An Adaptationist Framework for Personality Science

Lukaszewski, Aaron W.; Lewis, David M. G.; Durkee, Patrick K.; Sell, Aaron; Sznycer, Daniel; Buss, David M.

doi:10.1002/per.2292

Cited by 54 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 204 publications

(514 reference statements)

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“…Fortunately, there have been other recent contributions regarding how to explain phenomena that personality scientists consider as falling into their jurisdiction (e.g., Baumert et al, 2017;Briley et al, 2018;Grosz et al, 2020), including articles in this issue (e.g., Quirin et al, 2020;Costantini et al,. 2020;Lukaszewski et al, 2020). Here we offer general ideas about how one could think of causes and useful explanations -and why these are not necessarily the same things.…”

Section: Explanatory Personality Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latter approach is primarily about specific processes pertaining to individuals and resultant variability within them, as well as about how individuals may differ in these processes and/or their distant causes (e.g., Quirin et al, 2020). In many cases, it is not evident that variability/processes taking place within individuals and variability among people arise for similar reasons (e.g., DNA structure, anthropometry, parental socioeconomic status or other possible sources of individual differences do not even vary much within individuals), although sometimes they may (see Lukaszewski et al, 2020;Quirin et al, 2020). But even more importantly, while advocates of the latter approach may hope to identify specific causes of specific phenomena (why a particular person reacts to a situation in a particular way) and eventually perhaps even individual differences in these, advocates of the former approach may prefer explanations that propose general principles rather than target specific causes, for reasons that we'll describe shortly.…”

Section: Explanatory Personality Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Descriptive, predictive and explanatory personality research: Different goals, different approaches, but a shared need to move beyond the Big Few traits

Mõttus¹,

Wood²,

Condon³

et al. 2020

Preprint

106

182

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We argue that it is useful to distinguish between three key goals of personality science – description, prediction and explanation – and that attaining them often requires different priorities and methodological approaches. We put forward specific recommendations such as publishing findings with minimum a priori aggregation and exploring the limits of predictive models without being constrained by parsimony and intuitiveness but instead maximising out-of-sample predictive accuracy. We argue that naturally-occurring variance in many decontextualized and multi-determined constructs that interest personality scientists may not have individual causes, at least as this term is generally understood and in ways that are human-interpretable, never mind intervenable. If so, useful explanations are narratives that summarize many pieces of descriptive findings rather than models that target individual cause-effect associations. By meticulously studying specific and contextualized behaviours, thoughts, feelings and goals, however, individual causes of variance may ultimately be identifiable, although such causal explanations will likely be far more complex, phenomenon-specific and person-specific than anticipated thus far. Progress in all three areas – description, prediction, and explanation – requires higher-dimensional models than the currently-dominant “Big Few” and supplementing subjective trait-ratings with alternative sources of information such as informant-reports and behavioural measurements. Developing a new generation of psychometric tools thus provides many immediate research opportunities.

show abstract

Section: Explanatory Personality Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Explanatory Personality Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Descriptive, predictive and explanatory personality research: Different goals, different approaches, but a shared need to move beyond the Big Few traits

Mõttus¹,

Wood²,

Condon³

et al. 2020

Preprint

106

182

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Baumert et al, 2017; Briley, Livengood, & Derringer, 2018; Grosz, Rohrer, & Thoemmes, 2020), including articles in this issue (e.g. Costantini, Saraulli, & Perugini, 2020; Lukaszewski et al, 2020; Quirin et al, 2020). Here, we offer a few general ideas about how one could think of causes and useful explanations—and why these are not necessarily the same things.…”

Section: Explanatory Personality Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In many cases, it is not evident that variability/processes taking place within individuals and variability among people arise for similar reasons (e.g. DNA structure, anthropometry, parental socioeconomic status or other possible sources of individual differences do not even vary much within individuals), although sometimes they may (Lukaszewski et al, 2020; Quirin et al, 2020). But even more importantly, while advocates of the latter approach may hope to identify specific causes of specific phenomena (why a particular person reacts to a situation in a particular way) and eventually perhaps even individual differences in these, advocates of the former approach may prefer explanations that propose general principles rather than target specific causes, for reasons that we will describe shortly.…”

Section: Explanatory Personality Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This strategy may thus help to organize the legions of variables showing small distal effects by showing how they contribute to more proximally related variables and processes, such as the psychological mechanisms or systems that calibrate dominant and aggressive behaviour (e.g. Balliet, Tybur, & Van Lange, 2017; Lukaszewski et al, 2020). The successful identification of the most proximally related processes in turn offers the greatest potential for intentionally affecting outcomes of interest.…”

Section: Explanatory Personality Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Descriptive, Predictive and Explanatory Personality Research: Different Goals, Different Approaches, but a Shared Need to Move beyond the Big Few Traits

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We argue that it is useful to distinguish between three key goals of personality science—description, prediction and explanation—and that attaining them often requires different priorities and methodological approaches. We put forward specific recommendations such as publishing findings with minimum a priori aggregation and exploring the limits of predictive models without being constrained by parsimony and intuitiveness but instead maximizing out–of–sample predictive accuracy. We argue that naturally occurring variance in many decontextualized and multidetermined constructs that interest personality scientists may not have individual causes, at least as this term is generally understood and in ways that are human–interpretable, never mind intervenable. If so, useful explanations are narratives that summarize many pieces of descriptive findings rather than models that target individual cause–effect associations. By meticulously studying specific and contextualized behaviours, thoughts, feelings and goals, however, individual causes of variance may ultimately be identifiable, although such causal explanations will likely be far more complex, phenomenon–specific and person–specific than anticipated thus far. Progress in all three areas—description, prediction and explanation—requires higher dimensional models than the currently dominant ‘Big Few’ and supplementing subjective trait–ratings with alternative sources of information such as informant–reports and behavioural measurements. Developing a new generation of psychometric tools thus provides many immediate research opportunities. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology

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Evolutionary psychiatry: foundations, progress and challenges

Nesse

2023

World Psychiatry

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Evolutionary biology provides a crucial foundation for medicine and behavioral science that has been missing from psychiatry. Its absence helps to explain slow progress; its advent promises major advances. Instead of offering a new kind of treatment, evolutionary psychiatry provides a scientific foundation useful for all kinds of treatment. It expands the search for causes from mechanistic explanations for disease in some individuals to evolutionary explanations for traits that make all members of a species vulnerable to disease. For instance, capacities for symptoms such as pain, cough, anxiety and low mood are universal because they are useful in certain situations. Failing to recognize the utility of anxiety and low mood is at the root of many problems in psychiatry. Determining if an emotion is normal and if it is useful requires understanding an individual's life situation. Conducting a review of social systems, parallel to the review of systems in the rest of medicine, can help achieve that understanding. Coping with substance abuse is advanced by acknowledging how substances available in modern environments hijack chemically mediated learning mechanisms. Understanding why eating spirals out of control in modern environments is aided by recognizing the motivations for caloric restriction and how it arouses famine protection mechanisms that induce binge eating. Finally, explaining the persistence of alleles that cause serious mental disorders requires evolutionary explanations of why some systems are intrinsically vulnerable to failure. The thrill of finding functions for apparent diseases is evolutionary psychiatry's greatest strength and weakness. Recognizing bad feelings as evolved adaptations corrects psychiatry's pervasive mistake of viewing all symptoms as if they were disease manifestations. However, viewing diseases such as panic disorder, melancholia and schizophrenia as if they are adaptations is an equally serious mistake in evolutionary psychiatry. Progress will come from framing and testing specific hypotheses about why natural selection left us vulnerable to mental disorders. The efforts of many people over many years will be needed before we will know if evolutionary biology can provide a new paradigm for understanding and treating mental disorders.

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An Adaptationist Framework for Personality Science

Cited by 54 publications

References 204 publications

Descriptive, predictive and explanatory personality research: Different goals, different approaches, but a shared need to move beyond the Big Few traits

Descriptive, predictive and explanatory personality research: Different goals, different approaches, but a shared need to move beyond the Big Few traits

Descriptive, Predictive and Explanatory Personality Research: Different Goals, Different Approaches, but a Shared Need to Move beyond the Big Few Traits

Evolutionary psychiatry: foundations, progress and challenges

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