Who should be searching? Differences in personality can affect visual search accuracy

Biggs, Adam T.; Clark, Kait; Mitroff, Stephen R.

Abstract

© 2017 Visual search is an everyday task conducted in a wide variety of contexts. Some searches are mundane, such as finding a beverage in the refrigerator, and some have life-or-death consequences, such as finding improvised explosives at a security checkpoint or within a combat zone. Prior work has shown numerous influences on search, including “bottom-up” (physical stimulus attributes) and “top-down” factors (task-relevant or goal-driven aspects). Recent work has begun to focus on “observer-specific” factors, examining how searchers' attributes might influence search performance. A logical extension involves exploring whether some individuals are better suited to conduct visual searches than other individuals. The current study examined whether certain personality characteristics relate to visual search performance in a large sample of professional searchers employed by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration. Of the “big five” personality traits (neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness), only conscientiousness significantly correlated with visual search accuracy. Both early-career and experienced professional searchers demonstrated a significant relationship between conscientiousness scores and accuracy on a simple visual search task. These findings validate the notion that searchers' attributes impact their visual search performance and suggest that personality assessments might prove useful for hiring and selection decisions regarding professional tasks that incorporate visual search.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 22, 2017
• Online Publication Date: May 15, 2017
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Aug 2, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 3, 2017
• Journal: Personality and Individual Differences
• Print ISSN: 0191-8869
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 116
• Pages: 353-358
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.04.045
• Keywords: visual search, visual attention, professional search, personality hiring and selection
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/880075
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.04.045
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published version is available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.04.045.
• Contract Date: Aug 2, 2017