Abstract
To test for a relation between individual differences in personality and neural-processing efficiency, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess brain activity within regions associated with cognitive control during a demanding working memory task. Fifty-three participants completed both the self-report behavioral inhibition sensitivity (BIS) and behavioral approach sensitivity (BAS) personality scales and a standard measure of fluid intelligence (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices). They were then scanned as they performed a three-back working memory task. A mixed blocked/ event-related fMRI design enabled us to identify both sustained and transient neural activity. Higher BAS was negatively related to event-related activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate, the lateral prefrontal cortex, and parietal areas in regions of interest identified in previous work. These relationships were not explained by differences in either behavioral performance or fluid intelligence, consistent with greater neural efficiency. The results reveal the high specificity of the relationships among personality, cognition, and brain activity. The data confirm that affective dimensions of personality are independent of intelligence, yet also suggest that they might be interrelated in subtle ways, because they modulate activity in overlapping brain regions that appear to be critical for task performance.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aalto, S., Bruck, A., Laine, M., Nagren, K., & Rinne, J. O. (2005). Frontal and temporal dopamine release during working memory and attention tasks in healthy humans: A positron emission tomography study using the high-affinity dopamine d2 receptor ligand [11c]flb 457. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 2471–2477.
Ashby, F. G., Isen, A. M., & Turken, A. U. (1999). A neuropsychological theory of positive affect and its influence on cognition. Psychological Review, 106, 529–550.
Bates, T. C., & Rock, A. (2004). Personality and information processing speed: Independent influences on intelligent performance. Intelligence, 32, 33–46.
Braver, T. S., & Cohen, J. D. (2000). On the control of control: The role of dopamine in regulating prefrontal function and working memory. In S. Monsell & J. Driver (Eds.), Attention and performance XVIII: Control of cognitive processes (pp. 713–738). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Braver, T. S., Cohen, J. D., Nystrom, L. E., Jonides, J., Smith, E. E., & Noll, D. C. (1997). A parametric study of prefrontal cortex involvement in human working memory. NeuroImage, 5, 49–62.
Braver, T. S., Reynolds, J. R., & Donaldson, D. I. (2003). Neural mechanisms of transient and sustained cognitive control during task switching. Neuron, 39, 713–726.
Bullock, W. A., & Gilliland, K. (1993). Eysenck’s arousal theory of introversion-extraversion: A converging measures investigation. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 64, 113–123.
Bunge, S. A., Klingberg, T., Jacobsen, R. B., & Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2000). A resource model of the neural basis of executive working memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97, 3573–3578.
Bush, G., Luu, P., & Posner, M. I. (2000). Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate cortex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 215–222.
Bush, G., Vogt, B. A., Holmes, J., Dale, A. M., Greve, D., & Jenike, M. A. (2002). Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex: A role in rewardbased decision making. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, 507–512.
Canli, T., Sivers, H., Whitfield, S. L., Gotlib, I. H., & Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2002). Amygdala response to happy faces as a function of extraversion. Science, 296, 2191.
Carver, C. S., Sutton, S. K., & Scheier, M. F. (2000). Action, emotion, and personality: Emerging conceptual integration. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 741–751.
Carver, C. S., & White, T. (1994). Behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, and affective responses to impending reward and punishment: The bis/bas scales. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 67, 319–333.
Cohen, J., MacWhinney, B., Flatt, M., & Provost, J. (1993). PsyScope: An interactive graphic system for designing and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computers. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 25, 257–271.
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1980). Influence of extraversion and neuroticism on subjective well-being: Happy and unhappy people. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 38, 668–678.
Critchley, H. D., Mathias, C. J., & Dolan, R. J. (2001). Neural activity in the human brain relating to uncertainty and arousal during anticipation. Neuron, 29, 537–545.
Deary, I. J. (2000). Looking down on human intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press.
Deary, I. J., Simonotto, E., Meyer, M., Marshall, A., Marshall, I., Goddard, N., & Wardlaw, J. M. (2004). The functional anatomy of inspection time: An event-related f MRI study. Neuro Image, 22, 1466–1479.
Depue, R. A., & Collins, P. F. (1999). Neurobiology of the structure of personality: Dopamine, facilitation of incentive motivation, and extraversion. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 22, 491–569.
Devinsky, O., Morrell, M. J., & Vogt, B. (1995). Contributions of anterior cingulate cortex to behavior. Brain, 118, 279–306.
DeYoung, C. G., Peterson, J. B., & Higgins, D. M. (in press). Sources of openness/intellect: Cognitive and neuropsychological correlates of the fifth factor of personality. Journal of Personality.
Donaldson, D. I., Petersen, S. E., Ollinger, J. M., & Buckner, R. L. (2001). Dissociating item and state components of recognition memory using fMRI. Neuro Image, 13, 129–142.
Ebmeier, K. P., Deary, I. J., O’Carroll, R. E., Prentice, N., Moffoot, A. P. R., & Goodwin, G. M. (1994). Personality associations with the uptake of the cerebral blood flow marker 99mtc-exametazime estimated with single photon emission tomography. Personality & Individual Differences, 17, 587–595.
Eysenck, H. J. (1967). The biological basis of personality. Springfield, IL: Thomas.
Eysenck, H. J., & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1991). Manual of the Eysenck personality scales. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Eysenck, M. W., & Calvo, M. G. (1992). Anxiety and performance: The processing efficiency theory. Cognition & Emotion, 6, 409–434.
Eysenck, S. B. G., Eysenck, H. J., & Barrett, P. (1985). A revised version of the psychoticism scale. Personality & Individual Differences, 6, 21–29.
Fairclough, S. H., & Houston, K. (2004). A metabolic measure of mental effort. Biological Psychology, 66, 177–190.
Fink, A., Schrausser, D. G., & Neubauer, A. C. (2004). The moderating influence of extraversion on the relationship between IQ and cortical activity. Personality & Individual Differences, 33, 311–326.
Gale, A. (1983). Electroencephalographic studies of extraversion-introversion: A case study in the psychophysiology of individual differences. Personality & Individual Differences, 4, 371–380.
Gale, A. (1986). Extraversion-introversion and spontaneous rhythms of the brain: Retrospect and prospect. In J. Strelau, F. Farley, & A. Gale (Eds.), The biological basis of personality and behavior: Psychophysiology, performance, and applications (Vol. 2, pp. 25–42). Washington, DC: Hemisphere.
Gray, J. A. (1994). Personality dimensions and emotion systems. In P. Ekman & R. J. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of emotion (pp. 329–331). New York: Oxford University Press.
Gray, J. R., & Braver, T. S. (2002). Personality predicts working-memory-related activation in the caudal anterior cingulate cortex. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2, 64–75.
Gray, J. R., Braver, T. S., & Raichle, M. E. (2002). Integration of emotion and cognition in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, 4115–4120.
Gray, J. R., Chabris, C. F., & Braver, T. S. (2003). Neural mechanisms of general fluid intelligence. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 316–322.
Gray, J. R., & Thompson, P. M. (2004). Neurobiology of intelligence: Science and ethics. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5, 471–482.
Green, R. (1984). Preferred stimulation levels in introverts and extraverts: Effects on arousal and performance. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 46, 1303–1312.
Haier, R. J., Siegel, B., Tang, C., Abel, L., & Buchsbaum, M. S. (1992). Intelligence and changes in regional cerebral glucose metabolic-rate following learning. Intelligence, 16, 415–426.
Haier, R. J., White, N. S., & Alkire, M. T. (2003). Individual differences in general intelligence correlate with brain function during nonreasoning tasks. Intelligence, 31, 429–441.
Heffernan, T. M., & Ling, J. (2001). The impact of Eysenck’s extraversion-introversion personality dimension on prospective memory. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 42, 321–325.
Hockey, G. R. J. (1997). Compensatory control in the regulation of human performance under stress and high workload: A cognitive-energetical framework. Biological Psychology, 45, 73–93.
Humphreys, M. S., & Revelle, W. (1984). Personality, motivation, and performance: A theory of the relationship between individual differences and information processing. Psychological Review, 91, 153–184.
Kumari, V., Ffytche, D. H., Williams, S. C., & Gray, J. A. (2004). Personality predicts brain responses to cognitive demands. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 10636–10641.
Larsen, R. J., & Ketelaar, E. (1991). Personality and susceptibility to positive and negative emotional states. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 61, 132–140.
Lieberman, M. D. (2000). Introversion and working memory: Central executive differences. Personality & Individual Differences, 28, 479–486.
Lieberman, M. D., & Rosenthal, R. (2001). Why introverts can’t always tell who likes them: Multitasking and nonverbal decoding. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 80, 294–310.
MacDonald, A. W., Cohen, J. D., Stenger, V. A., & Carter, C. S. (2000). Dissociating the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex in cognitive control. Science, 288, 1835–1838.
Meng, X., Rosenthal, R., & Rubin, D. B. (1992). Comparing correlated correlation coefficients. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 172–175.
Neubauer, A. C., Fink, A., & Schrausser, D. G. (2002). Intelligence and neural efficiency: The influence of task content and sex on the brain-IQ relationship. Intelligence, 30, 515–536.
Paus, T. (2001). Primate anterior cingulate cortex: Where motor control, drive and cognition interface. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 417–424.
Paus, T., Koski, L., Caramanos, Z., & Westbury, C. (1998). Regional differences in the effects of task difficulty and motor output on blood flow response in the human anterior cingulate cortex: A review of 107 pet activation studies. Neuro Report, 9, R37-R47.
Pochon, J. B., Levy, R., Fossati, P., Lehericy, S., Poline, J. B., Pillon, B., Le Bihan, D., & Dubois, B. (2002). The neural system that bridges reward and cognition in humans: An fMRI study. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, 5669–5674.
Raven, J., Raven, J. C., & Court, J. H. (1998). Manual for Raven’s progressive matrices and vocabulary scales. Oxford: Oxford Psychologists Press.
Rusting, C. L., & Larsen, R. J. (1999). Clarifying Gray’s theory of personality: A response to Pickering, Corr, and Gray. Personality & Individual Differences, 26, 367–372.
Rypma, B., & D’Esposito, M. (1999). The roles of prefrontal brain regions in components of working memory: Effects of memory load and individual differences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96, 6558–6563.
Simpson, J. R., Drevets, W. C., Snyder, A. Z., Gusnard, D. A., & Raichle, M. E. (2001). Emotion-induced changes in human medial prefrontal cortex: II. During anticipatory anxiety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98, 688–693.
Stelmack, R. M. (1990). Biological basis of extraversion: Psychophysiological evidence. Journal of Personality, 58, 293–311.
Sutton, S. K., & Davidson, R. J. (1997). Prefrontal brain asymmetry: A biological substrate of the behavioral approach and inhibition systems. Psychological Science, 8, 204–210.
Talairach, J., & Tournoux, P. (1988). Co-planar stereotaxic atlas of the human brain. New York: Thieme.
Wilkinson, D., & Halligan, P. (2004). The relevance of behavioural measures for functional-imaging studies of cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5, 67–73.
Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to the rapidity of habit formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology & Psychology, 18, 459–482.
Zald, D. H., Mattson, D. L., & Pardo, J. V. (2002). Brain activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex correlates with individual differences in negative affect. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, 2450–2454.
Zelenski, J. M., & Larsen, R. J. (1999). Susceptibility to affect: A comparison of three personality taxonomies. Journal of Personality, 67, 761–791.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health. Some of these data have been published in abstract form (J. R. Gray & G. C. Burgess, Journal of Research in Personality, 2004, 38, 35–36) and in a full report (J. R. Gray, C. F. Chabris, & T. S. Braver, 2003, Nature Neuroscience, 6, 316–322).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gray, J.R., Burgess, G.C., Schaefer, A. et al. Affective personality differences in neural processing efficiency confirmed using fMRI. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 5, 182–190 (2005). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.5.2.182
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.5.2.182