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Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Observing Virtual Social Interactions
Published on: July 6, 2011
Is the social brain theory applicable to human individual differences? Relationship between sociability personality
Klára Horváth1, János Martos, Béla Mihalik
1Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary.
Abstract:
Our study intends to examine whether the social brain theory is applicable to human individual differences. According to the social brain theory primates have larger brains as it could be expected from their body sizes due to the adaptation to a more complex social life. Regarding humans there were few studies about the relationship between theory of mind and frontal and temporal brain lobes. We hypothesized that these brain lobes, as well as the whole cerebrum and neocortex are in connection with the Sociability personality dimension that is associated with individuals' social lives. Our findings support this hypothesis as Sociability correlated positively with the examined brain structures if we control the effects of body size differences and age. These results suggest that the social brain theory can be extended to human interindividual differences and they have some implications to personality psychology too.
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