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The Big Five Personality Traits and Brain Arousal in the Resting State

Based on Eysenck’s biopsychological trait theory, brain arousal has long been considered to explain individual differences in human personality. Yet, results from empirical studies remained inconclusive. However, most published results have been derived from small samples and, despite inherent limit...

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Autores principales: Jawinski, Philippe, Markett, Sebastian, Sander, Christian, Huang, Jue, Ulke, Christine, Hegerl, Ulrich, Hensch, Tilman
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8533901/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34679337
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11101272
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author Jawinski, Philippe
Markett, Sebastian
Sander, Christian
Huang, Jue
Ulke, Christine
Hegerl, Ulrich
Hensch, Tilman
author_facet Jawinski, Philippe
Markett, Sebastian
Sander, Christian
Huang, Jue
Ulke, Christine
Hegerl, Ulrich
Hensch, Tilman
author_sort Jawinski, Philippe
collection PubMed
description Based on Eysenck’s biopsychological trait theory, brain arousal has long been considered to explain individual differences in human personality. Yet, results from empirical studies remained inconclusive. However, most published results have been derived from small samples and, despite inherent limitations, EEG alpha power has usually served as an exclusive indicator for brain arousal. To overcome these problems, we here selected N = 468 individuals of the LIFE-Adult cohort and investigated the associations between the Big Five personality traits and brain arousal by using the validated EEG- and EOG-based analysis tool VIGALL. Our analyses revealed that participants who reported higher levels of extraversion and openness to experience, respectively, exhibited lower levels of brain arousal in the resting state. Bayesian and frequentist analysis results were especially convincing for openness to experience. Among the lower-order personality traits, we obtained the strongest evidence for neuroticism facet ‘impulsivity’ and reduced brain arousal. In line with this, both impulsivity and openness have previously been conceptualized as aspects of extraversion. We regard our findings as well in line with the postulations of Eysenck and consistent with the recently proposed ‘arousal regulation model’. Our results also agree with meta-analytically derived effect sizes in the field of individual differences research, highlighting the need for large (collaborative) studies.
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spelling pubmed-85339012021-10-23 The Big Five Personality Traits and Brain Arousal in the Resting State Jawinski, Philippe Markett, Sebastian Sander, Christian Huang, Jue Ulke, Christine Hegerl, Ulrich Hensch, Tilman Brain Sci Article Based on Eysenck’s biopsychological trait theory, brain arousal has long been considered to explain individual differences in human personality. Yet, results from empirical studies remained inconclusive. However, most published results have been derived from small samples and, despite inherent limitations, EEG alpha power has usually served as an exclusive indicator for brain arousal. To overcome these problems, we here selected N = 468 individuals of the LIFE-Adult cohort and investigated the associations between the Big Five personality traits and brain arousal by using the validated EEG- and EOG-based analysis tool VIGALL. Our analyses revealed that participants who reported higher levels of extraversion and openness to experience, respectively, exhibited lower levels of brain arousal in the resting state. Bayesian and frequentist analysis results were especially convincing for openness to experience. Among the lower-order personality traits, we obtained the strongest evidence for neuroticism facet ‘impulsivity’ and reduced brain arousal. In line with this, both impulsivity and openness have previously been conceptualized as aspects of extraversion. We regard our findings as well in line with the postulations of Eysenck and consistent with the recently proposed ‘arousal regulation model’. Our results also agree with meta-analytically derived effect sizes in the field of individual differences research, highlighting the need for large (collaborative) studies. MDPI 2021-09-26 /pmc/articles/PMC8533901/ /pubmed/34679337 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11101272 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Jawinski, Philippe
Markett, Sebastian
Sander, Christian
Huang, Jue
Ulke, Christine
Hegerl, Ulrich
Hensch, Tilman
The Big Five Personality Traits and Brain Arousal in the Resting State
title The Big Five Personality Traits and Brain Arousal in the Resting State
title_full The Big Five Personality Traits and Brain Arousal in the Resting State
title_fullStr The Big Five Personality Traits and Brain Arousal in the Resting State
title_full_unstemmed The Big Five Personality Traits and Brain Arousal in the Resting State
title_short The Big Five Personality Traits and Brain Arousal in the Resting State
title_sort big five personality traits and brain arousal in the resting state
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8533901/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34679337
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11101272
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