Some See It, Some Don't: Exploring the Relation between Inattentional Blindness and Personality Factors

PLoS One. 2015 May 26;10(5):e0128158. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128158. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Human awareness is highly limited, which is vividly demonstrated by the phenomenon that unexpected objects go unnoticed when attention is focused elsewhere (inattentional blindness). Typically, some people fail to notice unexpected objects while others detect them instantaneously. Whether this pattern reflects stable individual differences is unclear to date. In particular, hardly anything is known about the influence of personality on the likelihood of inattentional blindness. To fill this empirical gap, we examined the role of multiple personality factors, namely the Big Five, BIS/BAS, absorption, achievement motivation, and schizotypy, in these failures of awareness. In a large-scale sample (N = 554), susceptibility to inattentional blindness was associated with a low level of openness to experience and marginally with a low level of achievement motivation. However, in a multiple regression analysis, only openness emerged as an independent, negative predictor. This suggests that the general tendency to be open to experience extends to the domain of perception. Our results complement earlier work on the possible link between inattentional blindness and personality by demonstrating, for the first time, that failures to consciously perceive unexpected objects reflect individual differences on a fundamental dimension of personality.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Awareness*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Personality Assessment
  • Regression Analysis
  • Visual Perception*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

The reported research was supported by a grant from the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, http://www.dfg.de/) to DM, ME 2678/11.1. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.