Testing Predictions From Personality Neuroscience: Brain Structure and the Big Five

By Colin G. DeYoung, Jacob B Hirsh, Matthew S. Shane, X. Papademetris, N. Rajeevan, Jeremy R. Gray. Psychology Science, 2010

1,027 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We used a new theory of the biological basis of the Big Five personality traits to generate hypotheses about the association of each trait with the volume of different brain regions. Controlling for age, sex, and whole-brain volume, results from structural magnetic resonance imaging of 116 healthy adults supported our hypotheses for four of the five traits: Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Extraversion covaried with volume of medial orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region involved in processing reward information. Neuroticism covaried with volume of brain regions associated with threat, punishment, and negative affect. Agreeableness covaried with volume in regions that process information about the intentions and mental states of other individuals. Conscientiousness covaried with volume in lateral prefrontal cortex, a region involved in planning and the voluntary control of behavior. These findings support our biologically based, explanatory model of the Big Five and demonstrate the potential of personality neuroscience (i.e., the systematic study of individual differences in personality using neuroscience methods) as a discipline.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e09456eba6e6d7eb0c318247e500617c37dd486b

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Citations in the corpus

Cybernetic Big Five Theory. (2015, positive): “…Conscientiousness to be associated with volume of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region crucial for maintaining the activation of abstract goals and for executing planned action based on abstract rules (DeYoung et al., 2010; Kapogiannis, Sutin, Davatzikos, Costa, & Resnick, 2013).”
Personality Neuroscience and the Biology of Traits (2010, positive): “Neuroticism has also been associated with neural activity in medial prefrontal cortex that is suggestive of poor emotion regulation (Haas, Constable, & Canli, 2008; Williams et al., 2006) and with reduced volume in that region (DeYoung et al., 2010).”
Hard evidence on soft skills (2012, neutral): “(8)See Epstein (1979) for an early paper showing that personality traits are stable across multiple situations.”
Individual Differences in Marketing Placebo Effects: Evidence from Brain Imaging and Behavioral Experiments (2015, methodology): “…et al. 1995), VBM has been widely applied to investigate brain structural foundations of pathological processes as well as psychological variables and individual differences in behavior or personality (DeYoung et al. 2010; Schweinhardt et al. 2009; Tabibnia et al. 2011; Yokum, Ng, and Stice 2011).”
Opening up Openness to Experience: A Four-Factor Model and Relations to Creative Achievement in the Arts and Sciences. (2013, neutral): “…Grazioplene, & Peterson, 2012; DeYoung, Peterson, & Higgins, 2005; DeYoung, Quilty, & Peterson, 2007; DeYoung, Shamosh, Green, Braver, & Gray, 2009; DeYoung et al., 2010; Jang, Livesley, Angleitner, Riemann, & Vernon, 2002; Johnson, 1994; Mussel, Carolin, Gelleri, & Schuler, 2011; Wainwright,…”