Neuroticism, Extraversion and Stress: Physiological Correlates

Low neuroticism and high extraversion seem to be predictors for people performing well during and after extremely stressful circumstances. Here we investigate whether these personality factors are linked to stress sensitivity. Stress was induced through negative feedback on gaming performance and stress sensitivity was determined as the difference in baseline physiological variables (skin conductance, heart rate and heart rate variability) before and after the game, as well as this difference in subjectively reported stress. Our second research question was whether neuroticism and extraversion are linked to baseline physiology. While physiological results suggested that the game had indeed induced stress, subjective reports did not. Perhaps due to this weak experienced stress, we did not find correlations between stress sensitivity and personality. For the baseline measurements, we did find the expected correlations between extraversion and both heart rate and heart rate variability (negative and positive respectively). The negative correlation between neuroticism and skin conductance was opposite of what we expected. While the exact mechanisms are not clear yet, our study suggests that for healthy individuals, there are measurable links between physiology and personality, not only for heart rate variability (a variable that is already often used to probe the long lasting state of an individual) but also for heart rate and skin conductance.