The Web
address of this article is
http://sfhelp.org/gwc/news/personality.htm
This research adds to evidence that suggests that "personality
traits" are largely determined by (roughly) age six. The article doesn't
propose what factors determine a person's personality, and sug-gests
that a person's life experience alone does little to change their
personality over time. See my comments after the article.
Both of these unrelated
research reports suggest that human personalities can change.
- Peter Gerlach, MSW
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Personality Set for Life By 1st Grade, Study
Suggests
By LiveScience.com staff, via Yahoo News -
8/6/2010
Our personalities stay
pretty much the same throughout our lives, from our early childhood
years to after we're over the hill, according to a new study. The
results show personality traits observed in children as young as first
graders are a strong predictor of adult behavior.
"We remain recognizably the same person," said study author
Christopher Nave, a doctoral candidate at the University of
California, Riverside. "This speaks to the importance of understanding
personality be-cause it does follow us wherever we go across time and
contexts."
The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal
Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Tracking Personalities
Using data from a 1960s study of approximately 2,400 ethnically diverse
schoolchildren (grades 1 - 6) in Hawaii, researchers compared teacher
personality ratings of the students with videotaped interviews of 144 of
those individuals 40 years later.
They examined four personality
attributes - talkativeness (called verbal fluency),
adaptability (cope well with new situations), impulsiveness
and self-minimizing behavior (essentially being humble to the
point of minimizing one's importance). Among the findings:
Talkative youngsters tended
to show interest in intellectual matters, speak fluently, try to control
situa-tions, and exhibit a high degree of intelligence as adults.
Children who rated low in verbal fluency were observed as adults to seek
advice, give up when faced with obstacles, and exhibit an awkward
interper-sonal style.
Children rated as highly adaptable tended, as middle-age adults, to
behave cheerfully, speak fluently and show interest in intellectual
matters. Those who rated low in adaptability as children were observed
as adults to say negative things about themselves, seek advice and
exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.
Students rated as impulsive were inclined to speak loudly, display a
wide range of interests and be talka-tive as adults. Less impulsive kids
tended to be fearful or timid, kept others at a distance and expressed
insecurity as adults.
Children characterized as self-minimizing were likely to express guilt,
seek reassurance, say negative things about themselves and express
insecurity as adults. Those who were ranked low on a self-minimi-zing
scale tended to speak loudly, show interest in intellectual matters and
exhibit condescending be-havior as adults.
Changing Personality
Previous research has
suggested that while our personalities can change, it's not an easy
undertaking. Personality is "a part of us, a part of our biology," Nave
said. "Life events still influence our behaviors, yet we must
acknowledge the power of personality in understanding future behavior as
well."
Future research will "help us understand how personality is related to
behavior as well as examine the extent to which we may be able to change
our personality," Nave said.
Comments
This research does not define
or propose what factors shape it. These findings support the premise
in this Web site that early childhood (perhaps including the
pregnant mother's environment, stress profile, and
is
crucial to who an infant "becomes."
From research since 1986, this Web site suggests that children
deprived of healthy nurturing during their first years of life
develop a
and
This can cause significant person-al and social problems throughout
life, unless the adult intentionally admits and reduces "false self"
domi-nance (changes their personality).
This report's author acknowledges that changing personalities is
possible, but "not an easy undertaking."
in
this educational Web site offers a research-based concept of how to
intentionally change your personality by reorganizing the subselves
that comprise it.
+ + +
Personality Predicted by Size of
Different Brain Regions
By Rachael Rettner,
LiveScience Staff Writer, via Yahoo
News 6/23/2010
.In a social situation, it's
easy to tell the difference between a wallflower and the life of the
party, but a new study suggests we can also spot differences in their
brains.
The results show the size of certain brain regions is related to
people's personalities. For instance, highly altruistic people had a
bigger posterior cingulated cortex, a brain region thought to be
involved in the understanding of others' beliefs. Bigger regions are
assumed to be more powerful.
"One of the things that this shows is we can start to develop theories
about how personality is produced by the brain," said study researcher
Colin DeYoung, of the University of Minnesota.
While people's personalities are likely shaped by both genetic and
environmental factors, the findings might help explain the differences
in people's actions and demeanors from moment to moment, he said, or
"what produces the patterns of behavior and emotion and thought that we
describe as personality."
The Big Five
There are many ways to describe someone's character — from talkative to
anxious to hardworking and organized.
Psychologists have found that
many traits often go together and have grouped these traits into five
overarching categories...
-
extraversion
-
neuroticism
-
agreeableness
-
conscientiousness and...
openness/intellect.
Psychologists can get a pretty good picture of someone's personality by
determining to what degree they express each of these traits.
Scientists have only recently begun to link up personality research with
neuroscience to try to figure out the underlying brain mechanisms
responsible for personality differences.
DeYoung and his colleagues imaged the brains of 116 participants who had
previously completed a questionnaire designed to assess their
personality in terms of the "big five."
Next, they matched up all the brain images. Since everyone's brain is
different, the images won't line up perfectly right off the bat. So the
researchers picked one image — from a participant who scored about
average for all five traits — to serve as a "reference brain."
A computer program was then used to squish and stretch the images so
that they all lined up with the reference brain. This allowed the
researchers to compare all the subjects' brains, and see how large or
small certain brain regions were relative to one another.
Personality in the Brain
A connection between brain region size and personality was found for
four out of the five traits (all except openness/intellect).
Those who scored high on neuroticism — which indicates a tendency
to experience negative emotions, including anxiety and
self-consciousness — was associated with a larger mid-cingulate cortex,
a region thought to be involved in the detection of errors and response
to emotional and physical pain. Neurotics also had a smaller dorsomedial
prefrontal cortex, a region implicated in the regulation of emotions.
Extroverts, those who are sociable, outgoing and assertive, had a
larger medial orbitofrontal cortex, a region involved in processing
rewards. This goes along with the idea that extroverts are sensitive to
rewards, which in our society often involve social interactions and
status.
Conscientious people, who tend to be orderly, industrious and
self-disciplined, had a larger middle frontal gyrus, a region involved
in memory and planning.
The researchers note however, that
a bigger brain region does not
necessarily mean the region has better functioning, although
extensive evidence supports this assumption.
The results do not indicate, that people are doomed to embody one
personality or another for their whole lives. Though it's not
necessarily easy, personalities can, and do change.
"Our experience can change the
brain," DeYoung said. "And as the brain changes, personality can change,"
he said.
The results were published online April 30 in the journal
Psychological Science.
Copyright © 2010
TechMediaNetwork.com All rights reserved.
.
Comments
Like the prior report, this one doesn't define "personality." It offers
a partial definition by naming five significant traits in all people.
This report finds that these (and all?) personality traits are related
to speci-fic regions in the brain. This supports the idea that the
"personality subselves" proposed in Lesson 1 here are really discrete
brain regions which cannot be "killed," "exiled," or "demoted." They
can be "retrained."
The observation that functional regions differ in size in different
brains raises the question of "What factors determine human brain
growth?" The report doesn't propose an answer, other than the generality
that brains are affected by genetics and (early-childhood?) environment.
Note the unfortunate labeling of some emotions as "negative" (anxiety,
self-consciousness). Many lay and clinical authors further this harmful
misconception. I propose that emotions are neither "negative" or
"positive," but are each useful pointers to unfilled needs.
The report's author agrees with the view that brain functioning - and
hence personalities - can change
For more related research summaries, see
this.
+ + +
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