556 British Journal of Psychology (2012), 103, 556–573 C  2012 The British Psychological Society The British Psychological Society www.wileyonlinelibrary.com Personality differences in mental imagery and the effects on verbal memory Sin´ e McDougall 1 ∗ and Gaby Pfeifer 2 1 University of Bournemouth, Poole, UK 2 University of York, UK This study examined the effects of extraversion and neuroticism on participants’ reported vividness of visual imagery and on their memory performance for concrete and abstract nouns. Groups of extraverts (n = 15) and introverts (n = 15) were selected from a larger original sample and asked to remember a series of concrete and abstract nouns, including a set of lexically ambiguous concrete homonyms (e.g., earth = 1. planet, 2. soil). Extraverts reported more vivid imagery than introverts but this did not translate into better recall for extraverts, even for concrete stimuli. Recall was best for unambiguous concrete nouns, followed by concrete homonyms, then abstract nouns. While initial analyses suggested that there was an interaction between extraversion and the type of word presented, later analyses revealed that neuroticism was the main driver in differences in recall between different word types. While differences in recall were best explained by context availability theory (Schwanenflugel, 1991) rather than dual coding theory (Paivio, 1991), questions remain about the power of either theory to explain the role of individual differences in personality on recall, particularly given that imagery vividness effects were related to extraversion while differences in recall were related to neuroticism. The implications of these findings for future research and theoretical development are discussed. Personality, imagery and recall In the 1960s and 1970s, a considerable amount of research examining the relationship between personality type and performance on language tasks was conducted (see Eysenck, 1976, for a review). Differences which emerged in performance between introverts and extroverts were often explained using arousal theory (Eysenck, 1967). The theory stated that extraverts and introverts differ in arousal levels of the ascending reticular activating system that sends signals to the cortex. Introverts show higher cortical arousal at rest and greater sensitivity to sensory stimuli than extraverts. Cortical arousal can be further influenced by neuroticism. Based on this theory, the predominant methodology used in early studies was the manipulation of stimuli to change arousal Both authors contributed equally to this work and authors’ names are therefore listed alphabetically. ∗ Correspondence should be addressed to Sin´ e McDougall, Psychology Department, University of Bournemouth, Fern Barrow, Poole BH12 5BB, UK (e-mail: smcdougall@bournemouth.ac.uk). DOI:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02094.x