Conscientiousness and Agreeableness

FFM - Low Conscientiousness Scorers

• Late

• Change plans

FFM - High Conscientiousness Scorers

• Stick to routine

• Self-discipline

• Punctual

FFM - Low Agreeableness Scorers

• Fight with others

• Don’t care what others think

FFM - High Agreeableness Scorers

Attend to the needs of others

Agreeableness and Conscientiousness - One dimension

Eysenck’s Psychoticism

• A single dimension of ruthless nonconformity.

Tellegen’s Constraint

• A single dimension of ability to control impulses.

Agreeableness and Conscientiousness - Jacobsson et al. (2021)

Lowered in:

• The prison population and individuals with ASPD (antisocial personality disorder).

• Individuals with ADHD (in addition to high N) – although this is a complex picture

• You can find these groups of people who are low scorers on both dimensions

Agreeableness and Conscientiousness - Antisocial Behaviour

A and C are ‘twin checks’ against antisocial behaviour.

• C – think better / deliberate.

• A – attend to the suffering of others.

A dangerous situation can occur when both are low, explaining low A and C in prison populations.

Dam et al. (2021) - method

• Ps across the continuum of trait aggression (N=259)

• 39 incarcerated aggressive, violent offenders

  • NEO Personality Inventory‐Revised (NEO PI‐R)

  • Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ).

• Analysis covariated for group status, age and educational level

Dam et al. (2021) - findings

• Low A and C + high Neuroticism

• Higher risk of exhibiting aggressive behaviour.

Cohen et al. (1999)

Case study – “The man who borrowed cars”

• Lesion in R Medial Orbitofrontal Region

• Selective change in trait of conscientiousness

• Lost ability to deliberate, assess consequences of actions and apply that thinking.

• General lack of executive function → frontal lobe

Forbes et al. (2014)

• Brain injury to left DLPFC → Low conscientiousness (especially in self-discipline)

• Supports Cohen et al. (199)

Asahi et al. (2004) - Method

Response Inhibition: Go / No Go task

• fMRI

• Areas of the right frontal cortex are significantly more active on No Go trials than Go trials

Asahi et al. (2004) - Findings

During no-go trials, the correlation between:

• Strength of response in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

• Low self-rated impulsivity.

However… is impulsiveness a proxy marker of Conscientiousness?

Impulsivity (UPPS model)

• Lack of Perseverance

• Lack of Premeditation

• Urgency

• Sensation Seeking

Lack of Perseverance

Low industriousness; relates in a relatively straightforward manner to C

Lack of Premeditation

Tendency to act quickly without deliberation: Blend of Low C and High E

Urgency

Tendency to act rashly while faced with intense emotional contexts: linked to metatrait stability [C, A, and -N])

Sensation Seeking

Closely linked to E (DeYoung, 2010)

DeYoung et al. (2010)

Conscientiousness co-varied with volume in the lateral prefrontal cortex, a region involved in planning and the voluntary control of behaviour.

Brain Region Volume Associated with C

• Middle frontal gyrus

• Inferior frontal gyrus

• Paracentral lobule

• Fusiform gyrus

• Superior parietal lobule.

Bunge and Zelazo (2006), Paxton et al. (2008)

• DLPFC and Conscientiousness

• Involvement rule following and goal maintenance

DeYoung et al. (2005, 2009), Nee et al. (2013)

• DLPCF is most often associated with working memory

• Working memory is unrelated to Conscientiousness

Ackerman & Heggestad (1997), Conway et al. (2003), DeYoung (2011), Reuter et al. (2018)

• Working memory instead relates to intelligence or IQ

• IQ is unrelated to Conscientiousness

Issues with DLPFC and Conscientiousness

• Need to be more specific

• The neural substrate of Conscientiousness is likely distinct from the neural substrates of working memory and intelligence

• Despite involving the lateral PFC.

DLPFC and Conscientiousness - Summary

• Rule following, goal maintenance and working memory

• Working memory is related to IQ

• Working memory and IQ have no relation to C

The Stop-Change Paradigm - Stock and Beste (2015)

• GO trial → response to a target stimulus.

• A 3rd of the trials → a STOP signal appears after a variable delay, instructing Ps to inhibit their response to the GO stimulus.

• CHANGE stimulus → response with the opposite hand.

• The delay between the STOP and CHANGE signals is either 0 ms or 300 ms.

Aim of the Stop-Change Paradigm - Stock and Beste (2015)

Assesses multicomponent behaviour

• Challenges cognitive control mechanisms

• Reveals how individuals prioritise and process multiple actions simultaneously

Findings of the Stop-Change Paradigm - Stock and Beste (2015)

Highly conscientious individuals use a more effective, step-by-step processing strategy, leading to greater efficiency.

Rueter et al. (2018) - method

Neural systems for goal prioritisation and conscientiousness

• Used functional connectivity analysis in fMRI, which identifies brain regions that act in synchrony.

• Self- and peer-ratings of Conscientiousness were collected in a community sample of adults (n=218) who underwent a resting-state fMRI scan

Rueter et al. (2018) - Findings

• Components that overlapped with the Goal Priority Network were significantly associated with Conscientiousness:

• Aligns with (De Young et al. 2010)

Conscientiousness is related to a function of the Goal Priority Network

Brain Areas Associated with the Goal Priority Network

• Anterior insula

• Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex

• Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Gallagher & Frith (2003)

ToM, or mentalisation, describes people’s ability to recognise and understand the mental states of other people

Theory of Mind - Positive Correlations

• Social competence (Bosacki & Wilde Astington, 1999; Liddle & Nettle, 2006)

• Social cooperativeness (Paal & Bereczkei, 2007)

• Social network size (Liddle & Nettle, 2006; Stiller & Dunbar, 2007)

Theory of Mind - Negative Correlations

Aggressive tendencies (Meier et al., 2006; Mohr et al., 2007).

Baker (2003)

Poor ToM has been correlated with:

• A lack of understanding of how one’s actions affect other people

• Difficulty in accurately assessing others’ intentions

Limitations of ToM as a Mechanism Behind Agreeableness

• Research into ToM and individual differences is sparce

• Most of the research on ToM uses false belief tasks.

  • This likely fails to capture the full complexity of ToM

  • i.e., breadth of skills and abilities encompassed by ToM (Altschuler et al., 2018; Apperly, 2012; Tager-Flusberg, 2011).

• ToM can also be divided into perceptual and cognitive ToM.

Psychological Mechanisms Behind Agreeableness

• Correlates point to attention to the mental states of others

• This ability is thought to be subserved by a specialised mental mechanism called Theory of Mind (ToM).

Perceptual Theory of Mind

Baron Cohen et al. (2001)

• The ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ test

Cognitive Theory of Mind

The Stiller-Dunbar stories test – Stiller & Dunbar (2007)

• A story about someone’s beliefs

• Questions increasing in complexity → asking belief of more and more individuals.

Findings:

• Women tend to outperform men

• Related to their memory

• Predicted social network sizes

Nettle & Liddle’s study

• Social-cognitive ToM.

  • Good correlation (r = 0.48) between A and Stiller-Dunbar story performance

• Social-perceptual ToM

  • No correlation between A and reading the mind in the eyes

Individual differences in agreeableness relate to an individual’s performance on ToM and complex ToM tasks

Replication of Nettle & Liddle – De Young et al. (2018)

• Accounted for individual differences in IQ

  • Failed to replicate findings that agreeableness is related to ToM abilities

• Also investigated different aspects of A

  • Compassion → weak significant correlation with ToM

• Politeness → Significant negative correlation (did not remain significant when accounting for IQ)

Politeness relating to honesty and a lack of manipulativeness might be negatively related to mentalising ability.

Allen et al. (2017)

Honesty, manipulation and ToM

Potentially related findings in studies with children:

• The ability to effectively lie is associated with more advanced ToM abilities (Talwar et al., 2007; Lonigro et al., 2014)

• ToM training can actually induce lying in previously honest preschoolers (Ding et al., 2015).

De Young et al. (2022) - Method

• Participants (n=1050)

• The triangles task (whilst undergoing fRMI)

• Two additional tests of social cognitive ability:

  • Tests of intelligence

  • Self-report measures of Agreeableness.

De Young et al. (2022) - Findings

• Activity in the ‘Default Mode Network’ when participants were viewing the social triangles (relative to the random triangles)

• ToM has been consistently linked to brain regions in this network

The Triangle’s Task

Task: Describe the actions of two triangles moving around the screen

1. Triangles displaying random movement.

2. Triangles displaying social (human-like) movement.

Definition of Default Mode Network (DMN)

• ‘Dorso Medial Network’

• A system of connected brain areas

• Show increased activity when a person is not focused on what is happening around them

Udochi et al. (2022) - Method

Explored activation within the default network whilst participants performed the triangle test.

(Only looked within the DMN given the previous findings linking it to ToM)

Udochi et al. (2022) - Findings

• Activation in the dorsal medial subsystem was greater for social versus random animations.

• Activation in response to social animations predicted:

  • Better performance on social cognition tasks

  • To a lesser extent, a higher degree of activation was related to higher Agreeableness.

Frith and Frith (2003); Saxe and Kanwisher (2003)

ToM is a socio-cognitive process, during which one takes the perspective of another individual and infers their thoughts and beliefs

Goetz et al. (2010); Singer and Lamm (2009).

Compassion is a complimentary social emotion characterised by feelings of warmth and concern in response to another's suffering, along with the motivation to help

De Vignemont et al. (2006)

Empathy is sharing the emotions and feeling states of another individual, whilst explicitly knowing that the feeling originates from the other person.

Cognitive empathy

• Recognition Element

  • Perspective-taking / Theory of Mind (ToM) / Mentalising

• Capacity to make inferences about and represent others’ intentions, goals and motives.

• Propositional knowledge about others’ behaviour that enables an understanding of the motives that drive others’ behaviour

Affective empathy

• Empathetically share others’ affect

• Emotion Contagion = sharing an affective state with another person

Fletcher-Watson & Bird (2020)

Qualitative appraisal of Empathy

• Notice another’s feelings

• Correctly interpreting another’s feelings

• Feeling empathy

Singer et al. (2014)

Empathy:

• Is a self-related emotion often related to negative emotions (such as stress)

  • Withdrawal and nonsocial behaviour.

Compassion:

• Is another-related emotion often linked to positive emotions (such as love)

  • Prosocial behaviour.

Empathy training

Increases activity in the insula and anterior cingulate cortex when perceiving others in pain

Compassion training (Klimecki et al., 2013, 2014)

• Increases activity in areas related to positive affect and reward e.g., the OFC and striatum.

• Growing evidence suggests that compassion, empathy and ToM are not one and the same.

Double dissociation evidence that empathy and ToM operate independently

Autistic individuals → ToM impaired, empathy preserved

Criminals → ToM preserved, deficit in empathy

Neuroimaging data suggests a dissociation

Bird et al. (2010)

Whilst impairments in ToM have been frequently reported for autistic individual (Frith 2001), empathy is preserved

Winter et al. (2017) - Summary

Aggressive criminal offenders, in contrast, show empathy deficits (Meffert et al. 2013) without concurrent changes in ToM

Kanske et al. (2015)

Neuroimaging data suggests a dissociation for ToM and empathy

Winter et al. (2017) - Method

• 29 men with a history of serious assault versus 32 controls.

• The social video task (EmpaToM) (Kanske et al., 2015)

  • Differentiates empathy and ToM (and compassion)

• ToM – “Anna thinks that…”

• Factual reasoning – “It is correct that..”

Winter et al. (2017) - Findings

Aggressive participants:

• Reduced empathic responses to emotional videos of others’ suffering

• Correlated with aggression severity.

• Theory of Mind performance was intact.

Double dissociation for Empathy and Compassion

• Ventral striatum

  • Unique activity was observed for compassion but not in response to empathy.

• Anterior insula

  • Unique activity was observed in the for empathy but not in response to compassion.