The relationship between psychosocial stress, cognitive performance and disability was assessed in 97 randomly selected common whiplash patients. Patients were investigated early after injury (mean 7.2 days, SD = 3.8) and again at 6 months. Assessment included different aspects of psychosocial stress, negative affectivity, personality traits and attentional functioning. At 6 months six patients (7%) showed partial or complete disability (disabled group) while 91 patients went back to work at pre-injury levels (non-disabled group). However, 26 patients from the latter group at 6 months were still symptomatic. The disabled and non-disabled groups did not differ with respect to psychosocial stress, negative affectivity and personality traits as assessed at baseline. At 6 months no significant differences were found between the disabled group and 26 symptomatic patients from the non-disabled group with respect to any of the assessed factors. The disabled group showed a combination of the following variables as assessed at baseline: greater age, initial neck pain intensity, initial back pain, blurred vision, and anxiety but less dizziness, sensitivity to noise and neurotic or behavioural problems in childhood.