Attentional biases in healthy adults: Exploring the impact of temperament and gender

Background Attentional biases such as faster attentional orienting toward negative information were consistently replicated in high-anxious and depressive individuals, but findings in healthy individuals are inconsistent so far. Methods Using a dot-probe paradigm, we investigated whether temperament traits and gender, which are linked to (sub)clinical symptoms and attentional processing, influenced attentional biases in healthy adults. Results All participants showed protective attentional biases in terms of orienting their attention away from negative information. In both genders higher values of negative affect were compensated with stronger attentional engagement with positive stimuli. This effect was more pronounced in men than in women. Effortful control fulfilled its regulative function in terms of stronger avoidance of negative stimuli only among men. Limitations Reaction times after probe detection provide only a snapshot of attention and allow only for an indirect assessment of visual attention. Future research should emphasize methods that allow for continuous monitoring of attention allocation, therefore results of the present study await replication in psychophysiological or eye-tracking studies. Conclusion Our results highlight the importance of considering influencing factors such as gender and temperament traits for attentional biases in healthy adults.