Temperament differentially influences early information processing in men and women: Preliminary electrophysiological evidence of attentional biases in healthy individuals

- We address how gender and temperament influence attentional biases.
- All participants showed attentional biases away from negative information.
- Women showed preferential processing of negative compared to positive stimuli.
- Attentional processing was influenced by negative affect and effortful control.

Preferential processing of threat-related information is a robust finding in anxiety disorders. The observation that attentional biases are also present in healthy individuals suggests factors other than clinical symptoms to play a role. Using a dot-probe paradigm while event-related potentials were recorded in 59 healthy adults, we investigated whether temperament and gender, both related to individual variation in anxiety levels, influence attentional processing. All participants showed protective attentional biases in terms of enhanced attention engagement with positive information, indexed by larger N1 amplitudes in positive compared to negative conditions. Taking gender differences into account, we observed that women showed enhanced attention engagement with negative compared to neutral information, indicated by larger P2 amplitudes in congruent than in incongruent negative conditions. Attentional processing was influenced by the temperament traits negative affect and effortful control. Our results emphasize that gender and temperament modulate attentional biases in healthy adults.