• Question: How Much of Personality Comes From the Brain?

    Asked by anon-204615 to Sally, Lucy, James, David, Dan on 13 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-204603.
    • Photo: James Munro

      James Munro answered on 13 Mar 2019:


      Hey leon,

      All of it :). Without a brain, you simply wouldn’t exist. Your brain creates your mind, controls how you think, what you can do or learn, what traits you will have and what moods you might have. Everything that makes up what we call our personality is dependant on the brain. I wouldn’t recomend taking your brain out to check, though 🙂

      Good question!

    • Photo: Dan Taylor

      Dan Taylor answered on 13 Mar 2019:


      So first of all, I would start by saying that personality is generally considered to by built up from a variety of traits. Most commonly, the “Big 5” of personality is used, these traits are Extraversion (how outgoing you are), Agreeableness (how nice you are), Conscientiousness (wanting to perform work to a high standard), Openness (how open you are to new experiences) and Neuroticism (how susceptible you are to emotions like sadness and anxiety). Other traits do exist, a good example of this is the Dark Triad of personality which includes Psychopathy (cruel and unemotional, impulsive), Narcissism (having too much self love, lack of empathy) and Machiavellianism (socially manipulative and deceitful). Some studies have estimated that depending on the personality trait, personality can be between 40-60% heritable. So there is definitely something to suggest personality can be inherited. But it’s also important to remember that genetics comes from your parents who also make up a lot of the early environment, so working out what is biology and what is environment can be really hard.
      We can see some differences in the brain, impulsive people may have issues with the amygdala or prefrontal cortex, psychopaths also have quite interestingly different brains – but again there is something to be said about brain-environment interactions.

    • Photo: David Chadwick

      David Chadwick answered on 13 Mar 2019:


      I agree with James. All of it. All of our feelings, emotions and thoughts come from our brains. I think it was the ancient Greeks who thought they came from the heart, but now we know that this is not the case

    • Photo: Sally Tilt

      Sally Tilt answered on 13 Mar 2019:


      Personality is such a great subject to ask a question about. If you woke up, and overnight you had a completely different personality, would you still be you? It’s tricky to answer because we think of our personalities as being one and the same as the people that we are.

      While we are born with genes that might predispose us to respond in a particular way – it is our environment, our experiences with others, and the way that others respond to us that influence and shape our personalities. We know that our personalities take a while to shape, and that during our teenage years we are often still exploring and developing the values that are important to us and the way that our personalities will develop.

      So – yes, our personality is linked to the brain – but our brain is shaped by the world around us and our experiences – you could take a brain (well obviously not actually take it) and put it in one environment and someone’s personality will develop in one way, and take the same brain and put it in a different environment and their personality might develop in a different way.

      Great question.

    • Photo: Lucy Maddox

      Lucy Maddox answered on 14 Mar 2019:


      Fab question and this is highly controversial – some people would say all of it, others say it’s not just the brain, others say “personality” is not a reliable construct (idea).

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