How Our Personalities Influence Our Experiences

This study published by the American Psychological Association suggests that depending on an individuals personality types (ex: extraverted or neurotic), his or her brain will amplify different experiences over others. In this study,m psychologists at Stanford University used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the relation between brain responses to emotional stimuli by having subjects look at pictures.

The study focused on 14 women. They were shown pictures containing negative images or positive images that provoked strong emotional reactions, and their brain’s responses were measured.

Prior to the fMRI scan, a personality test was administered to help the researchers determine the participants’ level of extraversion and neuroticism. The fMRI results show that the women who scored high on extraversion also had greater brain reactivity to positive stimuli compared to negative stimuli than did those women who scored low on extraversion. The associations between extraversion and neural activity in response to positive images were observed in several areas of the brain that control emotion, including the frontal cortex, amygdala and anterior cingulate.

For the women who scored low on extraversion, no brain reactivity to positive stimuli was found. But those who scored high on the neuroticism measures had more brain reactions to negative stimuli, but in fewer parts of the brain that control emotions.

“Depending on personality traits, people’s brains seem to amplify some aspects of experience over others,” said Dr. Gabrieli. “All of the participants saw very positive and very negative scenes, but people’s reactions were very different. One group saw the cup as being very full while the other group saw it as very empty.” These results show that individual differences in brain reactivity to emotional stimuli are associated with specific personality traits.

This study is quite interesting in that it shows that our personalities are at least somewhat determined by the structure and chemistry of our brains. It is also interesting to see what parts of our brain process different thoughts and emotions. This raises a lot of questions about nature versus nurture. Are our personalities influenced by genes, or by our experiences?