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Information gating: an evolutionary model of personality function and dysfunction

W P Nash1

  • 1Department of Psychiatry, Naval Medical Center, San Diego, California 92134, USA.

Psychiatry
|May 22, 1998
PubMed
Summary
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Personality evolved to manage information flow, enabling human culture. Maladaptive personality disorders arise from chronic issues with this information gating, impacting social interactions.

Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Personality Psychology
  • Clinical Psychology

Background:

  • Personality is understood through evolutionary principles.
  • Personality's adaptive functions are crucial for managing information within human culture.
  • Disruptions in these functions are linked to personality disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To present a model defining personality's adaptive functions from an evolutionary perspective.
  • To explain how failures in these functions lead to personality disorder maladaptations.
  • To propose personality's role in mediating culture-forming processes like information flow, teaching, competition, and leadership.

Main Methods:

  • Development of a theoretical model based on evolutionary biology principles.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Definition of personality's core function as 'information gating'.
  • Analysis of how chronic over- or under-regulation of information flow relates to personality disorders.

    • Main Results:

    • Personality evolved to manage bidirectional information flow (sensory, cognitive, emotional, motor) between self and social systems.
    • This 'information gating' function is essential for culture, mediating teaching, learning, competition, cooperation, and leadership.
    • Personality disorders result from persistent, contextually inappropriate 'too open' or 'too closed' information gating.

    Conclusions:

    • The proposed evolutionary model offers a framework for understanding personality and its disorders.
    • Information gating is identified as a fundamental adaptive function of personality.
    • The model has significant clinical and research implications for personality disorders.