The Effects of Personality, Anxiety and Depression on the Attentional Processing of Emotional Faces

Individual differences in emotional information processing may be explained by attentional biases related to personality traits and affective symptoms. The present study examined how personality, anxiety, and depression symptoms relate to visual attention toward emotional facial expressions. Participants (N = 103) from a non-clinical student sample completed the Big Five Personality Inventory (BFI) and Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL-25), followed by an eye-tracking task assessing attention to paired neutral and emotional faces. Attentional processing was assessed using initial orienting (time to first fixation) and sustained attention (fixation duration).

Participants showed a general bias toward emotional faces, orienting faster to and fixating longer on emotional compared to neutral stimuli. Higher neuroticism was associated with faster initial orienting to fearful and sad expressions and prolonged fixation on emotional faces overall. Anxiety symptoms were linked to faster initial orienting across emotional expressions, indicating heightened sensitivity to emotional stimuli. Depressive symptoms were associated with longer fixation durations on emotional faces overall, without evidence of mood-congruent bias toward sad expressions. Other personality traits showed limited associations with attentional indices. Gender differences were minimal, although males oriented faster to angry faces.

These findings suggest that neuroticism, anxiety, and depression contribute to distinct components of attentional bias, with neuroticism linked to both early and sustained processing of negative emotional stimuli, anxiety to early vigilance, and depression to prolonged attention to emotional cues. Results support models emphasizing both vigilance and maintenance mechanisms in emotional attention and highlight the role of individual differences in attentional processes.