The Neurobiology of Personality
A book review about the emotional foundations of personality
I’ve always been interested in what drives human behaviour, and it becomes increasingly evident that personality is a big contributor to how human beings and animals perceive and act in the world. This is in large part what got me interested in psychology. It’s clear that personality has an evolutionary foundation, yet the link isn’t made very often. Instead, personality has mostly been focused on psychometrics and correlating it with various aspects of behaviour. While this has value, I always felt that it wasn’t going deep enough at the framework we have inherited.
Reading this book was in some sense a bit bizarre because it answered a lot of questions that I thought it had no answer yet or answered questions I didn’t even know I had. I felt, in some sense, if I managed to peak into the future and see the new paradigm of personality science.
The main author of the book is Jaak Panksepp, the father of affective neuroscience, whose work is paramount in contemporary psychology and neuroscience. He has authored over 10 books, 600 research papers, and his work has gotten over 43,000 citations. He is most famous for discovering laughter in non-human animals.
His Magnus Opus — “Affective Neuroscience”, will surely be a historical book on human understanding. It captured the emotional reality of beings, always so abstract and hard to pin down, into its biological roots, a feat attempted by Darwin himself, but now not only in terms of their adaptive value and phylogenetic emergence but also it’s neurochemical structure. Not only does it elucidate our position to nature and remind us of our animal underpinnings, but similarly, it elevates and humanizes animals, especially mammals, given the overlap between our emotional realities.
A Neurobiological and Evolutionary Approach
By Kenneth L. Davis and Jaak Panksepp
The book is some sense a short summary of his legacy, but focusing more heavily on personality, with roots all the way to Darwin’s emotional theory in “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals”. It links our personality to our basic emotional circuits, present since early mammalian brain anatomy, which some systems going as far back as fish and worms. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2017. This book is co-authored by Kenneth Davis, an old student of Panksepp and later colleague and co-author.
Basic primary emotions evolved to tacked a particular environmental challenge or a pattern of behaviour. All these are present with all mammalian brains, localized subcortically. By studying them, one can start to finally develop a sound personality theory with an epistemology based on an evolutionary understanding. Panksepp identifies 7 primary emotions and names them the following: SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, GRIEF and PLAY. A spirituality dimension is also mentioned at one point, although he unfortunately never explores it. All systems are always referenced in capitals, so it’s known it’s referencing the specific emotional circuit and not just the colloquial usage of the word itself.
The affective neuroscientific validity of basic emotions are based on:
1) Behaviors resulting from affective feelings can be aroused by electrical stimulation of their corresponding brain location
2)The reverse is also true — the brain areas associated with each affect are in use whenever the affect is present
3) These affects are rarely from higher prefrontal neocortical regions, they can regulate them but it’s not their origin.
SEEKING is involved with the reward system, and can be thought of like a drive, what Freud called “libido” and Spinoza “conatus”. It’s especially associated with novelty and generates from the most basic curiosity as exploring new territory to intellectual pursuits like philosophical discussion. It’s closely associated with Openness to Experience in the FFM at r=0.47. It heavily influences LUST, CARE, and PLAY.
RAGE is what is classically thought of the fight-flight response. It’s most often associated with the restriction of freedom (like cornering a cat). It generates aggressive behaviour, which works by either eliminating/neutralizing the threat or arousing the FEAR system in the threat so that it flees. It can also extend to other more indirect survival threads, like loss of resources. It’s inversely associated with Emotional Stability in the FFM at r=-0.65 and with Agreeableness at r=-0.48.
FEAR protects animals from physical damage and death. It leads to either a freezing response or fleeing, whatever is most adaptive to the animal. In humans, it’s associated with anxiety. It’s inversely associated with Emotional Stability in the FFM at r=-0.75
LUST has an obvious purpose — and it’s heavily influenced estrogen and testosterone, creating gender-specific sexual tendencies. They influence not only intercourse but related sexual behaviour as well, like trust, confidence, assertiveness, jealousy, etc.
CARE is to ensure paternal investment into offspring, and it’s heavily associated with maternal care in particular. It’s closely associated with Agreeableness in the FFM at r=0.5.
GRIEF (previously called PANIC/SADNESS) is an emotional system to receive nurturance for the young, and in adults in deals with social-attachment and social-bonding in mammals. It’s what causes crying in infants, partner grief in adults and general social rejection. It’s inversely associated with Emotional Stability in the FFM at r=-0.68.
PLAY is rough and tumble play — known to any parent. While it seems aggressive, it actually results in positive affect, and they’re essential for mammals. It provides learning for social rules and seems crucial for proper development. Not only is its importance not recognized in our current society, but it has also been recently demonized (with the thought that it promotes aggression). Lack of play is associated with ADHD and degrades plasticity in the prefrontal cortex. PLAY is closely associated with Extroversion in the FFM at r=0.46.
The book sadly excludes LUST, as they predicted it would be difficult to talk about and perhaps controversial. All these emotions are largely inherited, although the environment and learning play a role as well. They’re present in all mammals and the most basic ones, FEAR, RAGE and SEEKING are much older, found in reptiles and fish. The correlations with the FFM are based on the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scale, made by Panksepp and his colleagues.
It’s honestly bizarre and mindblowing how deep these systems run, and they’re so blatantly obvious even though we don’t recognize it. For example, both humans and other animals bare their teeth when angry and hairs stand up when fearful. They’re examples of very ancient innate responses that proved adaptive to our ancestors, and the list is endless.
In addition to these basic emotions, there are also secondary-process emotions, from learning via basal ganglia, in the form of classical conditioning, instrumental and operant conditioning, and emotional habits. Lastly, there is a third level of affect, which is neocortical. This includes cognitive executive functions (thoughts and planning), emotional ruminations and regulations, and intentionality. In simpler terms, primary-process emotions are basic instinctual frameworks, secondary emotional processes are based on learning, and tertiary-process emotions are related to cognition.
The primary emotions are what lay the foundations of personality — how we perceive and act in the world. Personality theory initially belonged to medicine (where it was believed to be caused by humors), which funny enough, is actually more in line with Panksepp’s neurobiological approach than our current models. He links sanguine with PLAY, choleric with RAGE, melancholic with GRIEF and phlegmatic with FEAR.
Personality was later was claimed by psychology, although at the time it was more a ramification of philosophy, with little if any empirical work. In the mid-1900s, statistics were seen as the solution to escape the philosophical grey waters of personality theory, and by looking for patterns among the adjectives we use to describe other people it was hoped to provide an objective account of personality. Panksepp claims this was useful in the era of the “black box” of psychology, but now with little relevance. They may only show the conceptual and descriptive categories of language to describe behaviour. As Darwin himself recognized, emotions arise well before language. Affect is the genes’ language — the oldest of them all. The FFM seems especially defective at dealing with negative emotions, which are all clumped into emotional stability even though there are clearly several systems at play and produce specific psychopathologies. There are other technical problems with a factor analysis in general, which are explored in the book. Top-bottom statistical models try to describe personality, while bottom-up approaches explain it.
The book is incredibly well written. It does have some technical aspects from time to time, but no in-depth background is needed. It lays out a new understanding of personality grounded in evolutionary biology that is not only fascinating, revealing one of the foundational roots of human nature, but also extremely useful, particularly for psychiatry wherein the future treatments may be based adjusting out of balance emotional systems.
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I also have a philosophy podcast. If you want to check it out look for Anagoge Podcast.
Tiago V.F.
