افکار مزاحم واسطه ارتباط بین روانرنجوری و عملکرد ادراکی

Although research has established a negative association between trait neuroticism and cognition, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie this relationship. We examined the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts and negative affect as potential mediators of the relationship between neuroticism and cognitive performance. We hypothesized that the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts reflects ineffective attentional control and would account for the relationship between neuroticism and cognitive performance over and above the mediating effect of negative affect. Three hundred seventeen adults (Mage = 49.43) completed a series of attention-demanding cognitive tasks as well as self-report measures of intrusive thoughts, negative affect, and neuroticism. Intrusive thoughts mediated the association between trait neuroticism and cognitive performance beyond negative affect. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts is a mechanism through which trait neuroticism influences cognitive performance.

Neuroticism is a dimension of personality characterized by emotional distress (Larsen & Ketelaar, 1991), lability (Eid & Diener, 1999), and reactivity (Bolger & Zuckerman, 1995). Those with high levels of neuroticism are at increased risk for poor physical and psychological health (Mroczek and Spiro, 2007 and Lahey, 2009). High levels of neuroticism are also associated with facets of cognitive health, including inefficient cognitive performance (Robinson & Tamir, 2005), cognitive decline (Wilson et al., 2005), and increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease (Duchek et al., 2007 and Wilson et al., 2007). However, the psychological mechanisms through which neuroticism influences cognitive function remain largely uninvestigated. One hypothesis is that high neuroticism individuals exhibit less efficient cognitive processing due to elevated “mental noise” caused by mental preoccupations with task-irrelevant intrusive thoughts (IT) and distress (Robinson & Tamir, 2005). The current study provides an explicit test of this hypothesis by examining the mediational effects of individual differences in IT and emotional distress on the neuroticism–cognition relationship.