Archive for May, 2010
Personality and emotion: take 4
1 year ago
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I’ve written about the relation between personality and emotion from my perspective, but was gladdened when I found Scherer has written on the matter in a very eloquent and apt manner. To quote from him and Revelle:
Personality is the coherent patterning of affect, behavior, cognition, and desires (goals) over time and space. Just as a full blown emotion represents an integration of feeling, action, appraisal and wants at a particular time and location so does personality represent integration over time and space of these components (Ortony et al., 2005). A helpful analogy is to consider that personality is to emotion as climate is to weather. That is, what one expects is personality, what one observes at any particular moment is emotion.
It is important to note that personality/emotion definition has been expanded to include cognition as well as affect; behavior as well as motivation (desires). Traditionally emotions are seen as affective (feeling) in nature but we know that emotional states have different cognitive underpinnings and can affect cognition in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Similarly though emotions may be more closely related to motivational issues (desires etc) they are also manifested in overt behavioral tendencies. some are energizing while others are calming/soothing.
In one of the last emotion/personality post , I referred to the dimensional emotional model of PAD (Pleasure-Arousal-dominance) as proposed by Meherbain. It is apt to note here that pleasure (pleasantness/unpleasantness) dimension is very much related to affect i.e. subjective feeling or how the emotion is subjectively felt. Also Arousal (Ready/Relaxed) is construct very much related to behavior or action tendencies. Some emotions lead to more vigorous, ready and active engagement with the environment as compared to others wherein one may be relaxed. Similarly Dominance (control/lack of control) is a motivational emotional dimension reflecting whether one wants to control and be in control or be dominated/ lose control in a particular situation.
That leaves us with cognition/appraisals dimension of emotions, but before we get onto that let us revisit the four evolutionary stages of Millon and how opposites on each stage lead to personality variations and disorders. The parallel with emotions will be self-evident.
The first stage is that of Existence and the polarity is of pain/pleasure: again an affective dimension/stage. Stability or life-preservation is coded by predominant disposition towards avoiding feelings of pain- a pain sensitive phenotype; Enhancing or life-enhancement is coded by predominant disposition towards felling pleasure a pleasure sensitive phenotype.
The second stage is that of Adaptation and the polarity is of active-passive: again a behaviorally defined dimension/stage. Modifying the environment to suit ones need is an active strategy, while passively accommodating to environmental niches is the passive strategy. both are defined behaviorally and the actual actions/behavioral tendencies define the personality type.
The third stage of Millon is that of Replication and the polarities are that of Self and Other: this is particularly a motivational dimension…whether one is motivated by selfishness and focus on oneself or by concern for others and selflessness too. There is polarity and tension between self-actualization tendencies and wants and other-nurturing motivational disposition. If focus is on self one would tend to dominate others, if focus is on others one would be willing to become vulnerable and submissive.
The fourth stage of Millon, that he does not relate to personality, but which I find integral to my theory is that of Abstraction and the polarity of information gathering versus information selection/transformation. I call the polarity Broad Versus Narrow and it is reflected in whether one is creative or is rigid and inflexible in thinking, , but the important point to note is that a cognitive dimension has been added to personality at the fourth stage.
Which brings us back to the (missing) cognitive dimension of emotions. I would have gladly taken the credit of discovering/proposing such a cognitive dimension, but it seems I was beaten to the game by Fontaine et al who made the bold statement :“The World of Emotions Is Not Two-Dimensional”.
As per Fonatine/ scherer et al’s analysis, using 144 features (like (a) appraisals of events, (b) psychophysiological changes, (c) motor expressions, (d) action tendencies, (e) subjective experiences, and (f) emotion regulation.) characterizing the 24 prototypical emotion terms, they found that emotions must be specified by at least four dimensions:these dimensions were evaluation-pleasantness, potency-control, activation-arousal, and unpredictability.
Note that the first three dimensions are similar to PAD while the fourth dimension is cognitive(appraisal) in nature- predictability vs unpredictability or certainty vs uncertainty in the appraisal of the situation. this ca be reasonably related to Broad Vs Narrow last stage of Abstraction i.e. whether one is cognitively open to new situations or appraisals or closed to them.
So the relationship between emotions and personality is more or less clear to my naive mind as of now. Of course I’m leaving some parts for the next post that will extend this and correlate with the eight stage process.
For now I’ll like to end with the excellent Scherer et al article quote:
In that personality represents the integration over time of feelings, actions, thoughts and desires, theoretical developments in personality benefit from a greater understanding of emotional processes. At the same time, research in emotion can take advantage of individual differences in sensitivities to situational cues and predispositions to emotional states. The questions of why some people become angry, while others become frightened or depressed in response to threats, and why some become elated while others seem unaffected when given rewards will be better understood by jointly studying the problem of long term coherence (personality) with short term fluctuations in affect, behavior, cognition and desire (emotion).
Fontaine, J., Scherer, K., Roesch, E., & Ellsworth, P. (2007). The World of Emotions is not Two-Dimensional Psychological Science, 18 (12), 1050-1057 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.02024.x
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Autism and white Matter/Myelination: the opposite of creativty/psychosis phenotype?
1 year ago
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A new paper by Ben Bashat et al extends their earlier findings that had found that there was accelerated maturation of white matter in children with Autism. In this new paper they use Tract Based Spatial statistics (TBSS) to determine the white matter integrity of children (age around 3 years) with Autism as compared to normal controls. Of course they used Diffusion tensor Imaging to find out Fractional anisotropy and other measures of white matter integrity.
Essentially they found that in some regions/tracts there was greater Fractional Anisotropy (FA) as compared to controls. These regions/tracts were genu and body of the corpus callosum (CC), left superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) and right and left cingulum (Cg). They also found that in areas of high FA there was corresponding decrease in Radial diffusivity (Dr). What this essentially means, to my naive mind, is that greater conductance or speed of action potential in axons would primarily be due to enhanced myelination which reduces leakage or lateral flow of AP.
I’ll like to contrast the results with an earlier study I had blogged about regarding creativity, psychopathology and white matter mylienation connection. As per that study an inverse relation was found between people high on creativity (divergent type) and Fractional anisotropy in frontal regions, i’e there was low FA. Also importantly there was increased Dr (radial diffusivity) in the same regions and thus the conclusion was that there was reduced myelination in those areas which meant reduced signal transmission speed and more signal leak . It is notable that that study too used DTI and Tract based Spatial statistics (TBSS) analysis method to arrive at their conclusions.
Regular readers of this blog will know my fanaticism for Autism and Psychosis as opposites on a continuum theory. This new paper nicely fits in with my last post linking creativity/psychosis and white matter/myelination, I had as much surmised that Autism would show the opposite effect and have high FA and decreased Dr. It is heartening to note when such a relation is found and reported- goes to show the strength and ability to make predictions of the theory.
However, I would also like to point out and highlight that I believe Autistic spectrum is characterized by another type of ability – the savantic intelligence- that may be directly due to this white matter /excess myelination effect. Perhaps the signals travel so fast that decisions are made locally without the time available to get other far-0off regions involved- thus giving attention to details but inability to link disparate regions and ideas.
Weinstein, M., Ben-Sira, L., Levy, Y., Zachor, D., Itzhak, E., Artzi, M., Tarrasch, R., Eksteine, P., Hendler, T., & Bashat, D. (2010). Abnormal white matter integrity in young children with autism Human Brain Mapping DOI: 10.1002/hbm.21042
Ben Bashat, D., Kronfeld-Duenias, V., Zachor, D., Ekstein, P., Hendler, T., Tarrasch, R., Even, A., Levy, Y., & Ben Sira, L. (2007). Accelerated maturation of white matter in young children with autism: A high b value DWI study NeuroImage, 37 (1), 40-47 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.04.060
Jung, R., Grazioplene, R., Caprihan, A., Chavez, R., & Haier, R. (2010). White Matter Integrity, Creativity, and Psychopathology: Disentangling Constructs with Diffusion Tensor Imaging PLoS ONE, 5 (3) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009818
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More brains and bonkers connection: thinking out of a broken box
2 years ago
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We have covered many studies linking creativity with Psychosis and this new study by Manzano et al provides further corroborating evidence.
Dopamine has been linked with psychosis and is now also being increasingly being linked with creativity, especially divergent creativity and thinking style.
Divergent thinking is influenced by dopaminergic function. Reuter [6] found a correlation between divergent thinking (the Inventiveness battery of the Berliner Intelligenz Struktur Test) and polymorphisms of the dopamine D2 receptor gene–DRD2 TAQ IA. Higher creativity scores were observed in carriers of the A1 allele. This polymorphism is unrelated to general intelligence [7], [8], which suggests that it is more specifically related to Glr (“long-term storage and retrieval”). This finding is in line with functional imaging research showing the D2 system to be involved in attentional set shifting and response flexibility, which are important components of divergent thinking [9]. Furthermore, the finding indicates that divergent thinking is related to regional differences in D2 densities, since the DRD2 TAQ IA polymorphism has been shown to modulate D2 binding potential (D2BP) in both striatal [10] and extrastriatal regions [11].
Divergent thinking is traditionally measured using alternate uses test, for eg., in which a familiar object like brick is provided and subjects asked to name novel use for that object. The responses are marked for creativity as per the follwoing criterion:
- Fluency–the number of valid responses;
- Originality–how frequent the participant’s responses were among the responses of the rest of the sample;
- Flexibility–the number of semantic categories produced;
- Switching–the number of shifts between semantic categories;
- and Elaboration–how extensive each response is (if the task involves producing more than single words)
The main findings of the study was that dopamine D2 binding potential (D2BP) receptor density in thalamus correlated negatively with divergent thinking and creativity scores. Here is how the authors interpret the results:
Based on the current findings, we suggest that a lower D2BP in the thalamus may be one factor that facilitates performance on divergent thinking tasks. The thalamus contains the highest levels of dopamine D2 receptors out of all extrastriatal brain regions [33], [45]. Decreased D2BP in the thalamus has been suggested, firstly, to lower thalamic gating thresholds, resulting in decreased filtering and autoregulation of information flow [31] and, secondly, to increase excitation of cortical regions through decreased inhibition of prefrontal pyramidal neurons [46], [47], [48]. The decreased prefrontal signal-to-noise ratio may place networks of cortical neurons in a more labile state, allowing them to more easily switch between representations and process multiple stimuli across a wider association range [49]. This state, which we hereforth will refer to as the “creative bias”, could benefit performance on tasks that involve continuous generation and (re-)combination of mental representations and switching between mind-sets. The creative bias could also explain why the different measures of divergent task performance correlate: A decreased signal-to-noise ratio in thalamus would decrease information gating and possibly increase fluency; decreased signal-to-noise ratio in cortical regions should better enable flexibility and switching between representations; similarly, the associative range should be widened and selectivity should be decreased which might spur originality and elaboration.
Besides carrying benefits related to fluency and switching, the decreased signal-to-noise ratio associated with the creative bias should be disadvantageous in relation to tasks that require high levels of selective attention. Some support for this prediction can be taken from Dorfman [50] who showed that the greater a person’s divergent thinking scores, the slower his or her reaction times were on a negative priming task requiring the inhibition of interfering information. Furthermore, the creative bias may also bring a risk of excessive excitatory signals from the thalamus overwhelming cortical neurotransmission, with ensuing cognitive disorganization and positive symptoms [30]. It is thus tempting to suggest that dopaminergic modulation of neurotransmission mediated through dopamine D2-receptors could be one of the mechanisms which associate creativity with positive psychotic symptoms. Interestingly, positive symptoms are not necessarily related to problems in executive function, at least not to the same extent as negative symptoms [51], which indicates that in the creative individual “blind variation” might be affected without a concomitant decline in “selective retention”. It can be speculated that aberrant thalamic function may promote unusual associations, as well as improved performance on divergent thinking tests in healthy individuals, in the absence of the detrimental effects typically associated with psychiatric disorders. In other words, thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box.
In plain English speak, the same decreased signal-to-noise ratio in perfrontal regions that gives rise to creativity also gives rise to proneness to psychosis. The more the noise that is introduced the greater the chances that the ideas generated by ‘blind variation’ are more creative; if the ‘selective retention’ procedure is also defective or loosened to an extent, it may result in psychopathology and psychosis, while if intact it leads to creativity. Thus while one factor , that of loosening of associations, flexibility and set switching is common to both psychosis and creativity, the defects in selective retention may be the crucial factor that distinguishes brains from bonkers.
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de Manzano, ?., Cervenka, S., Karabanov, A., Farde, L., & Ullén, F. (2010). Thinking Outside a Less Intact Box: Thalamic Dopamine D2 Receptor Densities Are Negatively Related to Psychometric Creativity in Healthy Individuals PLoS ONE, 5 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010670
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Emotions and personailty : take 3
2 years ago
- Image by DraconianRain via Flickr
I have written two previous posts regarding the relationship between emotions and personality. This is the third part focusing on the relationship between emotions and personality. Regular readers will note my evolutionary leanings and this post too is inspired in part from evolutionary ideas.
First let us review the ideas of Millon as regards to the evolutionary factors that shape personality and personality disorders.
Four domains or spheres in which evolutionary principles are demonstrated have been labeled by Millon as Existence, Adaptation, Replication, and Abstraction. The first relates the serendipitous transformation of random or less organized states into those possessing distinct structures of greater organization; the second refers to homeostatic processes employed to sustain survival in open ecosystems; the third pertains to reproductive styles that maximize the diversification and selection of ecologically effective attributes; and the fourth concerns the emergence of competencies that foster anticipatory planning and reasoned decision-making. Polarities from the first three phases have been used by Millon to construct a theoretically-derived classification system of personality disorders.
Let us simplify the above a bit:
Existence is simply the survival of an individual organism and all the factors that come to play there. For evolution to work, there has to be stable organisms. Ultimately genes are selected, but proximally individuals , which are the vehicles of genes, are selected. The first important function that an organism faces is to maintain and enhance the integrity of its body.
Adaptation is the next problem the creature faces once it has a stable constitution- how its define its relationship with the environment. One can take a passive approach and be dependent on a particular given environment niche; or one can take an active role and mold the environment as per ones needs. In any case an adaptation to ones environment (give/ chosen.actively constructed) is essential for ensuring that one lives a long life, especially a life long enough to reach the reproductive stage. Plants and animals are two prototypical examples of two diametrically opposed adaptation strategy- passive vs active.
Replication is the next task the organism faces. Its not enough just to live- one needs to pass on ones copies – in either original or modified forms- for posterity. The capacity for replication is an important aspect of the evolutionary theory and how evolution works over an extended time. thus the organism needs to reproduce- either clones or children of oneself that can live post the death of the organism and thus enable his genes to live on. One can choose to be self propagating or other -nurturing while ensuring reproductive success. Males and female genders are prototypical examples here.
Abstraction is the next challenge- this time in use of symbolic representation, their manipulations, transmissions etc to achieve lasting effects on potentially unborn and unrelated kins via generativity and memetic transmissions. This is how I see it , not as Millon see its, but this domain is not relevant for either personality or emotions for now.
Lets us see how Millon delineates the polarities inherent in these domain as a human goes about his business of life.
Existence: The Pleasure-Pain Polarity.
The first phase, existence, concerns the maintenance of integrative phenomena, whether nuclear particle, virus, or human being, against the background of entropic decompensation. Evolutionary mechanisms derived from this stage regard life-enhancement and life-preservation. The former are concerned with orienting individuals toward enhancing survival and improvement in the quality of life; the latter with orienting individuals away from actions or environments that decrease the quality of life, or jeopardize existence itself. These may be called existential aims. At the human level of functioning such aims form, phenomenologically or metaphorically , a pleasure-pain polarity.Adaptation: The Active-Passive Polarity
To exist is but an initial survival phase. Once an integrative structure exists, it must maintain its existence through exchanges of energy and information with its environment. The second evolutionary stage relates to what is termed Modes of Adaptation; it is also framed as a two-part polarity, a passive orientation, that is a tendency to accommodate to one’s ecological niche, versus an active orientation, that is a tendency to modify or intervene in one’s surrounds. These modes of adaptation differ from the first phase of evolution, in that they relate to how that which exists is able to endure or continue to survive in its environment.Replication: The Self-Other Polarity.
Although organisms may be well-adapted to their environments, the existence of all life-forms is time-limited. To circumvent this limitation, organisms have developed Replication Strategies, that is, ways in which to leave progeny. These strategies reflect what biologists have referred to as r- or self-propagating strategy, at one polar extreme, and K- or other-nurturing strategy, at the other extreme. Psychologically, the former strategy is disposed toward actions which maximize self-reproduction;; here, organisms are egotistic, insensitive, inconsiderate, and socially uncaring; while the latter strategy is disposed toward protecting and sustaining kin or progeny; this leads to actions which are socially affiliative, intimate, caring, and solicitous.
As per Millon an unbalanced leaning towards one or more polarities or a reversal of polarities leads to unhealthy personality styles and personality disorders. How-ever, I’ll lave the discussion of personality disorders for another day.
For now, I’ll like to focus on emotions instead and a popular dimensional theory of emotion developed by Mehrabian amongst others. this the PAD theory that posits that there are three underlying dimensions that characterize all emotions- a Pleasure dimension, an Arousal dimension and a dominance dimension.
As emotions have evolved to solve the same kind of evolutionary problems as personality – though emotions solve the problem in a ‘state’ manner in the ‘here and now’ – it would be self-evident that emotions should also be related to the three domains as outlined above by Millon.
The correspondence can be easily seen. The Pleasure dimension of emotions documents whether the affective valence- whether the affect is subjectively felt as positive and pleasurable or negative and distressing. One can easily see how this is related to the pleasure-pain polarity of Millon.
The Arousal dimension of emotions describes whether the emotion involves feelings of being energetic and ready to act ; or are associated with feelings of relaxation and lessened arousal and passivity. This can be easily seen to correspond to the active-passive polarity of Millon.
The Dominance dimension of emotions describes whether one feels in control and in power over the situation or one feels overwhelmed and subjugated by it. It is related to the powerfulness or dominance felt by the person experiencing the emotion. One can reasonably associate this with the replication self-propagating and other-nurturing polarity. Some states and traits make us more self -focused while others make us more caring towards others.
Now the above PAD model has been found to be valid using factor analytical solutions. In an analysis of positive emotions by M Argyle et al, they found that the structure of positive emotions was best explained by a four dimensional structure.
The grouping data obtained in part 1 were submitted to multidimensional scaling (MDS) and returned a four-dimensional solution. Canonical correlations between the four MDS dimensions and the 13 emotion scales revealed that dimension 1 is best explained by ‘absorption’, dimension 2 by ‘potency’, dimension 3 by ‘altruistic’ and dimension 4 by ‘spiritual’. These correlations were then married to an interpretation of the situations falling high and low on each of the four dimensions, with the following results. Dimension 1 distinguishes internal or private situations from social situations, dimension 2, achievement from leisure situations, dimension 3, social demands from self-indulgence, and dimension 4, serious from trivial situations.
One can easily see that dimension 2 is related to arousal and active-emissivity polarity while dimension 3 is related to the self-propagating/ other-nurturing polarity. Dimension 1 may just be the dimension for valence while dimension 4 may be related to abstraction. In my subsequent posts , I’ll touch upon why I think abstraction domain may also be relevant to emotions and personality.
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Emotions and personality : take 2
2 years ago
by sandygautam
in emotion
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In my last post, I laid forth my claim that personality and emotions are interrelated; in this post I want to review the affective literature to come up with the different types of affective phenomenon ranging from emotions to moods to personality traits and see what is common and where they differ
In particular, I read this article titled ‘Psychological theories of emotion’ by Scherer; and apart from providing a broad overview of the dimensional, discrete emotions, meaning based and component theories of emotions, it also does a very good job of defining emotions and differentiating them from other affective phenomenon.
Without further ado, here is how the five major affective phenomenon are described:
- Emotions: relatively brief episodes of synchronized responses by all or most organismic subsystems to the evaluation of an external or internal event, as being of major significance (eg anger, sadness, joy fear , shame etc)
- Mood: diffuse affect state, mots pronounced as changes in subjective feeling , of low intensity, but relatively longer duration, often without apparent cause (eg cheerful, gloomy, irritable, listless , depressed, buoyant)
- Interpersonal stances: Affective stance taken towards another person in a specific interaction, coloring the interpersonal exchange in that situation. (eg. distant, cold, warm supportive , contemptuous)
- Attitudes: relatively enduring, affectively colored beliefs, preferences and predispositions towards objects or persons (eg liking, loving, hating, valuing, desiring)
- Personality Traits: emotionally laden , stable personality dispositions and action tendencies, typical for a person (eg. nervous, anxious, reckless, morose, hostile, envious, jealous)
Note how the above classification also fits the 5 stage model: emotions representing stage 1 , mood stage 2 with stress on subjectivity, Interpersonal stances stress the interpersonal angle in stage 3; while attitudes have more to do with affective and social phenomenon per se in stage 4. ; finally Personality traits is something characteristic of , and defining of, self and properly belongs to stage 5.
Anyway, all said and done, the above classification provides reason not only to differentiate emotions and personality, but by subsuming them under one rubric of affective phenomenon ,also highlighting the similarities and universal features.
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