372 Iv. COGNITI vE AND M OTIvATIONAL P ROCESSES
should be more evident at higher levels of 
neuroticism. Robinson, Ode, Moeller, and 
Goetz (2007) examined this prediction in 
two studies and found that negative priming 
effects were indeed stronger at higher levels 
of neuroticism. By contrast, neuroticism did 
not predict the magnitude of positive prim -
ing effects. In our experience, however, neg -
ative priming effects are sometimes difficult 
to observe in the affective priming task. This 
suggests the potential value of other technol -
ogies in probing affective memory networks 
as a function of personality.
Punishment Reactivity Processes 
in Neuroticism
Theoretically, neuroticism has been linked 
to punishment sensitivity (Corr, 2004), 
yet there are surprisingly few basic probes 
of punishment sensitivity (Robinson et al., 
2013). Moeller and Robinson (2010) cre -
ated one in the following manner. On each 
of 120 trials, participants were asked to pre -
dict whether an arrow would point up or 
down. On 50% of these trials, they received 
punishment feedback in the form of an “in -
correct!” error message; on the remainder 
of the trials, they were told that they were 
correct in their predictions. Moeller and 
Robinson defined punishment sensitivity  as 
the tendency to make different predictions 
following error feedback (e.g., make a down 
arrow prediction on the trial following an 
up arrow prediction that received error 
feedback). As hypothesized, the tendency to 
alter one’s predictions in response to error 
feedback was pronounced at high levels of 
neuroticism. By contrast, this same tenden -
cy was absent at low levels of neuroticism. 
These results indicate that people high in 
neuroticism are more sensitive to punish -
ment feedback, even under circumstances 
in which altering one’s behavior cannot im -
prove performance.
Robinson, Moeller, and Fetterman (2010) 
examined the potential link between neu -
roticism and punishment sensitivity in a dif -
ferent way, namely, by examining how much 
people slow down following their errors in 
a categorization task. Slowing down fol -
lowing errors is normally thought to reflect 
adaptive attempts at self-  regulation, which should tend to improve accuracy in the long 
run (Holroyd & Coles, 2002). Alternative -
ly, though, slowing down following errors 
could represent an emotional form of error 
reactivity that would not generally aid one’s 
performance (Bush, Luu, & Posner, 2000). 
Robinson, Moeller, and Ode (2010) hypoth -
esized that the former, adaptive form of pos -
terror adjustment would be true of people 
low in neuroticism, whereas the latter, less 
adaptive form of emotional reactivity would 
be true of people high in neuroticism. In 
four studies, neuroticism did not generally 
predict the extent of slowing down follow -
ing errors. Nonetheless, slowing down fol -
lowing errors predicted worse performance 
at higher, but not lower, levels of neuroti -
cism. Hence, reacting to errors appears to 
take a less functional, more emotional form 
at higher levels of neuroticism.
Neuroticism as  Avoidance
Neuroticism seems to be closely related to 
avoidance motivation. Indeed, self-  reports 
of avoidance motivation often correlate very 
highly with both trait negative affect and 
neuroticism (Elliot & Thrash, 2002). Avoid -
ance motivation should, in turn, result in 
some detectable cognitive and perceptual 
signatures. Specifically, self-  regulation by 
avoidance can be thought of in terms of a 
distance-  increasing dynamic, whereby dis -
tance is placed between the self and objects 
in its environment (Carver & Scheier, 1998). 
Perceptually, this would result in objects 
that seem further away, smaller, or shrink -
ing (Gibson, 1966).
On the basis of these ideas, Liu, Ode, 
Moeller, and Robinson (2013) hypothesized 
positive relationships between neuroticism 
and perceptual distancing. Studies 1 and 2 
used ambiguous phrases akin to those used 
by Boroditsky and Ramscar (2002), who 
showed that the same phrases (e.g., “Next 
Wednesday’s meeting has been moved for -
ward 2 days”) could be perceived in terms 
of events that are closer in time (e.g., Mon -
day) or more distant in time (e.g., Friday), 
depending on one’s perspective. As hypoth -
esized, people higher in neuroticism were 
more likely to interpret the phrases in a 
distance-  favoring direction, such that the 