(PS11-70) Conscientiousness Predicts Self-report and Behavioral Indices of Attention Among College Students

Conscientiousness is a personality trait that encompasses orderliness, self-discipline, and carefulness (John & Srivastava, 1999). Conscientiousness is often a desirable trait that predicts academic and job performance (Conrad & Patry, 2012; Witt, 2002); however, high conscientiousness is implicated across several forms of psychopathology (Naragon-Gainey & Simms, 2017). Similarly, attention difficulties are common among people with psychopathology, and concentration difficulties are a common symptom across mood and anxiety disorders (APA, 2023). Previous research found that self-reported mindful attention was related to the number of errors in an attention task (Schmertz et al., 2008). Despite the similarities between conscientiousness and attention in the potential etiology and maintenance of psychopathology, little research has examined the relationship between conscientiousness and task-based measures of attention. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to examine the prospective relationship between conscientiousness and performance on task-based measures of attention.

Participants were 256 college students M_age = 18.97 years (SD = 1.75). Participants were primarily cisgender women (61.72%). Most participants identified their race as White, 60.55%, or Black/African American, 23.44%. Participants completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI-44; John & Srivastava, 1999) at time one to measure personality. The following day, participants completed the Attentional Control Scale (ACS; Derryberry & Reed, 2002) and the Posner task (Posner, 1979) to measure self-report and behavioral indices of attention, respectively.

Conscientiousness was positively correlated with self-report attentional control, r = .40, p < .001, indicating that participants with higher conscientiousness reported higher levels of control over their attention. Conscientiousness was significantly negatively correlated with reaction time for congruent, r = .13, p = .043, and incongruent, r = .13, p = .033, trials on the Posner task, indicating that higher conscientiousness participants reported, the slower they responded in an attention task. However, conscientiousness was not correlated with the number of errors, r = .03, p = .679, indicating that attention to detail was not related to mistakes on an attention task.

The results of this study suggest that people who report being diligent and attentive to detail also report better ability to control their attention. This reported conscientiousness was correlated with slower reaction times on an attention task the following day. However, reported conscientiousness was not related to fewer errors, as would be expected. These results suggest that, while people with higher levels of conscientiousness may be more careful and slower in responding, this does not translate to fewer errors.