Computer experience, attitudes toward computers and personality characteristics in psychology undergraduates

This study investigated computer experience, attitudes toward computers and personality characteristics in 149 first year psychology students at a Scottish university, 54 males and 95 females. Experience with computers appears to be the main determinant of students attitudes rather than personality variables or sex. Computer attitudes correlated most significantly with knowledge of a computer language, home computer use, programming, game-playing and word-processing use of computers, and statistics anxiety. Computer attitudes correlated significantly with two of seven personality variables studied, neuroticism and self-criticism. Sex differences for computer related variables were small and were only significant for computer attitudes, computer anxiety, knowledge of a computer language and programming computer use. Sex differences for emotionality, dependency, self-criticism, neuroticism and extraversion were more significant.