Neuroticism biases memory self-report in women

ABSTRACT

Reports of memory problems are associated with cognitive decline risk and other adverse health outcomes, and the personality trait of neuroticism is known to influence these reports. Since women tend to have higher neuroticism as well as a unique risk profile for cognitive decline, we examined the relationship between neuroticism and responses to two memory self-report items (self- and age-anchored comparisons) among women (n = 1,132; M_age = 52.71; SD = 13.99) in the Midlife in the United States Refresher Study. Multivariate regression demonstrated that women lower in neuroticism may be more likely to make a distinction between self-comparisons vs. age-anchored comparisons of memory.

KEYWORDS:

• Neuroticism
• memory self-report
• memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36532.v3, reference number ICPSR 36532.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01AG055398 and under Award Number P01AG020166 for the Midlife in the United States Refresher Study .