Intellect as distinct from openness: Differences revealed by fMRI of working memory.

Abstract

Relatively little is known about the neural bases of the Big Five personality trait Openness/Intellect. This trait is composed of two related but separable aspects, Openness to Experience and Intellect. On the basis of previous behavioral research (DeYoung, Peterson, & Higgins, 2005), we hypothesized that brain activity supporting working memory (WM) would be related to Intellect but not Openness. To test this hypothesis we used fMRI to scan a sample of 104 healthy adults, as they performed a difficult WM task. Intellect (and not Openness) was found to correlate with WM accuracy and with accuracy-related brain activity, in left lateral anterior prefrontal cortex and posterior medial frontal cortex. Neural activity in these regions mediated the association between Intellect and WM performance, implicating these regions in the neural substrate of Intellect. Intellect was also correlated significantly with scores on tests of intelligence and working memory capacity, but the association of Intellect with brain activity could not be entirely explained by cognitive ability. KeywordsIntellect; Openness; Prefrontal Cortex; Frontopolar Cortex; Working Memory; Intelligence The five factor model or Big Five classifies personality traits into five broad domains: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness/Intellect. The compound label for the last of these traits reflects an old debate about how best to characterize the content of this domain, with some researchers preferring "Openness to Experience" (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1992a) and others "Intellect" (e.g., Goldberg, 1993). This debate has been Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Colin G. DeYoung; Psychology Department, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Rd., Minneapolis, MN 55455. cdeyoung@umn.edu; or to Jeremy R. Gray, Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520; jeremy.gray@yale.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/journals/psp NIH Public Access Author Manuscript J Pers Soc Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 November 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript largely resolved conceptually by the observation that "Openness" and "Intellect" describe two related but separable aspects of the larger domain (Johnson, 1994;Saucier, 1992). Lexical studies make it clear that both aspects are well represented in natural language and that content related to both appears among the terms loading on a single Big Five factor (e.g., Gold...

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On personality and piloerection: Individual differences in aesthetic chills and other unusual aesthetic experiences.

“…People high in openness to experience, notably its openness facet rather than its intellect facet, indicated experiencing aesthetic chills significantly more often. According to DeYoung and others ( DeYoung et al, 2005, DeYoung et al, 2007, DeYoung et al, 2009Johnson, 1994), the Openness facet is most similar to McCrae's Openness to Experience evaluated by the NEO-PI-R ( Costa & McCrae, 1992), reflecting traits like appreciation for beauty and emotional sensitivity. Not surprisingly, this facet also predicts the likelihood that a person experiences chills better than DeYoung's Intellect facet ( DeYoung et al, 2007), which had a significant negative effect.…”

“…A later study ( Jang et al, 2002) expanded this idea using behavioral genetics to indicate that two genetic factors explain the shared variance of each Big Five factor. DeYoung ( DeYoung, Peterson, & Higgins, 2005;DeYoung et al, 2007;DeYoung, Shamosh, Green, Braver, & Gray, 2009) has advocated for a two-factor structure of domain aspects in several studies using fMRI scans, working memory assessment, and personality inventories, which support the factoring of the Big Five aspects of Openness to Experience into an Openness factor (representing aesthetics, creativity, and emotional sensitivity) and an Intellect factor (representing quick thinking, understanding, and embracing complex problems and ideas). The BFAS thus affords a more differentiated assessment of openness to experience.…”

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“…Therefore, executive processes could underlie the speed of search and retrieval of associations. Because, however, openness is linked to working memory (DeYoung et al, 2009;Kane et al, 2017), the contributions of executive processes are confounded in this study. Qualitative inspection of the unique responses revealed both depth and breadth of responses, which seems to suggest that both executive and associative processes might underlie semantic retrieval in people high in openness.…”

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