The Big Five personality traits and CNS arousal in the resting state

Abstract

Based on Eysenck's pioneering work, CNS arousal has long been considered an encouraging biological candidate that may explain individual differences in human personality. Yet, results from empirical studies remained inconclusive. Notably, the vast majority of published results have been derived from small samples, and EEG alpha power has usually served as exclusive indicator for CNS arousal. In this study, we selected N = 468 individuals of the LIFE-Adult cohort and investigated the associations between the Big Five personality traits and CNS arousal by using the low-resolution electromagnetic tomography-based analysis tool VIGALL. Our analyses revealed that subjects who reported higher levels of extraversion and openness to experience, respectively, exhibited lower levels of CNS arousal in the resting state. Bayesian and frequentist analysis results were especially convincing for openness to experience. Among the lower-order personality traits, we obtained strongest evidence for neuroticism facet 'impulsivity' and reduced CNS arousal. We regard these findings as well in line with the postulations of Eysenck and Zuckerman and consistent with the assumptions of the 'arousal regulation model'. Our results also agree with meta-analytically derived effect sizes in the field of individual differences research, highlighting the need for large studies with at least several hundreds of subjects.

Disentangling periodic and aperiodic resting EEG correlates of personality

“…This is the logic underlying research that examines associations between personality traits and neural indices derived from resting state data, as a tool for exploring the biological basis of individual differences. Studies in this area have yielded several promising findings, ranging from machine learning prediction of personality traits from neural activity at rest (e.g., Hsu et al, 2018;Jach et al, 2020;Li et al, 2022), to tests of theories within personality neuroscience, such as those linking Extraversion with resting measures of cortical arousal (Jawinski et al, 2021) or Openness with efficiency of the Default Network (Beaty et al, 2016). This field is however still a nascent and fragmented area of research.…”