Neuroticism is a relatively stable personality dimension characterized by tendencies to experience negative thoughts and affect. Its empirically related outcome measures range from anxiety and mood disorders to increases in mortality. Traditional theories of neuroticism, link the construct to greater threat sensitivity, however, these conceptions fail to account for certain salient features of neuroticism, such as negative affect in threat benign environments. The mental noise hypothesis posits that neuroticism results from a more variable mental control system, with support coming from behavioral, psychometric, and neuroimaging paradigms. To assess whether this more chaotic mental control system would variably disrupt the stimulus evaluation phase of cognition, single trial latency variance of the P3b event related potential was assessed in individuals who scored high and low on neuroticism inventories. The primary analysis in this paper failed to provide support for P3b latency variance as the neural generator of the more variable mental control system previously observed in those high in neuroticism. Exploratory analyses with electrode Pz, however, found interesting relationships between lower order neuroticism aspects and prolonged P3b latencies, as well as higher levels of interparticipant P3b latency variance in high neuroticism groups.
","abstract_html":"<p>Neuroticism is a relatively stable personality dimension characterized by tendencies to experience negative thoughts and affect. Its empirically related outcome measures range from anxiety and mood disorders to increases in mortality. Traditional theories of neuroticism, link the construct to greater threat sensitivity, however, these conceptions fail to account for certain salient features of neuroticism, such as negative affect in threat benign environments. The mental noise hypothesis posits that neuroticism results from a more variable mental control system, with support coming from behavioral, psychometric, and neuroimaging paradigms. To assess whether this more chaotic mental control system would variably disrupt the stimulus evaluation phase of cognition, single trial latency variance of the P3b event related potential was assessed in individuals who scored high and low on neuroticism inventories. The primary analysis in this paper failed to provide support for P3b latency variance as the neural generator of the more variable mental control system previously observed in those high in neuroticism. Exploratory analyses with electrode Pz, however, found interesting relationships between lower order neuroticism aspects and prolonged P3b latencies, as well as higher levels of interparticipant P3b latency variance in high neuroticism groups.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Lawrence, Jeremy"],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Master of Science","degree_level":"Thesis","degree_discipline":"Psychological Science","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Dr. Jon Barch"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2022,"date_issued":"2022-04-01T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2022-04-01T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T03:24:17Z","subjects":["Personality","Neuroticism","EEG","Neuroscience","Cognition and Perception"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://commons.nmu.edu/theses/712","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Dr. Jon Barch"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Lawrence, Jeremy"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2022-03-31T07:00:00Z"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Psychological Science"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Master of Science"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Personality","Neuroticism","EEG","Neuroscience","Cognition and Perception"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://commons.nmu.edu/theses/712"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Neuroticism is a relatively stable personality dimension characterized by tendencies to experience negative thoughts and affect. Its empirically related outcome measures range from anxiety and mood disorders to increases in mortality. Traditional theories of neuroticism, link the construct to greater threat sensitivity, however, these conceptions fail to account for certain salient features of neuroticism, such as negative affect in threat benign environments. The mental noise hypothesis posits that neuroticism results from a more variable mental control system, with support coming from behavioral, psychometric, and neuroimaging paradigms. To assess whether this more chaotic mental control system would variably disrupt the stimulus evaluation phase of cognition, single trial latency variance of the P3b event related potential was assessed in individuals who scored high and low on neuroticism inventories. The primary analysis in this paper failed to provide support for P3b latency variance as the neural generator of the more variable mental control system previously observed in those high in neuroticism. Exploratory analyses with electrode Pz, however, found interesting relationships between lower order neuroticism aspects and prolonged P3b latencies, as well as higher levels of interparticipant P3b latency variance in high neuroticism groups.
"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["THE MENTAL NOISE HYPOTHESIS: A RELATION BETWEEN NEUROTICISM AND P3 LATENCY VARIANCE IN A STROOP-STYLE REACTION TIME TASK"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Dr. Jon Barch"],"dc:creator":["Lawrence, Jeremy"],"dc:date.available":["2022-03-31T07:00:00Z"],"dc:description.abstract":["Neuroticism is a relatively stable personality dimension characterized by tendencies to experience negative thoughts and affect. Its empirically related outcome measures range from anxiety and mood disorders to increases in mortality. Traditional theories of neuroticism, link the construct to greater threat sensitivity, however, these conceptions fail to account for certain salient features of neuroticism, such as negative affect in threat benign environments. The mental noise hypothesis posits that neuroticism results from a more variable mental control system, with support coming from behavioral, psychometric, and neuroimaging paradigms. To assess whether this more chaotic mental control system would variably disrupt the stimulus evaluation phase of cognition, single trial latency variance of the P3b event related potential was assessed in individuals who scored high and low on neuroticism inventories. The primary analysis in this paper failed to provide support for P3b latency variance as the neural generator of the more variable mental control system previously observed in those high in neuroticism. Exploratory analyses with electrode Pz, however, found interesting relationships between lower order neuroticism aspects and prolonged P3b latencies, as well as higher levels of interparticipant P3b latency variance in high neuroticism groups.
"],"dc:identifier":["https://commons.nmu.edu/theses/712"],"dc:subject":["Personality","Neuroticism","EEG","Neuroscience","Cognition and Perception"],"dc:title":["THE MENTAL NOISE HYPOTHESIS: A RELATION BETWEEN NEUROTICISM AND P3 LATENCY VARIANCE IN A STROOP-STYLE REACTION TIME TASK"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Psychological Science"],"thesis:degree_level":["Thesis"],"thesis:degree_name":["Master of Science"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T03:24:17Z"}