| Home | << 1 2 3 4 5 6 >> |
|
Bouchard, T. J. J., & Loehlin, J. C. (2001). Genes, evolution, and personality. Behav Genet, 31(3), 243–273.
Abstract: There is abundant evidence, some of it reviewed in this paper, that personality traits are substantially influenced by the genes. Much remains to be understood about how and why this is the case. We argue that placing the behavior genetics of personality in the context of epidemiology, evolutionary psychology, and neighboring psychological domains such as interests and attitudes should help lead to new insights. We suggest that important methodological advances, such as measuring traits from multiple viewpoints, using large samples, and analyzing data by modern multivariate techniques, have already led to major changes in our view of such perennial puzzles as the role of “unshared environment” in personality. In the long run, but not yet, approaches via molecular genetics and brain physiology may also make decisive contributions to understanding the heritability of personality traits. We conclude that the behavior genetics of personality is alive and flourishing but that there remains ample scope for new growth and that much social science research is seriously compromised if it does not incorporate genetic variation in its explanatory models.
|
|
Weiss, A., King, J. E., & Figueredo, A. J. (2000). The heritability of personality factors in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Behav Genet, 30(3), 213–221.
Abstract: Human personality and behavior genetic studies have resulted in a growing consensus that five heritable factors account for most variance in human personality. Prior research showed that chimpanzee personality is composed of a dominance-related factor and five human-like factors--Surgency, Dependability, Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, and Openness. Genetic, shared zoo, and nonshared environmental variance components of the six factors were estimated by regressing squared phenotypic differences of all possible pairs of chimpanzees onto 1 – Rij, where Rij equals the degree of relationship and a variable indicating whether the pair was housed in the same zoo. Dominance showed significant narrow-sense heritability. Shared zoo effects accounted for only a negligible proportion of the variance for all factors.
|
|
Nettle, D. (2006). The evolution of personality variation in humans and other animals. Am Psychol, 61(6), 622–631.
Abstract: A comprehensive evolutionary framework for understanding the maintenance of heritable behavioral variation in humans is yet to be developed. Some evolutionary psychologists have argued that heritable variation will not be found in important, fitness-relevant characteristics because of the winnowing effect of natural selection. This article propounds the opposite view. Heritable variation is ubiquitous in all species, and there are a number of frameworks for understanding its persistence. The author argues that each of the Big Five dimensions of human personality can be seen as the result of a trade-off between different fitness costs and benefits. As there is no unconditionally optimal value of these trade-offs, it is to be expected that genetic diversity will be retained in the population.
Keywords: Animals; Birds; *Evolution; Female; Fishes; Humans; Insects; Male; Personality/*genetics/*physiology
|
|
Kurvers, R. H. J. M., Eijkelenkamp, B., van Oers, K., van Lith, B., van Wieren, S. E., Ydenberg, R. C., et al. (2009). Personality differences explain leadership in barnacle geese. Anim. Behav., 78(2), 447–453.
Abstract: Personality in animal behaviour describes the observation that behavioural differences between individuals are consistent over time and context. Studies of group-living animals show that movement order among individuals is also consistent over time and context, suggesting that some individuals lead and others follow. However, the relationship between leadership and personality traits is poorly studied. We measured several personality traits and leadership of individual barnacle geese, Branta leucopsis. We measured body size and scored the dominance of individuals living in a stable group situation before subjecting them to an open-field test, an activity test, a novel-object test, and a leadership test in which the order of the movement of individuals in pairs towards a feeding patch was scored. We found high repeatability for activity and novel-object scores over time. Leadership was strongly correlated with novel-object score but not with dominance rank, activity or exploration in an open field. These results provide evidence that leadership is closely related to some aspects of personality. Interestingly, an individual's arrival at the food patch was affected not only by the novel-object score of the focal individual, but also by the novel-object score of the companion individual, indicating that movement patterns of individuals living in groups are affected by the personality traits of other group members and suggesting that movement patterns of a group may be shaped by the mix of personality types present in the group.
Keywords: barnacle goose; boldness; Branta leucopsis; group behaviour; leadership; personality
|
|
Bergvall, U. A., Schäpers, A., Kjellander, P., & Weiss, A. (). Personality and foraging decisions in fallow deer, Dama dama. Anim. Behav., In Press, Corrected Proof.
Abstract: Recent studies have examined the ecological and evolutionary bases for variation in animal personality. However, only a few such studies have examined how foraging parameters are influenced by different personality domains. In wild ungulates, the trade-off between the time spent on food intake and antipredator behaviour differs between individuals, but the underlying reason for this is not yet well understood. One possibility is that this trade-off reflects personality dimensions such as boldness. To relate foraging decisions to personality we measured personality and performed feeding experiments with familiar and novel food in familiar and novel situations. We measured personality traits in 15 tame fallow deer, using novel object tests (NO), behavioural observations (BO) and personality ratings (PR). Boldness dimensions were found using PR and NO, dominance dimensions were found using BO and PR, and a flexibility dimension was found using BO. Multitrait-multimethod analysis showed that similar dimensions were significantly correlated across different methods and that different dimensions were not significantly correlated, even if measured using the same method. We also found that novel food eaten in familiar situations and familiar food eaten in novel situations were strongly related to boldness but not dominance, flexibility or age. Thus the trade-off between the benefits of gaining more food and the costs of reduced vigilance or increased toxin ingestion reflect boldness. These findings highlight the nature of personality dimensions in ungulates and how boldness impacts foraging behaviour.
Keywords: antipredator behaviour; boldness; Dama dama; dominance; fallow deer; foraging; novelty; personality
|
|
Riebli, T., Avgan, B., Bottini, A. - M., Duc, C., Taborsky, M., & Heg, D. (2011). Behavioural type affects dominance and growth in staged encounters of cooperatively breeding cichlids. Anim. Behav., 81(1), 313–323.
Abstract: In animals, behavioural properties such as aggressive propensity are often consistent over a life span, and they may form part of a behavioural syndrome. We studied how aggressive propensity influences dominance, contest behaviour and growth in the cooperatively breeding cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher. We tested whether intrinsic aggressive propensity (1) influences dominance in paired contests, (2) causes different aggression levels in contests with partners matched for aggressive propensity compared to unmatched partners, and how it (3) affects growth rate in groups that were either matched or unmatched for aggressive propensity. Intrinsic aggressive propensity was first scored with a mirror test and classified as high, medium or low. Thereafter we tested fish with either high or low aggressive propensity with partners matched for size and either matched or unmatched for aggressive type in a paired contest for a shelter. We scored dominance, aggression and submission. As predicted, (1) dominance was more clearly established in unmatched than in matched contests and (2) individuals with high aggressive propensity launched more attacks overall than fish with low intrinsic aggressiveness, suggesting a higher propensity to escalate independently of winning or losing the paired contest. However, contrary to expectation, (3) individuals with low aggressiveness grew faster than aggressive ones in unmatched groups, whereas the opposite occurred in matched groups. This suggests that individuals with low aggressive propensity may benefit from conflict evasion, which might allow them to gain dominance in the future owing to larger body size.
|
|
Reddon, A. R., & Hurd, P. L. (2009). Individual differences in cerebral lateralization are associated with shy-bold variation in the convict cichlid. Anim. Behav., 77(1), 189–193.
Abstract: Cerebral lateralization, the preferential use of one hemisphere of the brain to perform certain cognitive functions, is a widespread and evolutionarily ancient adaptation. Lateralization appears to enhance cognitive capacity, yet substantial individual variation in the strength cerebral lateralization is apparent in all species studied so far. It is puzzling that cerebral lateralization, a seemingly advantageous trait, has not been driven to fixation. It has been suggested that variation in lateralization may be linked to individual variation in behaviour, which itself may be subject to disruptive selection. We examined the relation between cerebral lateralization and individual variation in boldness in the convict cichlid, Archocentrus nigrofasciatus. We show that convict cichlids that are more strongly lateralized when exploring a familiar environment, but not a novel one, are quicker to emerge from a shelter in a test for boldness. The possibility that cerebral lateralization is linked to life history strategy is discussed.
|
|
h:, M., Lévy, F., Fortin, M., Leterrier, C., & LansadLansade, L. (2013). Stress and temperament affect working memory performance for disappearing food in horses, Equus caballus. Animal Behaviour, 86(6), 1233–1240.
Abstract: In the present study, we sought to determine the influence of stress and temperament on working memory for disappearing food in horses. After assessment of five dimensions of temperament, we tested working memory of horses using a delayed-response task requiring a choice between two food locations. Delays ranging from 0 to 20 s were tested. The duration of working memory for disappearing food was first characterized without stressors (N = 26). The horses were then divided into two groups and their performance was assessed under stressful (exposure to acute stressors prior to testing, N = 12) or control conditions (N = 12). Results showed that the duration of working memory for disappearing food lasted at least 20 s under nonstressful conditions, and that under stressful conditions this duration lasted less than 12 s. This stress-induced impairment confirms in a nonrodent species that working memory performance is very sensitive to exposure to stressors. In addition, working memory performance in horses is influenced by the temperamental dimension of fearfulness according to the state of stress: fearful horses showed better performance under control conditions and worse performance under stressful conditions than nonfearful horses. These findings are discussed in the context of the Yerkes–Dodson law of stress and performance.
|
|
Seyfarth, R. M., & Cheney, D. L. (2015). Social cognition. Animal Behaviour, 103, 191–202.
Abstract: The social intelligence hypothesis argues that competition and cooperation among individuals have shaped the evolution of cognition in animals. What do we mean by social cognition? Here we suggest that the building blocks of social cognition are a suite of skills, ordered roughly according to the cognitive demands they place upon individuals. These skills allow an animal to recognize others by various means; to recognize and remember other animals' relationships; and, perhaps, to attribute mental states to them. Some skills are elementary and virtually ubiquitous in the animal kingdom; others are more limited in their taxonomic distribution. We treat these skills as the targets of selection, and assume that more complex levels of social cognition evolve only when simpler methods are inadequate. As a result, more complex levels of social cognition indicate greater selective pressures in the past. The presence of each skill can be tested directly through field observations and experiments. In addition, the same methods that have been used to compare social cognition across species can also be used to measure individual differences within species and to test the hypothesis that individual differences in social cognition are linked to differences in reproductive success.
Keywords: evolution; fitness; future research; personality; selective pressure; skill; social cognition
|
|
Amici, F., Widdig, A., Lehmann, J., & Majolo, B. (2019). A meta-analysis of interindividual differences in innovation. Anim. Behav., 155, 257–268.
Abstract: The ability to innovate and the social transmission of innovations have played a central role in human evolution. However, innovation is also crucial for other animals, by allowing them to cope with novel socioecological challenges. Although innovation plays such a central role in animals' lives, we still do not know the conditions required for innovative behaviour to emerge. Here, we focused on interindividual differences in innovation by (1) extensively reviewing existing literature on innovative behaviour in animals and (2) quantitatively testing the different evolutionary hypotheses that have been proposed to explain interindividual variation in innovation propensity during foraging tasks. We ran a series of phylogenetically controlled mixed-effects meta-regression models to determine which hypotheses (if any) are supported by currently available empirical studies. Our analyses show that innovation is more common in individuals that are older and belong to the larger sex, but also in more neophilic and/or explorative individuals. Moreover, these effects change depending on the study setting (i.e. wild versus captive). Our results provide no clear support to the excess of energy or the bad competitor hypotheses and suggest that study setting and interindividual differences in traits related to personality are also important predictors of innovation.
|