尽责性的影响则是特定于女性的。因此，性别特定的人格特质可以解释决策阈值，而视觉刺激的复杂性则会产生经典人格特质神经质和外向性的影响。
