Absolute auditory thresholds related to trait vs state emotionality

Within the framework of Eysenck’s (1947, 1967) two-dimensional scheme of personality trait descriptions, Gray (1971) has contended that anxiety can be identified as a combination of introversion from the extraversion-introversion dimension and neuroticism from the neuroticism-emotional stability dimension. This general contention does not conflict with Eysenck’s (1964) position on anxiety, however Gray depicts anxiety as being equally related to introversion and to neuroticism while Eysenck assumes that anxiety is almost inseparable from neuroticism. Furthermore, Gray (1973) has proposed that the anxiety of equal parts of neuroticism and introversion is biologically more fundamental than either neuroticism or introversion. In Eysenck’s view these two traits are based on individual differences in autonomic nervous system responsiveness and cortical excitation-inhibition balance, respectively. In contrast to Eysenck’s (1967) position that extraverts are ‘poor’ or ‘bad’ at conditioning, Gray (1971) proposes that extraverts are bad at fear. The introvert is thus likely to forgo the rewards of human interaction in order to escape the accompanying punishments. When a person exhibits both strong introverted characteristics and the strong emotional responses of being high on neuroticism, then both the avoidance reactions and the powerful fears of high anxiety will be in evidence according to Gray. It is also Gray’s position that this anxiety dimension is essentially the same as the drive (Spence, 1956; Taylor, 1956) and the high levels of arousal that have been associated with poor task performance in an inverted U-shaped curve (Hebb, 1955). Gray (1964) has suggested that the dimension of level of arousal has noteworthy similarities to a nervous-system response property that Russian researchers (Pavlov, 1928, 1941; Nebylitsyn, 1972) have labeled a strength-weakness dimension. It was generally accepted in Pavlov’s laboratory that the stronger nervous system was the ‘better’ nervous system, but Teplov (1964) argued cogently that the weak nervous system was essentially a more sensitive nervous system and sensitivity might be an advantage in some situations. Nebylitsyn et al. (1960) found that most subjects with lower absolute thresholds (higher sensitivity) in both the visual and auditory modalities were identified with other established strength-weakness measures as having weak nervous systems. Both Eysenck (1967) and Gray (1967) have hypothesized that the strength-weakness dimension with its characteristics of arousability and sensitivity is the underlying physiological basis of extraversion-introversion. Using visual sensitivity as a measure of strength, Siddle ef ul. (1969) tested this hypothesis and found some support but noted that neuroticism appeared to be a confounding variable. It would seem quite possible that this confounding may indicate that the combination of introversion and neuroticism as an anxiety dimension as proposed by Gray would be more closely aligned with the strength-weakness dimension. In the present study it was hypothesized that absolute auditory threshold would exhibit a significant negative correlation with scores on a measure of trait anxiety. Another threshold method of assessing the strength-weakness dimension was explored by Yermolayeva-Tomina (1964). Using both the visual and the auditory sense modalities,