Personality Psychology #1

Biological Basis of Personality

Evolutionary Psychology and Animal
Studies of Personality

Bogdan Oprea
University of Bucharest
Evolution and Natural Selection
• Darwin proposed a theory of the process by which adaptations are created and
change takes place over time. He called it the theory of natural selection.

• Darwin noticed that species seemed to produce many more offspring than could
possibly survive and reproduce. He reasoned that changes, or variants, that better
enabled an organism to survive and reproduce would lead to more descendants. The
descendants would inherit the variants that led to their ancestors’ survival and
reproduction. Through this process, the successful variants were selected and
unsuccessful variants weeded out.

• Natural selection, therefore, results in gradual changes in a species over time, as

successful variants increase in frequency and eventually spread throughout the gene
pool, replacing the less successful variants. Over time, these successful variants come
to characterize the entire species; unsuccessful variants decrease in frequency and
vanish from the species.
Evolution and Natural Selection
• Darwin noticed that many mechanisms seemed contrary to survival. The elaborate
plumage, large antlers, and other conspicuous features displayed by the males of
many species seemed costly in terms of survival. Darwin proposed a second
evolutionary theory – the theory of sexual selection.

• The evolution of characteristics because of their mating benefits, rather than because
of their survival benefits, is known as sexual selection.

• Sexual selection, according to Darwin, takes two forms. In one form, members of the
same sex compete with each other, and the outcome of their contest gives the winner
greater sexual access to members of the opposite sex - intrasexual competition. In the
other type of sexual selection - intersexual selection - members of one sex choose a
mate based on their preferences for particular qualities. These characteristics evolve
because those that possess them are chosen more often as mates, and their genes
thrive.
Evolution and Natural Selection
• Genes are packets of DNA that are inherited by children from their parents in distinct
chunks. Genes are the smallest discrete units that are inherited by offspring intact,
without being broken up. According to modern evolutionary biologists, evolution
operates by the process of differential gene reproduction, defined by reproductive
success relative to others.

• Successful survival and successful mate competition are both paths to differential gene
reproduction. The characteristics that lead to the greater reproduction of genes that
code for them are selected and, hence, evolve over time.

• The modern evolutionary theory based on differential gene reproduction is called

inclusive fitness theory (Hamilton, 1964). The “inclusive” part refers to the fact that the
characteristics that facilitate reproduction need not affect the personal production of
offspring. They can affect the survival and reproduction of genetic relatives as well.
Evolution and Natural Selection
• Inclusive fitness can be defined as one’s personal reproductive success (roughly, the
number of children you produce) plus the effects you have on the reproduction of your
genetic relatives, weighted by the degree of genetic relatedness. Inclusive fitness can
lead to adaptations that incline you to take some risk for the welfare of your genetic
relatives, but not too great a risk. Inclusive fitness theory, as an expansion and
elaboration of Darwin’s theory, represented a major advance in understanding human
traits, such as some forms of altruism.

• Successful survival and successful mate competition are both paths to differential gene
reproduction. The characteristics that lead to the greater reproduction of genes that
code for them are selected and, hence, evolve over time.

• The evolutionary process acts as a series of filters. In each generation, only a small
subset of genes passes through the filter. The recurrent filtering process lets only three
things pass through: adaptations; byproducts of adaptations; and noise, or random
variations.
Evolution and Natural Selection
• Adaptations are the primary product of the selective process. An adaptation can be
defined as a “reliably developing structure in the organism, which, because it meshes
with the recurrent structure of the world, causes the solution to an adaptive problem”
(Tooby & Cosmides, 1992, p. 104).

• An adaptive problem is anything that impedes survival or reproduction, or anything

whose solution increases the odds of survival or reproduction. Stated more precisely,
all adaptations must contribute to fitness during the period of time in which they
evolve, by helping an organism survive, reproduce, or facilitate the reproductive
success of genetic relatives.

• The features of an adaptation are recognized as components of specialized

problem-solving machinery. Factors such as efficiency in solving a specific adaptive
problem, precision in solving the adaptive problem, and reliability in solving the
adaptive problem are key criteria in recognizing the special design of an adaptation.
Evolution and Natural Selection
• Byproducts of adaptations are incidental effects that are not properly considered to be
adaptations. Both sorts of evolutionary hypotheses - adaptation and byproduct
hypotheses - require a description of the nature of the adaptation.

• Evolutionary noise, or random variations, are neutral with respect to selection. Neutral
variations introduced into the gene pool through mutation, for example, are
perpetuated over generations if they do not hinder the functioning of adaptations.

• Adaptations are the primary product of the selective process, so evolutionary

psychology is primarily focused on identifying and describing human psychological
adaptations. The hypothesis that something is a byproduct requires specifying the
adaptation of which it is a byproduct. The analysis of byproducts, therefore, leads us
back to the need to describe adaptations. And noise is the residue of nonfunctional
variation that is selectively neutral.
Evolutionary Psychology
• Adaptations are hypothesized to be domain specific because they are designed by the
evolutionary process to solve a particular adaptive problem. Another reason for
domain specificity is that different adaptive problems require different sorts of
solutions. Domain specificity implies that selection tends to fashion at least somewhat
specialized mechanisms for each adaptive problem.

• Our ancestors faced many sorts of adaptive problems in the course of human
evolution, so we have numerous adaptive mechanisms. Evolutionary psychologists
suggest that the human mind, our evolved psychology, also contains a large number of
mechanisms - psychological adaptations. Evolutionary psychologists expect there to
be a large number of domain-specific psychological adaptations to correspond to the
large number of distinct adaptive problems humans have recurrently confronted.

• The third key premise of evolutionary psychology is functionality, the notion that our
psychological mechanisms are designed to accomplish particular adaptive tasks. The
search for function involves identifying the specific adaptive problem for which the
mechanism is an evolved solution.
 Exercise #1
The evolutionary purpose of personality
traits
Evolutionary Perspectives on Personality
• individual differences
• moderately heritable (e.g., Polderman et al., 2015)
• stable over time (Plomin et al., 2008) and across cultures (e.g., McCrae et al., 1998)
• continuous across species (e.g., Gosling, 2001)
• powerfully predictive of behavior (e.g., Fleeson and Gallagher, 2009)
• impact evolutionarily relevant aspects of fitness in a trade-off manner (e.g., Nettle, 2005,
2006)
• reliably solve adaptive problems (e.g., Buss, 2011).

• moderately heritable (Polderman et al., 2015)

• behavioral genetics research documents heritability estimates of various personality
dimensions ranging, on average, from .40 to .50 across various populations and personality
inventories (e.g., Bouchard, 1994; Loehlin, 1992; Tellegen et al., 1988).
Evolutionary Perspectives on Personality
• relatively stable across cultures (e.g., Ashton and Lee, 2007; McCrae and Costa,
2008; Saucier, 2009)
• the five-factor model of personality has been identified across several Western and
non-Western cultures, showing that the factors are not specific to any particular language
or culture (e.g., McCrae and Costa, 2008; McCrae et al., 1998).

• continuous across species (e.g., Gosling, 2001)

• individual differences are heritable in nonhuman mammals, such as chimpanzees (Weiss et
al., 2000);
• Big Five personality factors generalize to chimpanzees, as documented in a study employing
zoo workers’ ratings of chimpanzees on adjectival personality descriptors (King and
Figueredo, 1997);
• Big Five factors have been documented in several other species, ranging from octopuses to
dogs (see Gosling and John, 1999, for review).
Evolutionary Perspectives on Personality
• powerfully predictive of behavior
• meta-analysis of 15 experience sampling studies documented that Big Five personality traits
strongly predict trait manifestations in behavior (e.g., trait-level standing on Extraversion
predicting average levels of state-level extraverted behaviors of talkativeness, boldness, and
assertiveness; Fleeson and Gallagher, 2009);
• self-reported standing on the Big Five predict average levels of manifested behavioral states
with moderate to strong correlations between .42 and .56 (Fleeson and Gallagher, 2009).

• impact evolutionarily relevant aspects of fitness in a trade-off manner

• associated with the domains of survival, mating success, status ascension, offspring
production, and parenting (e.g., Buss and Greiling, 1999; Nettle, 2006; Ozer and
Benet-Martinez, 2006);
Evolutionary Perspectives on Personality
• impact evolutionarily relevant aspects of fitness in a trade-off manner
• self-reported degree of Extraversion is positively correlated with one’s number of lifetime
sexual partners, and one’s committed infidelity (Nettle, 2005) – behaviors indicative of
short-term mating success;
• the fitness benefits of a short-term mating strategy, however, are also associated with some
fitness costs, such as reduced parental investment (relative to time and resources invested
in mating effort), and reduced survival prospects for offspring (Nettle, 2005);

• reliably solve adaptive problems (e.g., Buss, 2011)

• personality and individual differences impact key aspects of an individual’s social life,
including friendships, rivalries, kinship, and mateships.
Environmental Triggers of Individual Differences
• Life history describes a schedule of growth, survival and reproduction throughout the
individual’s life that maximises reproduction and survival. Life history works is a
tradeoff between mating and parenting effort. Mating effort - maximising the number
of offspring it produces through its lifetime, thereby increasing the chances of its genes
surviving into future generations (i.e. if it has no offspring, its genes won’t survive).
Parental investment - spending more time with the existing offspring to ensure their
survival.

• The critical event of early father presence versus father absence triggers specific
sexual strategies in individuals (Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991). Children who grow
up in father-absent homes during the first five years of life, according to this theory,
develop expectations that parental resources will not be reliably or predictably
provided. Furthermore, these children come to expect that adult pair bonds will not be
enduring. Such individuals cultivate a sexual strategy marked by early sexual
maturation, early sexual initiation, and frequent partner switching - a strategy designed
to produce a larger number of offspring.
Environmental Triggers of Individual Differences
• In contrast, individuals who experience a reliable, investing father during the first
five years of life, according to the theory, develop a different set of expectations
about the nature and trustworthiness of others. People are seen as reliable and
trustworthy, and relationships are expected to be enduring. These early
environmental experiences predispose individuals toward a long-term mating
strategy, marked by delayed sexual maturation; a later onset of sexual activity; a
search for long-term, securely attached adult relationships; and heavy
investment in a small number of children.

• Children from divorced homes, for example, are more sexually promiscuous
than children from intact homes (Belsky et al., 1991). Furthermore, girls from
father-absent homes reach menarche (age of first menstruation) earlier than
girls from father-present homes (Kim, Smith, & Palermiti, 1997). Nonetheless,
these findings are correlational, so causation cannot be inferred.
Individual Differences Contingent on Other Traits
• Another type of evolutionary analysis of personality involves evaluating one’s personal
strengths and weaknesses. Suppose, for example, that men could pursue two different
strategies in social interaction - an aggressive strategy marked by the use of physical force and
a nonaggressive strategy marked by cooperativeness. The success of these strategies,
however, hinges on an individual’s size, strength, and fighting ability.

• Adaptive self-assessments can produce stable individual differences in aggression or

cooperativeness. In this example, the tendency toward aggression is not directly heritable.
Rather, it is reactively heritable: it is a secondary consequence of heritable body build (Tooby
& Cosmides, 1990).

• Body weight, which is highly correlated with strength, predicts aggression among young men
(Archer & Thanzami, 2009; Deaner et al., 2012). Physically stronger males are also quicker to
anger and are more likely to believe in the utility of warfare (Sell et al., 2012). The combination
of physical strength and physical attractiveness predict the traits of extraversion, leadership
orientation, and amount of bargaining power in social interactions - a prime example of how a
personality trait can be contingent on other traits (Lukaszewski, 2013; Lukaszewski & Roney,
2011; von Rueden et al., 2015).
Between-Sex Variation
• Evolutionary psychology predicts that males and females will be the same or
similar in domains in which the sexes have faced the same or similar adaptive
problems. In other domains, men and women have faced substantially different
adaptive problems over human evolutionary history. The key questions about
sex differences, from an evolutionary psychological perspective, are the
following:

1. In what domains have women and men faced different adaptive problems?

2. What are the sex-differentiated psychological mechanisms of women and men that have
evolved in response to these sex-differentiated adaptive problems?

3. Which social, cultural, and contextual inputs affect the magnitude of expressed sex
differences?
Between-Sex Variation
• In a sample of homicides committed in Chicago from 1965 through 1980, 86 percent were
committed by men (Daly & Wilson, 1988). In all cultures studied to date, men are
overwhelmingly more often the killers, and most of their victims are other men. Any
reasonably complete theory of aggression must provide an explanation for both facts - why
men engage in violent forms of aggression so much more often than women do and why men
comprise the majority of their victims.

• An evolutionary model of intrasexual competition provides the foundation for such an

explanation. Even psychologists who argue that most psychological and behavioral sex
differences are due to social roles concede that sex differences in aggression are most likely
caused by a long evolutionary history in which women and men have confronted different
adaptive problems in the context of mating and mate competition (Archer, 2009). Greater
body size and strength in males is also likely due to a long history of females who select as
mates males with these qualities (Buss, 2012; Plavcan, 2012). One study found that women
who fear crime are especially likely to prefer long-term mates who are aggressive and
physically formidable (Snyder et al., 2011). Another study found that men with more muscle
mass had a larger number of sex partners and an earlier age of first sexual intercourse (Lassek
& Gaulin, 2009). And a third study found that men who experienced aggressive victimization
in adolescence at the hands of other males have fewer sex partner (Gallup et al., 2009).
 Exercise #5
Sex Differences in Jealousy
Between-Sex Variation
• Men are far more distressed than women when
imagining their partners having sexual intercourse with
someone else (Buss et al., 1992). The overwhelming
majority of women, in contrast, are more distressed
when imagining their partners becoming emotionally
involved with someone else. These results also show up
in measures of physiological distress (Buss et al., 1992;
Pietrzak et al., 2002).

• Women experienced more psychological relief when

they discovered that their partner was not emotionally
unfaithful, whereas men experienced greater relief upon
the disconfirmation of a partner’s sexual infidelity
(Schutzwohl, 2008).
Between-Sex Variation
• Evolutionary psychologists have also predicted that men and women differ in the qualities
they desire in a long-term mate. Because women bear the burdens of the heavy obligatory
parental investment, they are predicted to place more value on a potential mate’s financial
resources and the qualities that lead to such resources. Men, in contrast, are predicted to place
greater value on a woman’s physical appearance, which provides a wealth of observable cues
to her fertility.

• It is clear that women and men both place many qualities above looks and resources. In
particular, “kind and understanding” and having an “exciting personality” are more valued by
both sexes. Interestingly, people prefer the trait of “kindness” in mates when the kindness is
directed toward them, but not necessarily when it is directed toward others (Lukaszewski &
Roney, 2010).

• The personality characteristics that contribute to financial success - ambition, industriousness,

and dependability - are highly valued by women worldwide. Whereas men prioritize physical
attractiveness, women prioritize social status as a “necessity” in selecting long-term mates (Li
et al., 2011). Personality plays a key role in mate preferences across the globe, and on a few
dimensions there are universal gender differences in what people want in a marriage partner.
Limitations of Evolutionary Psychology
1. adaptations are forged over the long expanse of thousands or millions of generations,
and we cannot go back in time and determine with absolute certainty what the
precise selective forces on humans have been

2. evolutionary scientists have just scratched the surface of understanding the nature,
details, and design features of evolved psychological adaptations

3. modern conditions differ from ancestral conditions in many respects, so that what
was adaptive in the past might not be adaptive in the present

4. it is sometimes easy to come up with different and competing evolutionary

hypotheses for the same phenomena

5. evolutionary hypotheses have sometimes been accused of being untestable and

hence unfalsifiable
Personality Neuroscience
• Studies have shown that traumatic brain injury can lead to large changes in personality
(Edmundson et al., 2015). One of the most common changes in personality following
brain injury is a diminished ability to inhibit or control one’s impulses. This has been
found in children who experienced brain trauma (Gerring & Vasa, 2016), in adults with
traumatic brain injuries (Kim, 2002), and in elderly persons whose brains have been
injured by stroke (Freshwater & Golden, 2002).

• This increased impulsivity and lack of self-control is most likely due to disruptions
between the frontal lobes, which serve as the executive control center of the brain,
and other parts of the brain. As a result, persons with extensive brain injury can retain
most of their cognitive abilities, yet lose some degree of self-control (Lowenstein,
2002).

• Persons with personality changes following traumatic brain injuries often have
spontaneous outbursts, sudden changes in mood, and episodes of aggression and can
become quite disruptive to their families (Beer & Lombardo, 2007).
Personality Neuroscience
• The term physiological characteristics refers to the functioning of organ
systems within the body.

• Examples of physiological systems are the nervous system (including the brain
and nerves), the cardiac system (including the heart, arteries, and veins), and the
musculoskeletal system (including the muscles and bones, which make all
movements and behaviors possible).

• From the perspective of personality psychology, physiology is important to the

extent that differences in physiology create, contribute to, or indicate
differences in psychological functioning.
Methods in Personality Neuroscience
• Neuroimaging techniques (e.g., MRI) create images of the brain based on the magnetic
properties of different tissue types. These can be either high-resolution images of brain
structure or lower resolution images of brain function.

• Functional imaging with fMRI is possible because blood flow and oxygen use increase
with neural activity, so that the blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal indicates
which regions of the brain are active at a given time. One limitation of fMRI is that it
assesses relative rather than absolute levels of neural activation; activation during one
experimental condition must be contrasted with activation during another to get a
meaningful signal.

• In addition to activation, fMRI can also be used to assess functional connectivity -

patterns of temporal synchrony between different parts of the brain. Brain regions that
show similar temporal patterns of activation and deactivation during some portion of a
scan are deemed to be functionally connected.
Methods in Personality Neuroscience
• Electroencephelography (EEG) measures the brain’s electrical activity through the skull
using electrodes on the scalp. It can assess neural activity by the millisecond, which is
much higher temporal resolution than what is currently available from fMRI or other
neuroimaging techniques, but it suffers from greatly reduced spatial resolution.

• Assays of endogenous psychoactive substances. Measurements of substances such as

hormones or neurotransmitter metabolites in blood, saliva, urine, or spinal fluid can be
used to implicate specific neurobiological systems in personality.

• Psychopharmacological manipulation. Psychoactive chemicals can be used as drugs to

probe neurotransmitter systems involved in personality traits. Effects of administering
a drug (vs. a placebo) can be assessed through effects on behavior or on biological
parameters measured through one of the three categories of assessment already
described. If the effects of the pharmacological manipulation are moderated by a trait,
this suggests that variation in the trait is related to variation in the neural system
targeted by the drug.
Methods in Personality Neuroscience
• Molecular genetics. The study of variation in DNA can be considered neuroscience
when it focuses on genes expressed in the brain. Molecular genetics has been in a
rapid state of flux as a field. Much early work on personality relied on candidate gene
studies, targeting variation in specific genes that seemed likely to be linked to
personality.

• Unfortunately, results have been largely inconsistent, and most candidate gene studies
have failed to replicate. Such failures do not indicate a lack of genetic influences on
personality, as all personality traits are substantially heritable (Johnson & Krueger,
2004; Loehlin, McCrae, Costa, & John, 1998; Riemann, Angelitner, & Strelau, 1997).
Rather, they indicate that complex traits are massively polygenic, influenced by many
thousands of variations in the genome, most of which have only miniscule effects on a
given trait (Munafò & Flint, 2011). Because of these challenges, we largely avoid citing
candidate gene studies.
Methods in Personality Neuroscience
• Electrodermal Activity (Skin Conductance). Most of the common physiological
measures in personality research are obtained from electrodes, or sensors placed on
the surface of a participant’s skin. They are noninvasive in that they do not penetrate
the skin, and these electrodes cause practically no discomfort. One drawback to such
measures is that the participant is literally wired to the physiological recording machine
(often called a polygraph), so movement is constrained.

• A new generation of electrodes will, however, overcome this limitation through the use
of telemetry, a process by which electrical signals are sent from the participant to the
polygraph through Bluetooth, WiFi, or other radio waves instead of by wires.

• The skin on the palms of the hands (and the soles of the feet) contains a high
concentration of sweat glands. These sweat glands are directly influenced by the
sympathetic nervous system, the branch of the autonomic nervous system that
prepares the body for action—that is, the fight-or-flight mechanism.
Methods in Personality Neuroscience
• The more water present in the skin, the more easily the skin carries, or conducts, electricity.
This bioelectric process, known as electrodermal activity or skin conductance, makes it
possible for researchers to directly measure sympathetic nervous system activity.

• In this technique, two electrodes are placed on the palm of one hand. A very low voltage of
electricity is then put through one electrode into the skin, and the researcher measures how
much electricity is present at the other electrode. The difference in the amount of electricity
that is passed into the skin at one electrode and the amount detected at the other electrode
tells researchers how well the skin is conducting electricity. The more sympathetic nervous
system activity there is, the more water is produced by the sweat glands in the skin, and the
better the skin conducts the electricity.

• Not surprisingly, the personality traits most consistently associated with nonspecific
electrodermal responding are anxiety and neuroticism (Cruz & Larsen, 1995). A person who is
high in anxiety and neuroticism appears to have a sympathetic nervous system that is in a
state of chronic activation.
Methods in Personality Neuroscience
• Cardiovascular Activity. Blood pressure is the pressure exerted by the blood on the inside of the artery
walls, and it is typically expressed with two numbers: diastolic and systolic pressure. The systolic
pressure is the larger number, and it refers to the maximum pressure within the cardiovascular system
produced when the heart muscle contracts. The diastolic pressure is the smaller number, and it refers
to the resting pressure inside the system between heart contractions.

• Blood pressure can increase in a number of ways—for example, the heart may pump with larger strokes
generating more volume or through a narrowing of the artery walls. Both of these actions occur through
activation of the sympathetic nervous system in the fight-or-flight response. Blood pressure is
responsive to a number of conditions, and personality researchers have been especially interested in
blood pressure response to stress.

• Another cardiovascular measure is heart rate, often expressed in beats-per-minute (BPM). One
approach is to measure the time interval between successive beats. If that interval is exactly one
second, then the heart rate is 60 BPM. By measuring the intervals between successive heartbeats, the
psychologist can get a readout of heart rate on a beat-by-beat basis. Heart rate is important because as
it increases, it indicates that the person’s body is preparing for action—to flee or to fight, for example. It
tells us that the person is distressed, anxious, fearful, or otherwise more aroused than normal. Heart
rate also increases with cognitive effort
Personality Hierarchy
• Personality traits are probabilistic descriptions of relatively stable patterns of
emotion, motivation, cognition, and behavior (DeYoung, 2015; Fleeson &
Gallagher, 2009). Traits can be arranged hierarchically, based on their patterns
of covariance, typically identified through factor analysis.

• Traits at higher levels of the hierarchy reflect the tendency of traits at lower
levels to co-occur within individuals. The most well-studied level of the
hierarchy contains the so-called “Big Five”—extraversion, neuroticism,
openness/intellect, conscientiousness, and agreeableness—which are the best
validated broad dimensions of covariation among personality traits (John,
Naumann, & Soto, 2008; Markon, Krueger, & Watson, 2005).
Extraversion
• Current theories of the neural basis of extraversion stem largely from the work of Depue and Collins
(1999), who linked it to dopamine and the brain’s reward system. They were inspired by the work of
Gray (1973; Pickering & Gray, 1999), a student of Eysenck, who developed an influential approach to
personality neuroscience called reinforcement sensitivity theory, which attempted to connect
personality to the neural processes that govern reward and punishment.

• Gray referred to the reward system as the behavioral approach system (BAS). Although Gray originally
speculated that the trait most closely reflecting BAS sensitivity might be impulsivity, subsequent
research indicates that extraversion is a better candidate, and that questionnaires explicitly designed to
assess BAS sensitivity are typically most closely aligned with extraversion (Pickering, 2004; Quilty,
DeYoung, Oakman, & Bagby, 2014; Wacker, Mueller, Hennig, & Stemmler, 2012; Zelenski & Larsen,
1999).

• Both behavioral and neural research have provided evidence that the core psychological function
underlying extraversion is sensitivity to reward (DeYoung, 2015; Smillie, 2013; Wacker & Smillie, 2015).
People high in extraversion are highly sociable because they find social interactions more rewarding
than do people low in extraversion; they are assertive and driven because they are more motivated to
pursue rewards; and they experience more positive emotions because they find more experiences
rewarding.
Extraversion
• The brain’s reward or valuation network comprises the regions of the midbrain (just
above the brainstem) that contain the cell bodies of dopaminergic neurons (known as
the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area) and also the various regions to
which those dopaminergic neurons project axons that release dopamine. The latter
regions include subcortical nuclei (nucleus accumbens and caudate nucleus), the
anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and the medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC; sometimes
labeled ventromedial prefrontal cortex).

• Although not often considered in relation to reward, the amygdala is also important for
this network, because it is involved in processing the emotional salience of rewarding
as well as threatening stimuli (Stillman, Van Bavel, & Cunningham, 2015). fMRI studies
have found neural activity in response to rewarding or pleasant stimuli to be
associated with extraversion in all of these regions; however, almost all of these have
used samples smaller than 20, rendering their evidentiary value quite low.
Extraversion

Section through superior colliculus

showing Substantia nigra.

Substantia nigra highlighted in red.

Extraversion

Location of ventral tegmental area

indicated by blue dot.
Extraversion
• The best supported finding in personality neuroscience is probably the association of
extraversion with dopamine. At least nine studies have indicated that the effects of
manipulating dopamine pharmacologically are moderated by extraversion (Chavanon,
Wacker, & Stemmler, 2013; Depue, Luciana, Arbisi, Collins, & Leon, 1994; Mueller et al.,
2014; Rammsayer, 1998; Rammsayer, Netter, & Vogel, 1993; Wacker, Chavanon, &
Stemmler, 2006; Wacker, Mueller, Pizzagalli, Hennig, & Stemmler, 2013; Wacker &
Stemmler, 2006).

• The association of extraversion with dopamine has also been supported more
indirectly through a line of EEG research on an electrical waveform known as the
reward positivity. The reward positivity appears 200–350 milliseconds after receiving
feedback about an outcome and reflects dopaminergic signaling in the dorsal anterior
cingulate cortex (Hauser et al., 2014). It spikes in response to better-than-expected
outcomes. Studies of both adults and children indicate that extraversion predicts the
amplitude of the reward positivity (Bress & Hajcak, 2013; Cooper, Duke, Pickering, &
Smillie, 2014; Kujawa et al., 2015; Lange, Leue, & Beauducel, 2012; Smillie, Cooper, &
Pickering, 2011; Smillie et al., 2019).
Extraversion

anterior cingulate cortex

Neuroticism
• Widespread agreement exists that neuroticism reflects variation in the biological
systems governing defensive responses to threat, punishment, and uncertainty (Allen
& DeYoung, 2017; Shackman et al., 2016). In Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory,
neuroticism was hypothesized to reflect the joint sensitivity of the two major defensive
systems, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and the fight–flight–freeze system
(FFFS; Gray & Mc-Naughton, 2000).

• At the core of the BIS, neuroanatomically, are medial temporal lobe structures,
including the hippocampus and amygdala, whereas at the core of the FFFS are
structures in the midbrain and brainstem, including the hypothalamus and
periaqueductal grey (though the amygdala is involved in the FFFS as well, and the two
systems interact closely). Research on the neural correlates of neuroticism largely
confirms these associations, while also implicating several cortical regions that regulate
the subcortical structures associated with the BIS and FFFS.
Neuroticism

hippocampus
Neuroticism
Neuroticism
• A number of fMRI studies in adults indicate that neuroticism is positively associated with
amygdala activation during a range of tasks involving threatening, uncertain, or ambiguous
stimuli (Everaerd, Klumpers, Wingen, Tendolkar, & Fernández, 2015; Hyde, Gorka, Manuck, &
Hariri, 2011; Schuyler et al., 2014; Somerville, Whalen, & Kelley, 2010).

• Other studies have not detected the link between amygdala activation and neuroticism
(Servaas et al., 2013), and it is possible that the relation between amygdalar function and
neuroticism is contingent on other variables. For example, in one fMRI study, neuroticism was
associated with an increase in amygdalar response to fearful faces, but only during an acute
stress induction (Everaerd et al., 2015). This is consistent with findings that individuals high in
neuroticism are especially prone to negative affect under stressful conditions (Shackman et al.,
2016). Others have found that the relation is moderated by social support (Hyde et al., 2011), or
is restricted to a specific region of the amygdala (Somerville et al., 2010). Clearly, further
research in large samples is necessary. One large study of youth (N = 875) found that
neuroticism was associated positively with cerebral blood flow in the amgydala while at rest
(Kaczkurkin et al., 2016).
Neuroticism
• The hippocampus abuts and influences the amygdala and is particularly implicated in
conflict detection and anxiety (Gray & McNaughton, 2000). In a meta-analysis,
neuroticism was positively associated with hippocampal activation during fear
learning—that is, learning to predict punishments from environmental cues (Servaas et
al., 2013). Several PET studies have also found a link between resting-state
hippocampal activity and neuroticism (Gray & McNaughton, 2000; Sutin,
Beason-Held, Dotson, Resnick, & Costa, 2010).

• One important target of amygdalar output is the hypothalamus, which forms the top of
the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis that controls the body’s response to
stress. The HPA response begins with the release of corticotropin-releasing hormone
(CRH) from the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus and ends with the release
of the stress hormone cortisol from the adrenal glands. In both adults and children,
neuroticism is positively associated with cortisol levels (Garcia-Banda et al., 2014;
Gerritsen et al., 2009; G. Miller, Cohen, Rabin, Skoner, & Doyle, 1999; Nater, Hoppman,
& Klumb, 2010; Polk, Cohen, Doyle, Skoner, & Kirschbaum, 2005; Schmidt, Fox, Rubin,
Sternberg, & Gold, 1997; Tyrka et al., 2010;
Neuroticism
Neuroticism
• All of the systems implicated in neuroticism are modulated by serotonin, and recent fMRI
studies show that potent serotonin agonists, such as psilocybin and
3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA) (which reduce or completely abolish
subjective ratings of anxiety and fear), attenuate amygdalar reactivity to negative stimuli during
the period of acute drug effects (Bedi, Phan, Angstadt, & De Wit, 2009; Kraehenmann et al.,
2015, 2016).

• Several lines of evidence implicate variation in serotonergic function in neuroticism. Selective

serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which increase serotonergic function by blocking its
removal from synapses, are commonly used to treat anxiety and depression, and
SSRI-induced reductions in symptoms of these disorders are mediated by declines in
neuroticism over the course of treatment (Du, Bakish, Ravindran, & Hrdina, 2002; Quilty,
Meusel, & Bagby, 2008; Tang et al., 2009). Further, a recent meta-analysis shows that
neuroticism is the personality trait that changes most following SSRI treatment (Roberts et al.,
2017). PET studies (albeit in small samples) have found neuroticism to be associated with
variation in serotonin receptor or transporter binding (Frokjaer et al., 2008; Takano et al., 2007;
Tauscher et al., 2001). One study using a pharmacological probe to assess participants’ typical
level of serotonergic function revealed that it was negatively associated with a standard
questionnaire measure of neuroticism (Flory, Manuck, Matthews, & Muldoon, 2004).
Openness/Intellect
• The distinction between the two aspects of O/I (evident in its compound label)
appears to be crucial for studying its neural correlates. Intellect reflects engagement
with abstract or semantic information through reasoning, whereas openness to
experience reflects engagement with sensory information through perception, art, and
fantasy (DeYoung, 2015; DeYoung et al., 2007). Intellect predicts creative achievement
in the sciences, whereas openness predicts creative achievement in the arts (Kaufman
et al., 2016).

• O/I is the only Big Five trait substantially associated with performance tests of
intelligence (IQ), and this association is driven by variance unique to Intellect
(DeYoung, Quilty, Peterson, & Gray, 2014). The unique variance of openness, on the
other hand, is associated with positive schizotypy (magical thinking, unusual thoughts
and experiences) and hence appears to be a risk factor for psychosis (Chmielewski,
Bagby, Markon, Ring, & Ryder, 2014, DeYoung et al., 2012; DeYoung, Carey, Krueger, &
Ross, 2016).
Openness/Intellect
• Several lines of indirect evidence support the theory that O/I is linked to individual
differences in dopamine function (DeYoung, 2013). Whereas extraversion is linked to
dopaminergic signaling that encodes the value of stimuli, research in other mammals
suggests that curiosity (indexed by exploratory behavior) is linked to a distinct type of
dopaminergic neurons that encode salience rather than value. These neurons increase
their firing rate to stimuli that are both better and worse than expected and appear to
promote information gathering and processing, particularly via dopaminergic
projections to the dlPFC (Bromberg-Martin, Matsumoto, & Hikosaka, 2010).

• O/I has been associated behaviorally with reduced latent inhibition (an automatic
process whereby stimuli previously deemed irrelevant are blocked from awareness),
and dopamine decreases latent inhibition, suggesting that those high in O/I might have
a dopaminergically driven tendency to find more information salient (Peterson, Smith,
& Carson, 2002).
Openness/Intellect
• Default network was discovered as a set of regions that were more active
during rest than during various cognitive tasks (including working memory
tasks). Later, however, certain tasks (e.g., episodic memory tasks) were shown
to activate this network reliably (Andrews-Hanna, Smallwood, & Spreng, 2014).
Its functions have been described in terms of “self-generated thought,” and
many of them involve imagination or simulation in one form or another.
Imagining the past, the future, or any hypothetical scenario requires the default
network, making it a promising candidate as a substrate of O/I (DeYoung, 2015).

• In a functional connectivity study, Beaty et al. (2016) explicitly tested this

hypothesis in two independent samples and showed that efficiency of
information processing among the core regions of the default network was
positively associated with O/I.
Openness/Intellect

default network
Conscientiousness
• A number of structural MRI studies have found positive associations of
conscientiousness with the volume of regions in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
(Bjørnebekk et al., 2013; DeYoung et al., 2010; Kapogiannis, Sutin, Davatzikos, Costa, &
Resnick, 2013; Riccelli et al., 2017; but see Liu et al., 2013, for a failure to replicate).
Similarly, a large study of brain-damaged patients showed that focal lesions of the
dlPFC were associated with lower conscientiousness (Forbes et al., 2014).

• The association of conscientiousness with dlPFC creates a puzzle, because

conscientiousness is unrelated, or even slightly negatively related, to working memory
and intelligence, which are commonly linked to dlPFC (DeYoung et al., 2009, 2014;
DeYoung, 2011).

• Another major functional network has a node in dlPFC (Yeo et al., 2011), and one study
(N = 218) indicated that functional connectivity in this network is positively associated
with conscientiousness (Rueter, Abram, MacDonald, Rustichini, & DeYoung, 2018).
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness
• This network combines two networks previously described as ventral attention or salience, and
appears crucial for determining the priority of goals and reorienting attention away from distractors and
toward goal-relevant stimuli (Fox, Corbetta, Snyder, Vincent, & Raichle, 2006; Uddin, 2015). As mapped
by Yeo et al. (2011), this goal priority network (Rueter et al., 2018) includes regions in the right inferior
frontal gyrus, anterior insula, temporoparietal junction, the middle frontal gyrus (in dlPFC), and dorsal
ACC and adjacent medial frontal cortex.

• A number of studies have linked conscientiousness, or related traits such as effortful control and
impulsivity, to the structure of the insula, with most reporting that a smaller insula (by metrics such as
cortical thickness or grey matter volume) was associated with higher levels of conscientiousness
(Churchwell & Yurgelun-Todd, 2013; Liu et al., 2013; Nouchi et al., 2016; Riccelli et al., 2017).

• In an fMRI study of response inhibition, impulsivity was negatively associated, on trials when inhibition
was required, with neural activity in the anterior insula and lateral frontal cortex (Farr, Hu, Zhang, & Li,
2012). On the same trials, impulsivity was also associated with less functional connectivity between
right anterior insula and regions of the PFC and visual cortex. One reasonable interpretation of these
findings is that the insula is involved in the generation of potentially distracting impulses, whereas
regions of lateral PFC are involved in restraining those impulses.
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
• Research using fMRI suggests two general processes involved in empathy, one
involving the ability to simulate and understand the mental states of others
(mentalizing), and the other involving feeling emotion in response to others’ emotion,
which often involves “mirroring”— neural activation that occurs while observing
another person, in the same networks that would be active if the observer were having
an experience similar to that of the observed person.

• Mentalizing involves the default network, primarily, whereas mirroring for emotion
involves the insula and regions of midcingulate cortex, primarily (Andrews-Hanna et
al., 2014; Kanske, Böckler, Trautwein, & Singer, 2015; Lamm, Decety, & Singer, 2011).
Several structural MRI studies have found empathy to be positively associated with
cortical thickness or volume of the insula (Mutschler, Reinbold, Wankerl, Seifritz, &
Ball, 2013; Patil et al., 2018; Sassa et al., 2012; Valk et al., 2016; but see Takeuchi, Taki,
Sassa, et al., 2014, for a failure to replicate), and one study of agreeableness indicated
that volume of the insula and other regions implicated in empathy was specifically
related to compassion but not politeness (Hou et al., 2017).
Agreeableness
• One reasonably large study of resting functional connectivity found positive
associations between empathy and connectivity among several regions of the default
network (Takeuchi, Taki, Nouchi, et al., 2014)..

• One fMRI study linked agreeableness to altruism at the neural level by contrasting
neural activity in the reward system when participants learned that a charity received a
monetary payment versus when they received a monetary payment themselves
(Hubbard, Harbaugh, Srivastava, Degras, & Mayr, 2016).

• Agreeableness is negatively associated with levels of the hormone testosterone, which

has been linked to aggression and competition. Testosterone appears to be specifically
linked to low politeness, based on research relating testosterone to individual
differences in interpersonal behavior and aggression (DeYoung et al., 2013; Montoya,
Terburg, Box, & Van Honk, 2012; Turan, Guo, Boggiano, & Bedgood, 2014).
Personality Psychology #2

Biological Basis of Personality

Heritability of Personality and Biological and Physiological
Models of Personality

Bogdan Oprea
University of Bucharest
 Exercise #10
Heritability of language
Heritability
• Genome refers to the complete set of genes an organism possesses. The human
genome contains between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. All these genes are located on
23 pairs of chromosomes. Each person inherits one set of each pair of chromosomes
from the mother and one set from the father.

• Most of the genes within the human genome are the same for each individual on the
planet. That is why all normally developing humans have many of the same
characteristics: 2 eyes, 2 legs, 32 teeth, 10 fingers, a heart, a liver, 2 lungs, and so on.

• A small number of these genes, however, are different for different individuals. Thus,
although all humans have two eyes, some people have blue eyes, some have brown
eyes, and a few even have violet eyes. Some of the genes that differ from individual to
individual influence physical characteristics, such as eye color, height, and bone width.
Some genes that differ across individuals influence the behavioral characteristics that
define human personality.
Heritability
• Percentage of variance refers to the fact that individuals vary, or are different from
each other, and this variability can be partitioned into percentages that are due to
different causes.

• Heritability is the proportion of variation in a phenotype which can be attributed to

genetic differences; these estimates are specific to the particular context and the time
point at which they are estimated (Beam & Turkheimer, 2017; Davey Smith, 2011;
Matthews & Turkheimer, 2017; Tropf et al., 2017).

• For example, if a trait has a heritability of 30%, then 30% of the variation in this trait is
assumed to be due to genetic variation.

• However, although these estimates provide an idea of the size of the genetic
component for a particular trait, they do not give us any information about which
genes are likely to be responsible for it (Cesarini & Visscher, 2017).
 Exercise #11
How do we know that certain traits are
hereditary?
Behavioral Genetic Methods
• Artificial selection - as occurs when dogs are bred for certain qualities - can take place only if
the desired characteristics are under the influence of heredity. Selective breeding occurs by
identifying the dogs that possess the desired characteristic and having them mate only with
other dogs that also possess the characteristic. Dog breeders have been successful precisely
because many of the qualities they wish specific dog breeds to have are moderately to highly
heritable.

• Some of these heritable qualities are physical traits, characteristics that we actually see, such
as size, ear length, wrinkled skin, and coat of hair. Other characteristics we might try to breed
for are more behavioral and can be considered personality traits (Gosling, Kwan, & John,
2003). All of these behavioral traits - aggressiveness, agreeableness, and the desire to please -
are characteristics that have been established in these animals through selective breeding.

• If the heritability for these personality traits in dog breeds is literally zero, then attempts to
breed dogs selectively for such traits will be doomed to fail. On the other hand, if the
heritability of these personality traits is high (e.g., >80 percent), then selective breeding will be
highly successful and will occur rapidly. The fact that selective breeding has been so
successful with dogs tells us that heredity must be a factor in the personality traits, such as
aggressiveness, agreeableness, and desire to please, that were successfully selected.
Behavioral Genetic Methods
• Family studies correlate the degree of genetic relatedness among family members with the
degree of personality similarity. They capitalize on the fact that there are known degrees of
genetic relatedness among family members. Parents are usually not related to each other
genetically. However, each parent shares 50 percent of his or her genes with each of the
children. Similarly, siblings share 50 percent of their genes, on average. Grandparents and
grandchildren share 25 percent of their genes, as do uncles and aunts with their nieces and
nephews. First cousins share only 12.5 percent of their genes.

• If a personality characteristic is highly heritable, then family members with greater genetic
relatedness should be more similar to each other than are family members with less genetic
relatedness. If a personality characteristic is not at all heritable, then even family members
who are closely related genetically, such as parents and children, should not be any more
similar to each other than are family members who are less genetically related to each other.

• Family members who share the same genes also typically share the same environment. Two
members of a family might be similar to each other not because a given personality
characteristic is heritable, but rather because of a shared environment. For this reason, results
from family studies alone can never be viewed as definitive.
Behavioral Genetic Methods
• Twin studies estimate heritability by gauging whether identical twins, who share 100 percent
of their genes, are more similar to each other than are fraternal twins, who share only 50
percent of their genes.

• Identical twins, technically called monozygotic (MZ) twins, come from a single fertilized egg
(or zygote—hence, monozygotic), which divides into two at some point during gestation. No
one knows why fertilized eggs occasionally divide. They just do. Identical twins are remarkable
in that they are genetically identical, like clones, coming from the same single source. They
share literally 100 percent of their genes.

• The other type of twin is not genetically identical to the co-twin; instead, such twins share only
50 percent of their genes. They are called fraternal twins, or dizygotic (DZ) twins, because
they come from two eggs that were separately fertilized (di means “two,” so dizygotic means
“coming from two fertilized eggs”). Fraternal twins can be same sex or opposite sex. In
contrast, identical twins are always the same sex because they are genetically identical.
Dizygotic twins are no more alike than regular siblings in terms of genetic relatedness. They
just happen to share the same womb at the same time and have the same birthday; otherwise,
they are no more similar than are ordinary brothers and sisters.
Behavioral Genetic Methods
• The twin method capitalizes on the fact that some twins are genetically identical,
sharing 100 percent of their genes, whereas other twins share only 50 percent
of their genes. If fraternal twins are just as similar to each other as identical twins
are, in terms of a particular personality characteristic, then we can infer that the
characteristic under consideration is not heritable: the greater genetic similarity
of identical twins, in this case, is not causing them to be more similar in
personality.

• If identical twins are substantially more similar to each other than are fraternal
twins on a given characteristic, then this provides evidence that is compatible
with a heritability interpretation.
Behavioral Genetic Methods
• Twin studies assume there are three distinct influences on phenotypic variation
(VP):
• additive genetic effects (VA)
• shared environmental effects (VC)
• nonshared environmental effects (VE) (Rijsdijk & Sham, 2002)

• Heritability estimates resulting from twin models are valid under certain
assumptions. These assumptions include:
• the twins are representative of the general population in terms of the trait
• environmental effects are shared to the same extent by identical (MZ) and nonidentical (DZ)
twins
• gene-environment interactions for the trait are minimal
• there is no assortative mating in the population (Rijsdijk & Sham, 2002)
 Exercise #12
Shared Versus Nonshared Environmental
Influences
Genotype–Environment Interaction
• Genotype-environment interaction refers to the differential response of
individuals with different genotypes to the same environments.

• Genotype-environment correlation is the differential exposure of individuals

with different genotypes to different environments.

• Passive genotype–environment correlation occurs when parents provide both genes and
the environment to children, yet the children do nothing to obtain that environment.

• Reactive genotype–environment correlation occurs when parents (or others) respond to

children differently, depending on the child’s genotypes.

• Active genotype-environment correlation occurs when a person with a particular genotype

creates or seeks out a particular environment.
Behavioral Genetic Methods
• There are several formulas for calculating heritability from twin data, each with
its own problems and limitations. One simple method, however, is to double the
difference between the MZ correlation and DZ correlation:

heritability2 = 2(rmz – rdz)

• In this formula, rmz refers to the correlation coefficient computed between pairs
of monozygotic twins, and rdz refers to the correlation between the dizygotic
twins.
Behavioral Genetic Methods
• Adoption studies can examine the correlations between adopted children and their
adoptive parents, with whom they share no genes. If one finds a positive correlation
between adopted children and their adoptive parents, then this provides strong
evidence for environmental influences on the personality trait in question.

• Similarly, we can examine the correlations between adopted children and their genetic
parents, who had no influence on the children’s environments. If we find a zero
correlation between adopted children and their genetic parents, again this is strong
evidence for a lack of heritable influence on the personality trait in question.

• Conversely, if we find a positive correlation between parents and their adopted-away

children, with whom they have had no contact, then this provides evidence for
heritability.
 Exercise #13
Behavioral Genetic Methods
Personality Traits
• Henderson (1982) reviewed the literature on more than 25,000 pairs of twins. He found
substantial heritability for both traits. In one study involving 4,987 twin pairs in Sweden, the
correlations for Extraversion were +.51 for identical twins and +.21 for fraternal twins
(Floderus-Myrhed, Pedersen, & Rasmuson, 1980). Using the simple formula of doubling the
difference between the two correlations yields a heritability of .60.

• The findings for Neuroticism is similar (Floderus-Myrhed et al., 1980). The identical twin
correlation for Neuroticism is +.50, whereas the fraternal twin correlation is only +.23. This
suggests a heritability of .54. Twin studies have yielded very similar results, suggesting that
Extraversion and Neuroticism are traits that are approximately half due to genetics. A
large-scale twin study, conducted in Australia, found a heritability for Neuroticism of 47
percent (Birley et al., 2006). Similar moderate heritabilities continue to be found for
Neuroticism and Extraversion in more recent samples using diverse measurement methods
(Loehlin, 2012; Moore et al., 2010).

• Pedersen (1993) found heritability estimates based on comparisons of adoptees and their
biological parents of about 40 percent for Extraversion and about 30 percent for Neuroticism.
Correlations between adoptive parents and their adopted children tend to be around zero,
suggesting little direct environmental influence on these traits.
Personality Traits
• Activity level (how vigorous and energetic a person is) was assessed in an adult
sample of 300 monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs residing in Germany (Spinath et
al., 2002). The researchers measured the physical energy each individual expended
through body movements, recorded mechanically with motion recorders analogous to
self-winding wristwatches. Movement of a person’s limbs activates the device, which
records the frequency and intensity of body activity. Activity level showed a
heritability of .40, suggesting that a moderate proportion of the individual differences
in motor energy are due to genetic differences.

• A study of 1,555 twins in Poland found 50 percent heritability, on average, for all
temperaments, including activity, emotionality, sociability, persistence, fear, and
distractibility (Oniszczenko et al., 2003). A study of Dutch twins, at ages 3, 7, and 10,
found even higher heritabilities for aggressiveness, ranging from 51 to 72 percent (
Hudziak et al., 2003).
Personality Traits
• Using 353 male twins from the Minnesota Twin Registry, researchers explored the heritability
of psychopathic personality traits (Blonigen et al., 2003). These include traits such as
Machiavellianism (e.g., enjoys manipulating other people), Coldheartedness (e.g., has a
callous emotional style), Impulsive Nonconformity (e.g., indifferent to social conventions),
Fearlessness (e.g., a risk taker; lacks anticipatory anxiety concerning harm), Blame
Externalization (e.g., blames others for one’s problems), and Stress Immunity (e.g., lacks
anxiety when faced with stressful life events). All of these “psychopathic” personality traits
showed moderate to high heritability.

• For Coldheartedness, the rmz was +.34, whereas the rdz was −.16; for Fearlessness, the rmz was
+.54, whereas the rdz was only .03. Using the method of doubling the difference between the
MZ and DZ correlations suggests substantial heritability to all of these psychopathic-related
personality dispositions (Vernon et al., 2008; Niv et al., 2012). The heritability of psychopathic
personality traits, which predispose individuals to criminal activity, may be the key reason that
a massive study from Sweden of more than a million individuals showed the heritability of
violent crime to be roughly 50% (Frisell et al., 2012).
Personality Traits
• A study of 296 twin pairs in Japan revealed moderate heritability for Cloninger’s Seven-Factor
model of temperament and character, which includes dispositions such as novelty seeking,
harm avoidance, reward dependence, and persistence (Ando et al., 2002). A study of twins in
Germany, using observational methodology, revealed a 40 percent heritability to markers of
the Big Five (Borkenau et al., 2001). Similar findings for the Big Five personality traits have been
documented in Canada and Germany using self-report measures (Jang et al., 2002; Moore et
al., 2010).

• A recent meta-analysis of personality traits in more than 100,000 participants revealed a

heritability of 40 percent for Big Five (Vukasovic & Bratko, 2015). A different meta-analysis
showed heritabilities of 48 percent for Neuroticism and 49 percent for Extraversion (van den
Berg et al., 2014).

• In a study of chimpanzees, Weiss, King, and Enns (2002) explored the heritability of
dominance (high extraversion, low neuroticism) and well-being (e.g., seems happy and
contented), as indexed by trained observer judgments. Individual differences in chimpanzee
well-being showed a moderate heritability of .40, whereas dominance showed an even
stronger heritability of .66.
Attitudes and Preferences
• The Minnesota Twin Study showed that traditionalism - as evidenced by
attitudes favoring conservative values over modern values - showed a
heritability of .59.

• A longitudinal study of 654 adopted and nonadopted children from the Colorado
Adoption Project revealed significant genetic influence on conservative attitudes
(Abrahamson, Baker, & Caspi, 2002). Markers of conservative attitudes included
whether participants agreed or disagreed with specific words or phrases such
as “death penalty,” “gay rights,” “censorship,” and “Republicans.” Significant
genetic influence emerged as early as 12 years of age in this study. Other studies
confirm the moderate heritability of values (Renner et al., 2012). For example,
twin studies of 19 measures of political ideologies from five different countries
revealed heritabilities ranging between and 60 percent (Hatemi, 2014).
Attitudes and Preferences
• Genes also appear to influence occupational preferences. In a study of 435 adopted and 10,880 genetic
offspring residing in Canada and the United States, Ellis and Bonin (2003) had participants respond to 14
different aspects of prospective jobs, using a scale ranging from 1 (not at all appealing) to 100
(extremely appealing). The 14 job aspects were high income, competition, prestige, envied by others,
taking risks, element of danger, controlling others, feared by others, little supervision, independence, job
security, part of a team, clear responsibilities, and help others. These occupational preferences were
then correlated with seven measures of parental social status, including mother’s and father’s education
level, occupational status, and income. A full 71 percent of the correlations were statistically significant
for the genetic children, whereas only 3 percent were significant for the adopted children (suggesting
that rearing environment does not create the effect).

• One study of 400 twin pairs yielded heritabilities of essentially zero for beliefs in God, involvement in
religious affairs, and attitudes toward racial integration (Loehlin & Nichols, 1976). A study confirmed
that there is no evidence of a heritable influence on religious attitudes (Abrahamson et al., 2002).
Another study also found extremely low heritability (12 percent) for religiousness, as measured by items
such as “frequency of attending religious services,” during adolescence (Koenig et al., 2005). In
adulthood (average age of 33), however, the heritability of religiousness had increased to 44 percent.
Genes have an increasingly important role in religiousness as people move from adolescence into
adulthood (Button et al., 2011).
Drinking and Smoking
• In one study of Australian twins, an MZ twin who smoked was roughly 16 times more
likely than an MZ twin who did not smoke to have a twin who smoked (Hooper et al.,
1992). The comparable figures for DZ twins were only a sevenfold increase, suggesting
evidence of heritability. Similar findings were obtained in a sample of 1,300 Dutch
families of adolescent Dutch twins (Boomsma et al., 1994).

• Heritability studies of alcohol drinking are more mixed. Some studies find heritability
for boys, but not for girls (Hooper et al., 1992). Other studies find heritability for girls,
but not for boys (Koopmans & Boomsma, 1993). Most studies, however, show
moderate heritability for both sexes, ranging from .36 to .56 (Rose, 1995).

• Heritability studies of alcoholism, as opposed to everyday drinking habits, show even

stronger heritabilities. Indeed, nearly all show heritabilities of .50 or greater (Kendler et
al., 1992). In one study, the heritabilities of alcoholism were 67 percent in women and
71 percent in men (Heath et al., 1994).
Marriage and Satisfaction with Life
• A fascinating study revealed that genes can even influence the propensity to marry or stay single
(Johnson et al., 2004). The heritability estimate for propensity to marry turned out to be an astonishing
68 percent! One causal path is through personality characteristics. Men who got married, compared to
their single peers, scored higher on social potency and achievement—traits linked with upward
mobility, success in careers, and financial success. These traits are also highly valued by women in
selecting marriage partners (Buss, 2016). Thus, a genetic proclivity to marry occurs, at least in part,
through heritable personality traits that are desired by potential marriage partners.

• Genes also play an interesting role in marital satisfaction. First, individual differences in women’s marital
satisfaction are roughly 50 percent heritable (Spotts et al., 2004) (this study could not evaluate the
heritability of a husband’s marital satisfaction). Second, the personality characteristics of wives, notably
dispositional optimism, warmth, and low aggressiveness, accounted for both their own marital
satisfaction and their husband’s marital satisfaction (Spotts et al., 2005). Thus, the marital satisfaction of
both women and men seems partly to depend on the moderately heritable personality dispositions of
the wives. Interestingly, husbands’ personality did not explain as much of their own or their wives’
marital satisfaction. Taken together, these results suggest that genes play a role in the quality of
marriages, and even who gets divorced versus staying married (Jerskey et al., 2010), in part through
heritable personality characteristics.
Marriage and Satisfaction with Life
• Heritable personality characteristics play a key role in satisfaction with life
(Bartels, 2015). Four moderately heritable personality factors - having a sense of
purpose, an orientation toward personal growth, feeling your life is under your
own control, and having positive social relationships - predict psychological
well-being and overall satisfaction with life (Archontaki et al., 2012).