Biological Bases of Personality and Intelligence Flashcards
1
Q
What is genotype?
A
The internal genetic code for maintaining a living individual
2
Q
What is phenotype?
A
The outward manifestation of the individual
3
Q
What is genetic heritability?
A
The assessment of the extent that any phenotype is passed on from children to children from genes
4
Q
What influence does the environment have?
A
On heritable variability and lower shared variance
5
Q
What does low variability between the parent and child mean?
A
High proportion of shared variance the characteristis
6
Q
What are certain behaviours linked to?
A
Certain personality traits which are heritable
7
Q
What are the three things that influence personality?
A
Social theories (environment)
Genes (variation in brain structure and function
Gene-environment interaction
8
Q
What are the issues of genetic analyses?
A
Biological mechanisms that they can identify with are not specific unless looking at the effect on individual genes
9
Q
What is a lesion study?
A
A method for studying personality= investigation of the brain that has been impacted by an event
10
Q
Who studied brain injury and personality?
A
Forbes et al
11
Q
What did Forbes et al find?
A
Damage to the left dorso lateral pre frontal cortex associated with high neuroticism and low conscientiousness
12
Q
What do the Forbes et al findings suggest?
A
That N + C rely on a common neural structure
13
Q
What is a criticism of Forbes et al?
A
Study doesn’t indicate anything functional unless using functional imagery
14
Q
Who looked at cortical folding?
A
Schultz et al
15
Q
What did Schultz et al find?
A
High levels of neuroticism associated with low cortical folding of the left dorsal lateral pre frontal cortex. Structural changes associated with neuroticism=m
16
Q
Who looked at structural brain images?
A
Ejindhoven et al
17
Q
What did Ejindhoven et al find?
A
Neuroticism companied with cortico-limbic brain structures
High N scores predicted by thinning of the left orbital frontal cortex and smaller volume of the right amygdala
18
Q
What evidence supports Ejienhoven et al?
A
The limbic system being involved in emotional activity + the orbital frontal cortex being associated with personality traits
19
Q
What does gene expression do?
A
Control brain development in the limbic system
20
Q
What are the traits of gene expression?
A
Complex + coordinated
21
Q
What occurs to genes?
A
Need to be transcribed to make mRNA which is translated to proteins
22
Q
What are the components of chromosomes?
A
Long strand of DNA spaced with non-functional sequences
23
Q
What are the contributions to a trait?
A
Genetics, shared environment + non-shared environment
24
Q
What are the types of studies?
A
Twin, adoption + family
25
Who found the three types of studies?
Plomin et al
26
What are twin studies?
MZ and DZ comparison
27
What are adoption studies?
Personality compared with adopted children and adopted parents and biological
28
Which journal article looked at adoption studies?
Goldsmith 1983
29
What did Goldsmith find?
Adoption studies provide estimates for genetic and environmental influences
30
What are family studies?
Observation, interview and questionnaire, but similarities might be due to environmental
31
What are the comparisons between twin, family + adoption studies?
Between siblings, twins, reared together or apart to examine the extent of genetic environmental effects
32
What are the three types of genetic variance?
Additive, dominant + epistatic
33
What is additive genetic variance?
The total effect on a trait from one or more gene loci
Each locus contributes to a trait (measurable)
34
What is dominant genetic variance?
Certain genes are expressed and others aren't
35
What is epistatic genetic variance?
Genes + environment interact and particular genes will be expressed in certain circumstance
36
Who spoke of the non shared environment characteristics that influence personality?
Harris
37
What are the non shared environment characteristics that influence personality?
Context specific socialisation
Outside the home socialisation
Transmission of culture via group processes
Group processes that widen differences between social groups
Group processes that widen differences among individuals within the group
38
What is context specific socialisation?
Children learn behaviours at home and outside but become less influenced by family as they get older
39
What is outside-the-home socialisation
Children will identify with a number of social groups and could influence personality
40
What is transmission of culture via group processes
Shared norms that can influence personality aren’t always from the parent
Due to shared norms with peers and social groups, interaction with parents’ social identities + individual norms developed are shared with other people if accepted
41
What is group processes that widen differences between social groups?
Personality norms from in groups and how we reject the out-group)
42
What are behavioural genetic researchers interested in?
Estimating the extent of genetic heritability of behaviour across a population
Stating the genetic heritability of the behaviour in terms of shared variance
43
What is concordance?
The rate of probability that 2 people with shared genes will have the same score
44
What do studies assume for adoption studies?
No shared environment for adopted MZ twis
Personality similarities for adopted MZ twins assumed to be genetics
45
What do MZ twins in adoption studies have?
Some post-natal shared environment + extensive pre-natal shared environment
46
Who looked at dopamine and personality?
Munafo et al 2008
47
What did Munafo et al 2008 find?
DRD4 gene may be associated with measures of novelty seeking and impulsivity but not extraversion
48
What traits have a biological basis according to Eysenck?
E + N (P added later)
49
What is Eysenck's biological model of personality and arousal?
The individual wants to maintain a balance between the excitatory mechanism and the inhibitory which is regulated by the aascending reticular activating system which is located in the brain stem
50
What circuit is E related to?
Reticulo-cortical circuit
51
What circuit is N related to?
Reticulo-limbic
52
What does the RC control?
Cortical arousal from incoming stimuli
53
What does the RL control?
Arousal to emotional stimuli
54
What occurs to introverts with the RC?
Arousal of the ARAS so they will avoid stimulation
55
Why are neurotics more aroused?
Due to emotional stimulation
56
Who looked at extraverts and arousal?
Geen
57
What did Geen find?
Extraverts chose higher levels of music to listen to while working compared to introverts
58
What is the stereotyped behaviour of extraverts?
* naturally under-aroused
* seek arousal
* stimulus hungry
* Approaching
59
What is the stereotyped behaviour of introverts?
* naturally more aroused
* prone to over-arousal
* stimulus shy
* Withdrawing
60
What are EEGs?
A measure of electrical activity in the brain and broken down into delta, theta, alpha + beta
61
What do alpha waves indicate?
Low states of arousal
62
Who looked at alpha waves?
Gale 1973
63
What did Gale find?
Introverts tend to show higher levels of alpha activity than extraverts
64
Who disagrees with Gale?
Stenberg
65
What did Stenberg find?
No significant relationship between EEG measures for E + N
66
What are ERPs?
Aame as EEG but in response to a stimuli in the environment
67
What waveform indicates arousal in ERPs?
300 MS
68
Who looked at 300 MS waveform?
Stelmack and Houlihan
69
What did Stelmack & Houliman find?
Higher levels pf P300 amplitudes in introverts and neurotics in response to stimuli
70
What journal article speaks of aggression and arousal?
Bezdjian et al
71
What did Bezdjian et al say?
Aggressive people- more ‘reactive’ as they have ‘high emotional arousal, difficulties with impulse arousal, and an inability to regulate control emotions or affect’
There is a correlation between ‘psychopathic personality traits and ….proactive aggressive’
Proactive aggression + reactive are heritable
72
What are the criticisms of Eysenck's theory?
Genetic components not clear cut for Neuroticism in comparison to Extraversion
Other issues with self-report scores in general – can people be out of touch
with emotions?
e.g. alexiythymic.
Does not distinguish between LH and RH as some studies point to personality change following damage to the cortex
73
Who looked at the five factor model?
Hsu et al
74
What did Hsu et al do?
810 young participants used to generate networks of brain areas and activation patterns.
Looked at the resting state fMRI data from 810 young adults
If activation patterns be used to predict scores on OCEAN traits
75
What did Hsu et al find?
Activation patterns cannot predict scores for E but yes for everything else
76
Who proposed the reinforcement sensitivity theory?
Gray
77
What does Gray suggest?
Individual differences in the physiology of the nervous system, reinforcement history and their level of arousal, may determine the way how the components of the conceptual nervous system leads to three sets of behaviours shown by many animals and humans.
78
What is the reinforcement sensitivity theory?
Biological mechanisms move towards things that they desire and away from things that worry them
79
What is personality based on in the RST?
Interaction between the behavioural approach system, the behavioural inhibition system and the fight/flight/freeze system
80
What is the behavioural approach system?
Motivations to approach
Causes sensitivity to potential rewards and the seeking of them
Motivation from reward seeking and explains attraction to certain things
81
What brain areas are involved with the BAS?
Medial forebrain bundle and the lateral hypothalamus
82
Which people are linked to the BAS?
Impulsive
83
What is the behavioural inhibition system?
Motivation to avoid things based around anxiety Motivations are conditioned and lead to sensitivities over potential punishment Avoidance of certain situations
84
What brain area is involved with the BIS?
Septo-hippocampal system, its monoaminergic
afferents from the brain stem and its neocortical
projection in the frontal lobe
85
What people are involved with the BIS?
Anxious
86
What is the fight/flight/freeze system?
Natural mechanism to stimuli that they haven’t learn a reaction to, threat system
87
What does reward and punishment link to in the RST?
Anxious + impulsive individuals
88
What occurs to anxious individuals in the RST?
Anxious respond well to punishment but not reward
89
What occurs to impulsive individuals in the RST?
Respond well to rewards and not punishment
90
What supports Gray's theory?
Revelle et al 1980
91
What did Revelle et al find?
Moderate doses of caffeine hindered the performance of introverts and helped
the performance of extraverts on a cognitive task
In the morning, low impulsives were hindered and high impulsives helped by caffeine but the pattern reversed in the evening
92
What is evolutionary psychology?
Selective fitness and in this sense this is related to genes.
The ability to reproduce
Focus on largely on characteristics that humans
have in common
93
Which journal article spoke of evolutionary psychology?
Segal & Macdonald 1998
94
What did Segal & MacDonald speak of?
Inclusive fitness theory= Hamilton (1964) favouring of alleles that will cause preservation of the individual, alleles will be passed down, alleles that can ‘reduce the reproductive fitness of individuals may thus be selected if those behaviours increase the fitness of relative’ p.168
Buss (1991)= importance of looking at evolution when studying personality such as ‘acquiring mates’ p.164
95
Who looked at costs and benefits in evolutionary psychology?
Nettle 2005
96
What did Nettle find?
Extraversion
The benefits are mating success, development of social alliances + exploration of environment
The costs are exposure to high levels of risk
97
Who proposed the sociogenomic model?
Roberts
98
What is the sociogenomic model?
‘the expression of DNA can be modified and reprogrammed by experiences in the environment’ p.23 (Robinson, 2004)
‘DNA methylation changes and histone modifications’ p.23
99
Who looked at sex effecting personality?
De Bolle
100
What did De Bolle find?
Young adolescent girls were higher than boys in extraversion and openness’ p.173 (McCrae, 2002)
Gender differences are internalised which leads to differentiated personality traits
Larger cultural differences within Western nations which can cause an effect on personality traits (Schmitt et al, 2008)
Biological changes can cause the changes in how people will interact with their environment which can effect personality
more observable differences after 12 due to hormone changes, girls have a higher risk for depression (N)
‘Sex differences for N are expected to emerge around the age of 14 years’ p.174
