Why did we evolve personalities?
Last Sunday, the New York Times Magazine published a fascinating story on the burgeoning field of animal-personality research. The very idea that animals would have personalities challenges our traditional concepts of psychology and the difference between man and beast, of course. But as the writer Charles Siebert argues, studying animal behavior helps us figure out what precisely a personality is, and what it isn't. What function does a personality serve, anyway? Why do we have one?
That latter point turns out to be the most interesting question in the whole story. Because when you think about it, a personality doesn't always seem like a usefully adaptive behavior, in evolutionary terms. As Siebert writes:
"[Why] do we even have a personality?" he asked. "Why do we have a relatively narrow range of responses as opposed to a full range? Why can't we all be bold when we need to be and cautious and shy when we need to be? Then we'd have no identifiable personality, and that would free us all to become optimal."
For Sih, the answer seems to be that our personality is a manifestation of a complex interplay between genetic inheritance and environment and early-life experience. Bold people, for example, are both naturally disposed to boldness and, further, choose to be bold, becoming ever better at it, building from an early age a mountain of abilities and tendencies that become a personality. It might happen, as well, that an inherently shy person is induced by an early-life experience to venture away from his or her natural disposition and cultivate a bold personality. But whether a person ends up building and climbing a shy or a bold mountain, it may become increasingly difficult to come back down and build another one.
As one of the researchers in the article notes, a human that actually was able to morph his or her personality to adapt to an environment would be "scary to be around".
Posted by Clive Thompson at January 28, 2006 04:09 PM
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Undoubtedly personality still is the "complex interplay between genetic inheritance and environment and early-life experience", but what strikes me is the degree to which, lately, it amounts to a collection of choices we make as cosumers. Everyone has heard about the studies done of identical twins seperated at birth and then reunited 30 years later only to find eerily similar traits shared in common like a prefernce for Pepsodent Toothpaste and Hunt's Ketchup. One could make an argument that, however obliquely, or preference for one consumer product or another is coded in our genes. I wonder whether one day entire personalities will be able to be reconstructed using the accumulated receipts from a lifetime of buying things.
Posted by: daniel luke at January 28, 2006 10:58 PM
Neat article. I agree it's weird that while animal trainers, etc. see it as blindingly obvious that animals have personailities, many psycology researchers say it isn't so. I feel like there may be a superiority complex involved there, rather than science.
This falls near something I was pondering the other day. Why do we like certain foods and not others? And why do one person's tastes vary to the next? What possible evolutionary advantage could there be to not want to eat something? Shouldn't we all enjoy any food put in front of us? It's a little unrelated, but seems weird in the same way.
Posted by: Peter at January 29, 2006 6:31 PM
Cool points here. "I wonder whether one day entire personalities will be able to be reconstructed using the accumulated receipts from a lifetime of buying things" ... heh, Daniel, I think most major grocery and drug stores already do this. That whole "club card" thing, whereby you get little rebates if you offer your membership number at the checkout, is used to create massive aggregate profiles of buyer behavior chainwide -- and I also think they sell it to third parties for data mining.
Peter, yes, I've wondered about that too. Clearly having a distaste for certain foods could mean that they're not optimized for your system. But even that doesn't really obtain in real life: Plenty of people who discover they're lactose intolerant really enjoy the taste of milk and cheese.
Posted by: Clive at January 29, 2006 6:48 PM
I´m travelling Spain at the moment, and am impressed by the quantity of "clinicas estéticas" around here, I feel like literally every street corner has a clinic where you can drop in and have a nose job or whatever (and they list the different surgerys outside, with prices). Don´t know if it´s that common in other countrys, but in Norway they certainly are rarer.
So, anyway, I see a market with this personality research; "clinica moral" - wouldn´t it be great? I´d be right in there for some boldness and a bit of waryness (someone picked my pocket today).
Posted by: eke at February 2, 2006 11:02 AM
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Undoubtedly personality still is the "complex interplay between genetic inheritance and environment and early-life experience", but what strikes me is the degree to which, lately, it amounts to a collection of choices we make as cosumers. Everyone has heard about the studies done of identical twins seperated at birth and then reunited 30 years later only to find eerily similar traits shared in common like a prefernce for Pepsodent Toothpaste and Hunt's Ketchup. One could make an argument that, however obliquely, or preference for one consumer product or another is coded in our genes. I wonder whether one day entire personalities will be able to be reconstructed using the accumulated receipts from a lifetime of buying things.
Posted by: daniel luke![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 28, 2006 10:58 PM
Neat article. I agree it's weird that while animal trainers, etc. see it as blindingly obvious that animals have personailities, many psycology researchers say it isn't so. I feel like there may be a superiority complex involved there, rather than science.
This falls near something I was pondering the other day. Why do we like certain foods and not others? And why do one person's tastes vary to the next? What possible evolutionary advantage could there be to not want to eat something? Shouldn't we all enjoy any food put in front of us? It's a little unrelated, but seems weird in the same way.
Posted by: Peter![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 29, 2006 6:31 PM
Cool points here. "I wonder whether one day entire personalities will be able to be reconstructed using the accumulated receipts from a lifetime of buying things" ... heh, Daniel, I think most major grocery and drug stores already do this. That whole "club card" thing, whereby you get little rebates if you offer your membership number at the checkout, is used to create massive aggregate profiles of buyer behavior chainwide -- and I also think they sell it to third parties for data mining.
Peter, yes, I've wondered about that too. Clearly having a distaste for certain foods could mean that they're not optimized for your system. But even that doesn't really obtain in real life: Plenty of people who discover they're lactose intolerant really enjoy the taste of milk and cheese.
Posted by: Clive![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 29, 2006 6:48 PM
I´m travelling Spain at the moment, and am impressed by the quantity of "clinicas estéticas" around here, I feel like literally every street corner has a clinic where you can drop in and have a nose job or whatever (and they list the different surgerys outside, with prices). Don´t know if it´s that common in other countrys, but in Norway they certainly are rarer.
So, anyway, I see a market with this personality research; "clinica moral" - wouldn´t it be great? I´d be right in there for some boldness and a bit of waryness (someone picked my pocket today).
Posted by: eke![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 2, 2006 11:02 AM