Negative emotionality and behavioral inhibition are associated with subjective frustration after a controlled frustration-induction task

Abstract

Frustration responses vary substantially across individuals, yet the psychological characteristics associated with task-evoked frustration remain unclear. We examined whether four theoretically organized psychological domains, Big Five, BIS/BAS, Self-regulation, and Self-evaluation, were associated with post-task subjective frustration following a controlled frustration-induction task. The final sample comprised 145 participants. Hierarchical regressions with HC3-robust inference first accounted for baseline mood, energy, hunger, and sleep, followed by task-familiarity controls. Baseline-state and familiarity blocks were not significant in the primary models. When entered separately after these controls, each psychological-domain block showed a significant incremental association with frustration at the unadjusted 0.05 level. At the individual-measure level, higher negative emotionality and behavioral inhibition were positively associated with frustration and remained significant in Cook’s-distance sensitivity analyses. No other individual psychological coefficients were significant in the primary robust models. These exploratory findings provide a focused basis for future confirmatory research on individual differences in subjective responses to goal obstruction.