do not affect only emotions. We have found that neuroticism affects most of
the cognitive components of the distress and worry states, including low con-
fidence and control, low self-esteem and high levels of cognitive interference,
although it has proved to difficult to find reliable correlates of task motiva-
tion using standard trait measures (Matthews, Joyner, et al., 1999).
We conceptualize traits as one of several factors that bias short-term adap-
tation. As previously indicated, traits bias in-situation processing at various
levels, including appraisal and coping. For example, extraversion relates to
challenge appraisal and task-focused coping, and neuroticism to threat ap-
praisal and emotion-focused coping (Matthews et al., in press). Thus, traits
operate to reframe the situation toward personal concerns. For example, the
processing attributes of neuroticism work so as to interpret ambiguous situa-
tions as threatening, engaging the self-protective motives characteristic of the
trait. The state correlates of traits reflect, in macro terms, the different subjec-
tive worlds that people of differing trait characteristics inhabit, and in micro
terms, the differing sets of biases that support adaptations.
For example, in performance settings, there is typically a correlation of
.3–.4 between neuroticism and the distress state. Broadly, neurotic individu-
als interpret task situations, including those involving intellectual tasks, dif-
ferently to more emotionally stable persons: the situation affords opportuni-
ties for personal failure and inadequacy. At the micro level, the relationship
between trait and state is statistically mediated by effects of neuroticism on
intervening variables such as heightened threat appraisal and use of emotion-
focused coping (Matthews, Derryberry, et al., 2000).
States as Self-Regulative Constructs
As in the transactional theory of stress and emotions (Lazarus, 1993), tran-
sient states tell us something about how the person stands in relation to the
surrounding environment. The three higher-order factors of state may corre-
spond to the three predominant adaptive choices of the performance environ-
ment (Matthews et al., 2002; see Table 6.4). The first is how much effort to
commit to the task, corresponding to task engagement. The second is
whether the situation is recognized as imposing uncontrollable demands and
inevitable failure to attain performance goals (distress). The third is whether
the situation calls for pulling back mentally from the task and reevaluating its
personal relevance and significance (worry). These transactional themes rep-
resent an abstraction of the status of self-regulation. At a descriptive level, we
give equal status to emotion, motivation and cognition as expressions of the
different modes of self-regulation that govern the person’s management of
performance situations. At a process level, we emphasize cognitive processes
as the main drivers of all three aspects of state, consistent with self-regulative
- TRAITS, STATES, AND INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONING 167