Extraversion and Reward-Processing: Consolidating Evidence from an Electroencephalographic Index of Reward-Prediction-Error

Trait extraversion has been theorized to emerge from functioning of the dopaminergic reward system. Recent evidence for this view shows that extraversion modulates the scalp-recorded Reward Positivity, a putative marker of dopaminergic signaling of reward-prediction-error. We attempt to replicate this association amid several improvements on previous studies in this area, including an adequately-powered sample (N = 100) and thorough examination of convergent-divergent validity. Participants completed a passive associative learning task presenting rewards and non-rewards that were either predictable or unexpected. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses confirmed that the scalp recorded Reward Positivity (i.e. the Feedback-Related-Negativity contrasting unpredicted rewards and unpredicted non-rewards) was significantly associated with three measures of extraversion and unrelated to other basic traits from the Big Five personality model. Narrower sub-traits of extraversion showed similar, though weaker associations with the Reward Positivity. These findings consolidate previous evidence linking extraversion with a putative marker of dopaminergic reward-processing

Why Has Personality Psychology Played an Outsized Role in the Credibility Revolution?

21 pages. Published at PsychOpen: 10.5964/ps.6001Personality is not the most popular subfield of psychology. But, in one way or another, personality psychologists have played an outsized role in the ongoing “credibility revolution” in psychology. Not only have individual personality psychologists taken on visible roles in the movement, but our field’s practices and norms have now become models for other fields to emulate (or, for those who share Baumeister’s (2016, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.02.003) skeptical view of the consequences of increasing rigor, a model for what to avoid). In this article we discuss some unique features of our field that may have placed us in an ideal position to be leaders in this movement. We do so from a subjective perspective, describing our impressions and opinions about possible explanations for personality psychology’s disproportionate role in the credibility revolution. We also discuss some ways in which personality psychology remains less-than-optimal, and how we can address these flaws

How personality psychology and cognitive neuroscience can enrich one another: Insights from information seeking to machine learning

© 2021 Hayley Kristina JachPersonality psychology investigates individual differences in emotion, behaviour, cognition, and motivation, whereas cognitive neuroscience investigates the neurobiological bases of these phenomena. This substantial content overlap suggests that these areas are well placed to integrate knowledge. Accordingly, I present results from two empirical research programs that demonstrate how combining theories and methods from personality psychology and cognitive neuroscience can provide a new perspective on outstanding research questions and spur novel research programs. Part 1 (Studies 1-5) assessed how theory from personality psychology can address a current question in cognitive neuroscience: why people seek information that provides no extrinsic reward. One explanation is that uncertainty is aversive, and information reduces this uncertainty. This would suggest that the personality trait uncertainty intolerance would relate to information seeking. However, this conflicts with a theory from personality psychology whereby openness/intellect (describing tendencies toward imagination and intellect; thought to relate to greater tolerance for uncertainty) is grounded in increased information seeking. Because no explicit confirmatory study has assessed the putative negative relation between uncertainty intolerance and openness/intellect, Study 1 (N = 308) investigated—and confirmed—these relations. Next, Studies 2 (N = 151) and 3 (N = 301) assessed personality trait correlates of information seeking to gauge relative evidence for either conflicting theory. Openness/intellect did not predict information seeking; however, joyous exploration (a facet of curiosity positively related to openness/intellect) predicted information seeking across both studies, and uncertainty intolerance predicted information seeking in Study 3. These results informed a conceptual model featuring two motivations to seek information—either to explore (related to joyous exploration and openness/intellect) or to feel safe (related to uncertainty intolerance and neuroticism)—each differentially elicited depending on how the situation is perceived. To evaluate this model, Study 4 (N = 436) assessed personality and situation perception predictors of information seeking across four stimulus sets. Study 5 (N = 316) provided a partial replication and extension. Results provided consistent evidence for the exploration pathway, but more tentative evidence for the safety pathway. These findings suggest that an incorporation of person and situation factors can assist theory-development for information seeking. Part 2 provided a complementary approach to interdisciplinary dialogue by investigating how methods from cognitive neuroscience could be applied to explore possible neural bases of personality. Specifically, the machine learning technique multivariate pattern analysis was used to explore, then confirm, relations between personality and spectral power derived from electroencephalography. Study 6 (N = 174) found that agreeableness and neuroticism could be consistently decoded in particular frequencies across four testing conditions. Study 7 (N = 197) failed to replicate Study 6 in the full testing sample, but when subsequent analyses were stratified by country, agreeableness could be decoded in participants from Australia and neuroticism from participants from Germany. Caution is warranted for these latter findings given their unexpected nature and the smaller sample size of individual groups. The advantages of employing new methods are counterbalanced by a need to accept some measure of uncertainty in our inferences. However, open documentation of this complexity can spur new investigations to gain future insight into the neural bases of personality. Together, these studies emphasise the challenges, but also substantial benefits, from combining knowledge and methods from personality psychology and cognitive neuroscience to constrain existing theory, form links between research domains, and propose new avenues for research

Testing the Information-Seeking Theory of Openness/Intellect

Why are open people open? A recent theory suggests that openness/intellect reflects sensitivity to the reward value of information, but so far this has undergone few direct tests. To assess preferences for information, we constructed a novel task, adapted from information-seeking paradigms within decision science, in which participants could choose to see information related to a guessing game they had just completed. Across two studies (one exploratory, n = 151; one confirmatory, n = 301), openness/intellect did not predict information-seeking. Our results thus do not support a straightforward version of the theory, whereby open individuals display a general-purpose sensitivity to any sort of new information. However, trait curiosity (arguably a facet of openness/intellect) predicted information-seeking in both studies, and uncertainty intolerance (inversely related to openness/intellect) predicted information-seeking in Study 2. Thus, it is possible that the domain-level null association masks two divergent information-seeking pathways, one approach-motivated (curiosity), and one avoidance-motivated (uncertainty intolerance). It remains to be seen whether these conflicting motivations can be isolated, and if doing so reveals any association between information-seeking and the broader openness/intellect domain

A critique of motivation constructs to explain higher-order behavior: We should unpack the black box

The constructs of motivation (or needs, motives, etc.) to explain higher-order behavior have burgeoned in psychology. In this article, we critically evaluate such high-level motivation constructs that many researchers define as causal determinants of behavior. We identify a fundamental issue with this predominant view of motivation, which we called the black-box problem. Specifically, high-level motivation constructs have been considered as causally instigating a wide range of higher-order behavior, but this does not explain what they actually are or how behavioral tendencies are generated. The black box problem inevitably makes the construct ill-defined and jeopardizes its theoretical status. To address the problem, we discuss the importance of mental computational processes underlying motivated behavior. Critically, from this perspective, motivation is not a unitary construct that causes a wide range of higher-order behavior --- it is an emergent property that people construe through the regularities of subjective experiences and behavior. The proposed perspective opens new avenues for future theoretical development, i.e., the examination of how motivated behavior is realized through mental computational processes

To Fear or Fly to the Unknown: Tolerance for Ambiguity and Big Five Personality Traits

The present study investigated whether ambiguity tolerance relates to personality traits that are theoretically grounded in fear (neuroticism) or attraction (openness to experience; extraversion) for the unknown. Our hypotheses were supported for self-report measures (and openness to experience predicted ambiguity tolerance controlling for intelligence), but behavioral choice measures of ambiguity tolerance demonstrated poor reliability and were unrelated to self-reported ambiguity tolerance and basic personality traits. An exploratory network analysis revealed that ambiguity tolerance was more strongly related to the intellectual curiosity (vs. aesthetic appreciation) facet of openness to experience, and the assertiveness (vs. energy or sociability) facet of extraversion. Our findings reinforce the fragmented literature in this area, and support predictions derived from psychological entropy theories of personality