Prospective Memory, Personality, and Individual Differences

Abstract

A number of studies investigating the relationship between personality and prospective memory (ProM) have appeared during the last decade. However, a review of these studies reveals little consistency in their findings and conclusions. To clarify the relationship between ProM and personality, we conducted two studies: a meta-analysis of prior research investigating the relationships between ProM and personality, and a study with 378 participants examining the relationships between ProM, personality, verbal intelligence, and retrospective memory. Our review of prior research revealed great variability in the measures used to assess ProM, and in the methodological quality of prior research; these two factors may partially explain inconsistent findings in the literature. Overall, the meta-analysis revealed very weak correlations (rs ranging from 0.09 to 0.10) between ProM and three of the Big Five factors: Openness, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness. Our experimental study showed that ProM performance was related to individual differences such as verbal intelligence as well as to personality factors and that the relationship between ProM and personality factors depends on the ProM subdomain. In combination, the two studies suggest that ProM performance is relatively weakly related to personality factors and more strongly related to individual differences in cognitive factors.

Hey buddy, why don’t we take it outside: An experience sampling study of prospective memory

“…Cuttler and Graf (2007) found that conscientiousness predicted PM performance (for two of three PM tasks), Arana et al (2008) found that Brule-consciousness^predicted PM, and Pearman and Storandt (2005) also found a significant correlation with conscientiousness. By contrast, Salthouse, Berish, and Siedlecki (2004), Smith et al (2015), and Uttl, White, Wong Gonzalez, McDouall, and Leonard (2013) found no relationship between conscientiousness and PM. However, all of these findings are directed at PM accuracy (rather than PM thoughts), do not include self-generated naturalistic intentions, and are largely underpowered.…”

Development and psychometric validation of the verbal affective memory test

“…We hypothesised that higher Neuroticism might predict stronger recall of negative words, but noted that Neuroticism has not been consistently related to negative memory biases (Edwards & Collins, 2008;Uttl et al, 2013). In addition, negative verbal recall may be more closely related to Neuroticism for nouns than adjectives (Edwards & Collins, 2008), and negative words in VAMT included only four nouns, as well as four adjectives.…”

“…In addition, negative verbal recall may be more closely related to Neuroticism for nouns than adjectives (Edwards & Collins, 2008), and negative words in VAMT included only four nouns, as well as four adjectives. But most importantly, negative memory biases may be associated with Neuroticism only in highly dysphoric or depressed individuals and most studies of neuroticism and affective memory investigate the recall of self-related affective material (Edwards & Collins, 2008;Uttl et al, 2013). In contrast, we measured recall of decontextualised words within a healthy sample.…”

“…Participants rated 240 items on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (definitely agree) for how well items described their personality. We examined Neuroticism, which is a risk factor for depression and has been related to negative recall bias, although inconsistently (Edwards & Collins, 2008;Uttl, White, Wong Gonzalez, McDouall, & Leonard, 2013). The Neuroticism α = .93.…”

A Meta-Analysis and Critical Review of Prospective Memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Evidence suggests that PM has a clear developmental trajectory (Kliegel et al 2008), and that both verbal (Uttl 2006; Uttl et al 2013) and nonverbal (Cockburn and Smith 1991; Maylor 1996) intelligence are related to it. Furthermore, there is some evidence for a female advantage in PM tasks (Palermo et al 2015).…”