Individual differences in attentional resources and self-complexity

The correlational study addressed the hypothesis that individuals with grea ter attentional resources have more complex self-representations. Female pa rticipants first described themselves by assigning descriptive trait terms to self-aspects according to the Linville (1987) self-complexity procedure. In what was described to them as a second study, participants then complet ed tasks that provided individual difference measures of processing speed ( distinguished from baseline speed) and working memory. Principal components analysis of processing speed and working memory scores revealed one attent ional-resource factor. As expected, participants with greater attentional r esources had higher self-complexity scores.