Are You sure you want to delete Member from list ?
Personality and the brain
Personality psychologists first found the Big Five personality trait dimensions when analyzing questionnaire responses. Can they also find them when analyzing the brain?
Relating brain regions to Big Five scores is difficult. A theoretical analysis of psychological processes can be a helpful guide, as shown by recent theory and research by DeYoung and colleagues.
These investigators obtained Big Five scores for a set of 116 adult research participants. Then they obtained whole-brain images for each participant using MRI and, using the images, looked for variations in Big Five scores. The reasoning behind this approach is that greater volume in a specific brain region may indicate a greater psychological capacity to perform activities for which the region is needed.
They found that people with higher levels of extraversion had larger brain volume in a region of the frontal cortex that contributes to the processing of information about environmental rewards. This supports the idea that the pursuit of rewarding experiences is a core feature of extraversion.
Higher neuroticism scores were correlated with greater volume in brain regions known to be associated with processing environmental threats.
Agreeableness scores correlated with brain volume in regions of the brain that contribute to people’s ability to understand others’ mental states, a distinct psychological ability that has been linked to specific brain regions.
Conscientiousness correlated with volume in a region of the frontal cortex known to be active when people plan events and follow rules.
Openness to experience was not significantly related to any of the examined brain regions.
