A simple “blank screen” test revealed a key fact about the psychology of neuroticism

A recent study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences provides evidence that people with higher levels of neuroticism tend to naturally focus their thoughts on life problems and uncertainties when their minds are at rest. This default tendency to dwell on negative topics suggests a reason why these individuals frequently experience unhappiness and distress even without any immediate stressors. By exploring what people think about during idle moments, scientists hope to better understand the mental habits that contribute to everyday anxiety.

Psychologists describe neuroticism as a broad personality trait that predisposes individuals to experience negative emotions like stress, anxiety, and sadness. People who score high in neuroticism tend to experience more mental health issues, including generalized anxiety and depression.

In the past, scientists have usually studied neuroticism by looking at how people react to negative events or external threats. Emotional reactivity means experiencing a larger-than-normal emotional spike in response to a stressful event. However, this focus on emotional reactivity fails to explain why highly neurotic people often feel distressed even when nothing particularly bad is happening to them.

To address this gap, the researchers drew inspiration from older psychological theories and newer neurological findings. Researcher Muhammad R. Asad explained, “In the 1950s-1970s, many personality psychologists explored the idea that personality is most evident in terms of spontaneous forms of thinking, such as daydreams, fantasies, etc.”

Asad noted that recent scientific literature has built on these concepts. “More recently, a literature on mind-wandering and the default mode network, which is a brain network that becomes active when the person is detached from tasks or actions, has converged on earlier ideas, many of which were originally inspired by Freudian frameworks,” he said.

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“It struck us that we could develop a ‘thought sampling’ paradigm that was really well structured to examine what people are thinking about when they are doing nothing, but are awake,” Asad added. “From these influences, we created a ‘blank space’ paradigm, where people stare at blank screens for periods of time and then tell us what happened in their minds.”

“Personality traits should be revealed in the types of thoughts that one has when nothing is happening,” Asad continued. “In the present research, it seemed likely that people higher in neuroticism would choose to focus on problems and uncertainties in their lives, with such thought streams likely to give rise to negative affect.”

To test their ideas, the researchers conducted an initial study with 154 college students. First, the students completed a standard questionnaire to measure their levels of neuroticism. After this, they were seated alone in small, unadorned rooms with a computer and asked to simply observe their own thoughts and feelings.

The computer program guided them through six blank periods, ranging from 20 to 140 seconds, where the screen was mostly black. During these periods, the participants had absolutely no task to complete and were free to let their minds wander. After each blank interval, the students answered questions on a seven-point scale about what they had just been thinking about.

The questions asked participants to rate how much they were thinking about themselves, their relationships, good things in their lives, or problems. They also rated how pleasant or unpleasant they felt during that specific time block. This method allowed the scientists to track how emotional states shifted alongside passing thoughts.

The scientists found a direct connection between the content of a person’s thoughts and their emotional state at any given moment. Thinking about good things was linked to pleasant feelings, while thinking about problems was linked to unpleasant feelings.

Participants with higher neuroticism scores reported thinking about life problems more often and good things less often. Because of this thought pattern, highly neurotic individuals experienced more unpleasant feelings overall during the experiment. This pattern provides evidence that a highly neurotic mind naturally defaults to negative and unpleasant topics.

To build on these initial observations, the researchers conducted a second study with a new group of 180 college students. The procedure was nearly identical to the first study, but it included twelve blank intervals instead of six. The researchers also used sliding visual scales from zero to 100 instead of standard numbered options to record answers.

These sliding scales allowed for more precise measurements of how much time the participants spent thinking about specific topics. In this second experiment, the scientists also added two new thought categories to the assessment. Participants were asked to estimate how much time they spent thinking about their goals, which are generally seen as positive, and their uncertainties, which are typically viewed as negative.

Pursuing goals tends to give people a sense of purpose, while facing uncertainties often creates feelings of worry and dread. By including these topics, the scientists hoped to capture a wider range of the thoughts that typically occupy a wandering mind. As in the first study, participants also rated their overall feelings of pleasantness.

The findings from the second study supported the initial observations and provided additional details about how the mind wanders. Thinking about goals and good things predicted pleasant feelings, while dwelling on problems and uncertainties predicted unpleasant feelings. Unlike the first study, the researchers also found that thinking about relationships was linked to pleasant feelings.

Participants who scored higher in neuroticism spent significantly more time thinking about problems and uncertainties. At the same time, they spent much less time thinking about goals, positive aspects of their lives, and their relationships. This tendency to focus on darker topics offers a strong explanation for why neuroticism heavily predicts dissatisfaction with life.

These findings suggest that mental habits play a significant role in shaping a person’s emotional experience. Asad explained that the average person should recognize “that people create their own realities through the types of thoughts that they have.”

“Individuals prone to negative affect seem to be contributing to their negative affect by choosing to think about problems and uncertainties under default conditions,” Asad continued. “Perhaps these findings could point to ways that pessimistic ways of living could be changed.”

While these findings offer a helpful look into the resting mind, the researchers acknowledge that their methods have boundaries. “We need more research of the present type,” Asad noted.

“For example, one could have more trials or even assess spontaneous thoughts over the course of several days to get a thought assessment that reflects more chronic (over time) tendencies,” Asad explained. “We would also like to see research that explores whether recent experiences (e.g., being placed in a negative mood state) change the frequency of problematic thoughts, especially at higher levels of neuroticism.”

Moving forward, the scientists hope to track the ongoing flow of human cognition. “We would like to start examining the ‘stream-of-consciousness’ that William James wrote about so eloquently,” Asad said, referencing the famous philosopher and psychologist.

“For example, does having certain thoughts at time A lead to having other thoughts at time B?” Asad asked. “That is, do thoughts trigger each other in ways that can be tracked and do such thought streams vary by personality?”

By refining their experimental methods, the scientists hope to unlock even deeper insights into human cognition. “To the extent that we can alter the paradigm to be more sensitive, we might be able to really see how people’s minds work,” Asad concluded.

The study, “Dark thoughts: Default thought tendencies as a function of neuroticism,” was authored by Muhammad R. Asad, Hamidreza Fereidouni, and Michael D. Robinson.