andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-490 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Many years ago, a research psychologist whose judgment I greatly respect told me that the characterization of personality by the so-called Big Five traits (extraversion, etc.) was old-fashioned. So I’m always surprised to see that the Big Five keeps cropping up. I guess not everyone agrees that it’s a bad idea. For example, Hamdan Azhar wrote to me: I was wondering if you’d seen this recent paper (De Young et al. 2010) that finds significant correlations between brain volume in selected regions and personality trait measures (from the Big Five). This is quite a ground-breaking finding and it was covered extensively in the mainstream media. I think readers of your blog would be interested in your thoughts, statistically speaking, on their methodology and findings. My reply: I’d be interested in my thoughts on this too! But I don’t know enough to say anything useful. From the abstract of the paper under discussion: Controlling for age, sex, and whole-brain volume
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Many years ago, a research psychologist whose judgment I greatly respect told me that the characterization of personality by the so-called Big Five traits (extraversion, etc. [sent-1, score-0.398]
2 For example, Hamdan Azhar wrote to me: I was wondering if you’d seen this recent paper (De Young et al. [sent-5, score-0.114]
3 2010) that finds significant correlations between brain volume in selected regions and personality trait measures (from the Big Five). [sent-6, score-1.13]
4 This is quite a ground-breaking finding and it was covered extensively in the mainstream media. [sent-7, score-0.105]
5 I think readers of your blog would be interested in your thoughts, statistically speaking, on their methodology and findings. [sent-8, score-0.069]
6 From the abstract of the paper under discussion: Controlling for age, sex, and whole-brain volume, results from structural magnetic resonance imaging of 116 healthy adults supported our hypotheses for four of the five traits: Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. [sent-11, score-0.401]
7 Extraversion covaried with volume of medial orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region involved in processing reward information. [sent-12, score-1.168]
8 Neuroticism covaried with volume of brain regions associated with threat, punishment, and negative affect. [sent-13, score-1.157]
9 Agreeableness covaried with volume in regions that process information about the intentions and mental states of other individuals. [sent-14, score-1.034]
10 Conscientiousness covaried with volume in lateral prefrontal cortex, a region involved in planning and the voluntary control of behavior. [sent-15, score-0.964]
11 I could be glib and call this the new phrenology etc etc, but really maybe this stuff is great, I just don’t know. [sent-16, score-0.111]
12 I guess the next step is to study how these traits interact with situations. [sent-17, score-0.208]
13 For example, the key finding here is that there are certain brain regions in which relative local volume correlates with a Big Five trait. [sent-22, score-1.004]
14 The paper provides beta estimates and number of voxels for each of these regions and indicates that an overall threshold of p<. [sent-23, score-0.408]
15 For example, it would help to know, according to the authors’ computations, what would be the difference in medial temporal lobe volume between someone at the 75th percentile in Neuroticism and someone at the 25th percentile. [sent-26, score-0.583]
16 And more importantly, how this “between-groups” variance compared to the mean variance within the Low Neuroticism or the High Neuroticism group. [sent-27, score-0.265]
17 In other words, I’ll accept that brain regions vary in size based on personality traits – but I want to know how this variance compares to the naturally occurring variance in brain region volume between people with similar personality traits. [sent-28, score-2.014]
18 Or rather, some notion of what percent of the variation in relative volume of various brain regions can be accounted for by knowledge of personality traits. [sent-29, score-1.137]
19 Does it constitute an oversight or a flaw in either methodology or presentation to not include any of this information? [sent-32, score-0.179]
20 Or am I missing some other statistical information provided in the paper that does address my concerns? [sent-33, score-0.127]
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Introduction: Many years ago, a research psychologist whose judgment I greatly respect told me that the characterization of personality by the so-called Big Five traits (extraversion, etc.) was old-fashioned. So I’m always surprised to see that the Big Five keeps cropping up. I guess not everyone agrees that it’s a bad idea. For example, Hamdan Azhar wrote to me: I was wondering if you’d seen this recent paper (De Young et al. 2010) that finds significant correlations between brain volume in selected regions and personality trait measures (from the Big Five). This is quite a ground-breaking finding and it was covered extensively in the mainstream media. I think readers of your blog would be interested in your thoughts, statistically speaking, on their methodology and findings. My reply: I’d be interested in my thoughts on this too! But I don’t know enough to say anything useful. From the abstract of the paper under discussion: Controlling for age, sex, and whole-brain volume
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