FOXSYLVANIA

– – A new study presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association  suggests that personality may be more than just a psychological construct, but rather reflect underlying neural differences in the brain.

Study researcher Inna Fishman of the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences found that more extroverted test subjects showed a higher change in a particular brain electrical activity known as P300 when they were exposed to images of human faces as opposed to pictures of flowers.  Those scoring lower on a test of extroversion had very similar P300 responses to both human faces and flowers.

The findings might partly explain why extroverts are more motivated to seek the company of others than are introverts,  who might not place a larger weight on social stimuli than on other stimuli…