The Neural Substrates of Personality

Personality is the study of individual differences, mostly in humans, though some work in animal personality too has happened. While evolution has designed for some universal adaptations, that lead to say human universals, evolution has also maintained some variations which leads to individual differences. Personality traits are stable and consistent patterns of responding in terms of emotions, behavior, cognition and motivation across different situations. Various methods, both theoretical and empirical, have been used to arrive at the most parsimonious collection of traits; some of these methods include lexical studies to arrive at basic traits on which humans differ. Its important to remember that humans differ along degrees and on a continuum on these dimensions and the difference is not of  kind or categories. The most well known and well established personality trait model is the Big Five or the FFM which posits that humans differ on the following five dimensions: Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness/Intellect, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. The personality trait structure is hierarchical. There are meta traits of stability (Alpha) and plasticity (Beta) over the Big Five; there are aspects (two each) below the Big Five; and finally there are multiple facets composing each aspect. If we want to explore the neural substrates of personality, we have to start at the description level and the Big Five is a good place to start. Next one needs to look at psychological f...
Source: The Mouse Trap - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: personality Big Five Big Five personality traits HEXACO neural substrates Source Type: podcasts