Individual Differences in Personality Predict How People Look at Faces

Perlman, Susan B.; Morris, J. P.; Wyk, Brent C. Vander; Green, Steven R.; Doyle, Jaime L.; Pelphrey, Kevin A. · 2009 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005952

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Summary

This study investigates how individual differences in personality, specifically the trait of neuroticism, influence visual attention to emotional facial expressions. While personality traits are known to interact with environmental contexts to shape social behavior, the specific mechanisms linking personality to social cognition remain unclear. Guided by the trait-congruency hypothesis, which posits that individuals seek information consistent with their personality characteristics, the authors predicted that individuals high in neuroticism—a trait associated with negative affect and anxiety—would exhibit heightened attention to emotionally arousing stimuli, particularly the eyes of fearful faces. The researchers employed eye-tracking technology to measure visual scanpaths in 30 adult volunteers (mean age 22.35 years) as they viewed static photographs of prototypic emotional facial expressions (happy, sad, angry, fearful, surprised, disgusted, and neutral). Participants completed the NEO Five-Factor Inventory to assess personality traits. Eye movements were recorded at 50 Hz, and the duration and number of fixations on specific facial regions (eyes, nose, mouth) were analyzed. The study focused on the proportion of time spent looking at the eyes relative to the whole face, adjusting for individual differences in blinking or distraction. The results demonstrated a significant positive correlation between neuroticism scores and the duration of fixation on the eyes of fearful faces ($r = .60, p < .001$). This effect was significantly stronger for fearful faces than for happy or sad faces. Participants high in neuroticism spent significantly more time fixating on the eyes of fearful faces and made more saccades to this region compared to those low in neuroticism, indicating a "hyper-scanning" behavior. While correlations were found for happy and sad faces, they did not remain significant after Bonferroni corrections for multiple comparisons. An unexpected finding revealed a negative correlation between conscientiousness and attention to emotional eyes, which was attributed to a shared variance with neuroticism related to anxious concern for emotional outcomes. The findings suggest that personality traits shape fundamental aspects of social cognition, such as eye contact, by directing attention toward trait-congruent emotional information. The authors propose that eye gaze serves as a behavioral link in a complex relationship between genetic factors (such as the serotonin transporter gene), brain function (specifically amygdala reactivity to fear), and personality. Individuals high in neuroticism may perceive fearful stimuli as more salient threats, leading to increased amygdala activity and redirected visual attention to the eyes to gather more information. This study highlights that personality influences not only how individuals interpret social cues but also which cues they attend to in the first place, with implications for understanding the interplay between genetics, neural mechanisms, and social behavior.

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• personality driving