| The extant literature has revealed wide patterns of associations between personality traits and emotional experiences, and the traits of neuroticism and extraversion serve as an organizing framework for these differences. Neuroticism is associated with negative affectivity and decreased affect regulatory success (e.g., Gross & John, 2003; Hemenover & Pytlik Zillig, 2006) while extraversion is associated with positive affectivity (Costa & McCrae, 1992). One explanation for these differences is that individuals have different affect regulatory motivations.; Although it has long been assumed that people are motivated to maximize positive affect (PA) and minimize NA (Bower et al., 1981), this hedonic hypothesis has fallen out of favor in recent years. It has been suggested that individuals may benefit from experiencing affect that is consistent with their trait affective state. Tamir (2005) demonstrated that neurotic participants performed better on a cognitive task when experiencing negative affect. However, demonstrations of pragmatic benefits of trait-consistent affect have not included the type of cognitive task, despite the importance of task type in the relationship between affect and cognitive. Prior research has found that creativity is associated with PA (Isen, 2002), while analytical reasoning is associated with NA (Schwarz, 2001).; The purpose of this current study was to examine interactions between personality, task, and affect on cognitive performance. It was hypothesized that participants would perform the best on both creative and analytical tasks while experiencing trait-consistent affect. Participants (N = 186) watched a video that induced either PA or NA, completed either an analytical or a creative task, and then completed questionnaires about their knowledge and beliefs about affective states and performance on tasks. Contrary to hypotheses, participants did not perform better when experiencing trait-consistent affect. However, individual differences in beliefs about the relationship between affect and cognition emerged. Neuroticism predicted beliefs that higher levels of NA are beneficial for performance for both types of tasks, while extraversion predicted beliefs about PA. These findings suggest that although there were no differences in performance, participants did report different beliefs that may be a partial explanation of the mechanisms related to individual differences in affect regulatory motivations. |
