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Human Diversity > Week 6: Personality persepctives > Flashcards

Week 6: Personality persepctives Flashcards

1
Q

Riemann et al 1997 method and findings

A

twin study

compared 950 mz and dz twins on the big 5.

Mz correlations higher (notably double) than dz twins

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2
Q

Falconer’s formula: Heritability estimate

A

h^2 = 2 (rmz - rdz)

rmz = correlation for mz twins

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3
Q

Heritability estimate from studies in general

A
  • Suggests personality is influenced by genetic factors
    About 20-50% varience due to genetics
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4
Q

Adoption study: Loehlin et al 1985

A

found larger correlations between children and biological parents (.16–.34) than between children and adoptive parents (.02–.12) on a number of traits

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5
Q

Adoption study: Hershberger et al 1995, mz twins

A

found that identical twins reared apart did NOT show lower correlations on extraversion & neuroticism than identical twins reared together – but did on openness

(so genetic importance for extraversion and neuroticism but not openness)

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6
Q

Adoption studies: Bergeman et al 1993

A

concluded that genetic influence was “substantial” for openness (40%) and conscientiousness (29%), but was weak for agreeableness (12%) and that “there was little evidence of shared rearing environment”

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7
Q

Issues with heritability estimates

A
  • genetic variation across a population (an average)
  • additive assumption (i.e. if only 20-50% of personality varience is due to genes, does that mean 50-80% is environment? Not exactly)
  • 3 different genetic actions, where variance is more complex (Huang & Mackay 2016)…
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8
Q

There are 3 types of genetic actions and their respective genetic variance are difficult to partition (Huang & Mackay, 2016):

A

– Additive genetic actions – different genes work independently
– Dominant genetic actions – dominant genes suppress expression of recessive genes
– Epistatic genetic actions – certain genes determine whether other genes will be expressed or suppressed

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9
Q

Biological: Eysenck’s biological model of personality

A

the human brain has two neural mechanisms:
– excitatory mechanism – keeps the individual alert, active and aroused
– inhibitory mechanism – causes inactivity and low energy

* These two mechanisms are regulated by two independent circuits of arousal
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10
Q

Biological: extraversion is linked to

A
  • Eysenck proposes that extraversion is linked to the arousal circuit responding to incoming stimuli (known as reticulo-cortical circuit)
  • According to Eysenck, while introverts have over-aroused circuits, extraverts have under-aroused circuits
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11
Q

Biological: Neuroticism

A

is linked to the arousal circuit responding to emotional stimuli (known as reticulo-limbic circuit)

  • In stressful situations, neurotics would be more emotionally aroused, while emotionally stable individuals are less aroused
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12
Q

Support for Eysenck’s bio model: Green (1984) & Kehoe et al. (2012)

A

asked introverts and extraverts to choose noise levels of music to listen to while doing a difficult and boring task
* As predicted, extraverts chose higher levels of music than did introverts. Both groups completed the task well under the chosen conditions, but not in the reverse conditions

* For neuroticism, in a neuroimaging study, Kehoe et al. (2012) found that the link between neuroticism and arousal is more complicated than Eysenck proposed 
	* While neuroticism is linked to increased reactivity to emotional arousal, it is also linked to reduced reactivity to positive stimuli
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13
Q

Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST)

A

Gray (1970) proposes personality based on the interaction between three basic systems in the brain:

Behavioural approach system (BAS)

Behavioural inhibition system (BIS)

Flight/flight/freeze system (FFFS)

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14
Q

RST: Behavioural approach system (BAS)

A

comprises motivations to approach and causes the individual to be sensitive to potential rewards and to seek those rewards

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15
Q

RST: Behavioural inhibition system (BIS)

A

comprises motivations to avoid based on conditioned sensitivity to potential punishment or non-rewarding stimuli

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16
Q

RST: Flight/flight/freeze system (FFFS)

A

a mechanism that responds to threat by a tendency to fight, flight or freeze

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17
Q

Relationship between Gray’s & Eysenck’s model

A
  • Gray (1990) proposed that sensitivity to reward and punishment are two independent dimensions, and
    • that Eysenck’s E and N dimensions should be rotated to form more causally efficient axes of ‘punishment sensitivity’ (anxiety) and ‘reward sensitivity’ (impulsivity)
    • This theory explains why introverts are more aroused: they are punishment sensitive / anxious (punishment is more arousing than reward)
    • Likewise, extraverts are reward sensitive (hence impulsive)
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18
Q

Cloninger’s psychobiological model

A

Cloninger et al. (1993) proposed a psychobiological model of personality that includes

four dimensions of temperament and

three dimensions of character

* The temperament dimensions are independently heritable, manifest early in life, and involve individual differences in associative learning in response to novelty, danger or punishment, and reward;
  • whereas the character dimensions mature in adulthood and influence personal and social effectiveness by insight learning about self-concepts
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19
Q

Cloninger: Temperament

A
  • The four dimensions of temperament are:
    – novelty seeking
    – harm avoidance (thought to be linked to serotonin)
    – reward dependence
    – persistence
  • Thought to be organised as independent brain systems, and linked to neurotransmitters that are responsible for the activation and inhibition of our behaviour and responses to rewards and punishments
20
Q

Cloninger: Character

A
  • Characters are based on differences in self-concepts, which vary according to the extent to which a person identifies the self as:
    – an autonomous individual (independent)
    – an integral part of humanity
    – an integral part of the universe as a whole
    • These aspects correspond to the 3 dimensions of character:
      – self-directedness
      – Cooperativeness
      – self-transcendence
21
Q

Problems with psychobiological theories

A

inadequate empirical support, with only some parts of the theories supported by research evidence

* For instance, the relation between neuroticism and arousal was much less well supported than that between extraversion and arousal 

* Stewart et al. (2004) found that items measuring Cloninger's traits more closely resemble FFM and Eysenck's model than the original 7- factor model 

* It has been argued that these theories may have oversimplified biological processes potentially underlying personality
22
Q

Neural correlates of extraversion (findings for DeYoung et al’s fMRI)

A

found extraversion associated with neural activation in response to pleasant stimuli in dopaminergic neurons in the reward network

* Effects of manipulating dopamine pharmacologically are moderated by extraversion, such that extraverts responded with more positive affect in response to stimuli previously paired with dopamine drug experience 

* Extraversion was also found to be positively related to volume of medial OFC (mOFC; a cortical region involved in monitoring the reward value of stimuli), as well as glucose metabolism in mOFC while at rest
23
Q

Neuronal correlates of neuroticism

A

most frequently linked to neuroticism is the amygdala, which modulates attention and arouses the sympathetic nervous system in response to danger signal

* Neuroticism is also linked to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), both thought to downregulates negative emotions 

* All of the systems implicated in neuroticism are modulated by serotonin, and pharmacologically modulating serotonin level was found to result in decline in neuroticism. However, the actual relationship between serotonin and neuroticism seems complex
24
Q

Neural correlates of agreeableness

A
  • Much of the relevant neuroscience research comes from the study of empathy, which involves mentalizing (understanding others’ perspectives) and mirroring (feeling others’ emotions)
    • Mentalizing was found to primarily involve the default network, whereas mirroring for emotion primarily involves the insula and regions of midcingulate cortex.
    • In an fMRI study, agreeable participants showed increased neural activities in the reward circuits knowing that a charity received a payment compared with that they received payment themselves
    • Agreeableness is related negatively to testosterone, & positively with serotonin
25
Q

Neural correlates of openness

A
  • Openness is linked to individual differences in dopamine function
    • According to DeYoung (2013)
      – extraversion is associated with encoding of stimulus value, and functional connectivity between dopaminergic neurons and the nucleus accumbens and caudate nucleus
      – openness is correlated with encoding of stimulus salience, and functional connectivity between dopaminergic neurons and dlPFC
    • In addition, Beaty et al. (2016) reported that openness is linked to the information processing in the default network
      • Default network is a set of brain regions that are more active during rest than various cognitive tasks, representing some kind of “underlying” neural activation
      • Typically deactivated/less activated in externally driven tasks
      • It is thought to be responsible for self-generate thoughts, internal goal-oriented tasks, thinking about the past, planning the future, etc.
26
Q

Neural correlates of conscientiousness

A
  • Structural MRI studies have found positive associations of conscientiousness with the volume of regions in dlPFC
    • It can be attributed to the fact that dlPFC is one of the regions of the goal priority network, which is thought to play a role in determining the priority of goals and reorienting attention away from distractors and toward goal-relevant stimuli
    • Associations seem to be associated with serotonin levels, but evidence inconclusive so far.
    • Rueter et al (2018) found conscientiousness was positively associated with functional connectivity in this goal priority network
      • Measured resting state fMRI (default network)
      • Activation in dlPFC, insula, and ACC significantly associated with conscientiousness and their functional connectivity in other areas of the goal priority network
      • Important for determining the priority of goals as one aspect of concientousness
27
Q

Evaluation of neural correlates of personality

A
  • Increasing number of research findings on neural correlates / instantiations of personality in the brain
    However,
    • A lot of individual pieces of evidence
  • No integrative view on personality as hardwired in the brain
28
Q

3 laws of behavioural genetics: Turkheimer 2000

A
  1. All human behavioral traits are heritable
     2. The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes 

 3. A substantial portion of the variation in human behavioural traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families

“The nature nurture debate is over. The bottom line is that everything is ‐ heritable.” (Turkheimer, 2000, p. 160)

29
Q

Nature via nurture

A

heritability accounts for between 20%-50% of variance in personality traits

* Shared environment (e.g. being raised in the same family environment) accounts for at best a small portion of variance 

* It follows that much of the variance is unexplained by genes nor shared environment, and is hence attributed to non-shared environment 

* This includes the individuals’ peers and aspects of parenting not shared with siblings 

* Because individuals select and shape their environments, effects on developmental outcomes are easier to detect for genes than for environment
30
Q

Nature via nurture
* Barlow (2020)

A

argued that genes affect the way we perceive and react to the social world

31
Q

Nature via nurture
Kendler 1997

A

wins were asked about their social support; genes accounted for 43–75% of variance in reported social support, while shared environment showed small effects.

32
Q

niche building

A

genes partly “cause” environment through self selection:
‐ Individuals can choose to create and transform environments according to their preferences or needs

33
Q

Group socialisation (Harris, 1995)

A

non-shared environment

* With social categorisation, i.e., individuals have a tendency to place other individuals into social groups, being important 

* An individual’s social identity is based on and derived from the groups one feels belonging to and one’s perception of similarities and differences in relation to different social groups 

* This theory attempts to explain what makes people similar as well as what makes people unique in personality
34
Q

Group processes that influence personality

A

Context-specific socialisation

group socialisation

transmission of culture

between-groups contrasts

within-group differentiation

35
Q

context-specific socialisation

A

we learn from many sources and the learning is highly context-specific

36
Q

group socialisation

A

we are socialised by the social groups we identify with

37
Q

transmission of culture

A

culture is transmitted group-to-group, not merely parent to child

38
Q

between-group contrasts

A

we behave in ways depart from the group we reject

39
Q

within-group differentiation

A

while we imitate peer models, we also differentiate ourselves from our peers within-group

40
Q

culture: Hofstede’s cultural dimensions

A

collected survey data on attitudes of employees of IBM, involving close to 117,000 cases from 71 countries

* Four relatively independent dimensions were identified: 
	– individualism-collectivism – the degree to which a person is integrated into groups 
	– power distance – acceptance of economic and social inequality 
	– uncertainty avoidance – the discomfort experienced in ambiguous or unstructured situations  – masculinity-femininity – assertiveness (masculinity) versus nurture (femininity)
41
Q

Hofstede et al. (2010) added 2 additional dimensions later

A

– Long vs. short term orientation – focusing on the future vs. the present and past for one’s efforts
– Indulgence-restraint – gratification vs. control of basic human desires related to enjoying life

  • It is important to emphasize that these dimensions describe cultures and not individuals. Also, the original survey was on work attitude, so these dimension are often referred to as “organizational culture”.
42
Q

Culture dimensions and personality Triandis (2001)

A

comparatively, people in collectivist cultures are more likely to
– describe themselves as group members instead of as individuals
– emphasize collective goals
– pay more attention to external than internal determinants of social behavior, and
– be self-effacing

43
Q

Culture dimensions and self-construals

A

independent versus interdependent self-construals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991)

* In particular, people in individualist cultures tend to construct a self as independent of others and emphasise self-esteem 

* In contrasts, people in collectivist cultures tend to construct a self that is inter-connected to their social groups and emphasise relationship harmony
  • Relationship harmony can be seen as the functional equivalence of selfesteem in contributing to subjective well-being (Kwan et al., 1997)
44
Q

individualist culture wellbeing

A

independent self-construal

self esteem

= wellbeing

45
Q

collectivist culture well-being

A

interdependent self-construal

relationship harmony

= wellbeing

46
Q

Jiang & Sui (2022): self-construals and cognitive processing

A

found to predict different ways of cognitive processing

experimentally priming the interdependent self-construal led to a reduced self-bias effect (i.e., faster and more accurate processing of self-relevant stimuli)

(Zhang et al., 2017), priming independent self-construal caused Chinese participants to self-evaluate more favourably when faced with threatening feedback (without the same priming threatening feedback resulted in less favourable self-evaluation among Chinese participants than non-threatening feedback)

47
Q

summary

A
  • Genes play an important role in – yet do not fully explain – personality
    • Personality has specific neural correlates (in terms of brain activations)
    • Environment can impact personality by turning on/off genes, while personality, under the influence of genes, determines an individual’s choice of and reactions to environment
  • Culture affects how the mind works, and hence personality and/or its manifestation

Human Diversity (6 decks)

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