8 the affective neuroscience personality scales: normative data and implications

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Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for

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The Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales:

Normative Data and ImplicationsKenneth L. Davis Ph.D.

a, Jaak Panksepp Ph.D.

b& Larry Normansell Ph.D.

c

aPegasus International, Inc., Greensboro, N.C., U.S.A.

bBowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, U.S.A.

cMuskingum College, New Concord, Ohio, U.S.A.

Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article:Kenneth L. Davis Ph.D., Jaak Panksepp Ph.D. & Larry Normansell Ph.D. (2003) The AffectiveNeuroscience Personality Scales: Normative Data and Implications, Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for

Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 5:1, 57-69, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2003.10773410

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15294145.2003.10773410

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The Affec t ive Neuroscience Personalit y Scales:

Normat ive Dat a and Impli cat ions

Kenneth L. Davis, Jaak Panksepp, and Larry Normansell

Based on evidence for brain affective systems, parceled into six distinct groups (Panksepp, 1998a), it was hypothesized thata great deal of personality variability would be related to strengths and weaknesses found in these six systems. If supported,

this hypothesis would provide further evidence for the physiological bases of personality. Personality scales, modeled afterthe Spielberger State-Trait Personality Inventory (STPI), were constructed to estimate self-reported feedback concerning theputative influences of these six neurally based networks, which are labeled PLAY, SEEK, CARE, FEAR, ANGER, and SADNESS

systems, along with a Spirituality scale and various filler questions. Subjects completed these Affective Neuroscience

Personality Scales (ANPS) as well as a Five-Factor Model (FFM) scale. Data revealed various strong relationship between theAPNS and the FFM scales. Implications for psychometric theory, the relationships between affect and personality, as well as

the physiological bases of personality are discussed.

Kenneth L. Davis, Ph.D.: Pegasus International, Inc., Greensboro, N.C., U.S.A.; Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D.: Bowling Green State University, Bowling

Green, Ohio, U.S.A.; Larry Normansell, Ph.D.: Muskingum College, New Concord, Ohio, U.S.A.

Correspondence : Dr. Jaak Panksepp, Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, U.S.A. (email:

[email protected]).

One of the more urgent questions of human psychol-ogy is how to parse the primary affective states thatare subsumed by the temperamental variability thatconstitutes human personality. A great deal of pastwork on the topic has yielded tools that are based ontheoretical conceptions of the relevant underlying

processes (Edwards, 1954; Myers, 1962) as well as

those that aspire to simply tackle the problem inradically positivistic ways, as in the currently pop-ular Five-Factor Model (FFM: Goldberg, 1990).Another common approach to testing has been toachieve a profile that can help us estimate degreesof psychological disturbances (Hathaway &McKinley, 1967; Millon, 1994). It is generally as-sumed that the effectiveness of therapeutic practice,

both psychological and somatic, should be informedby the structure of clients personalities. Indeed, inthe current era of biological psychiatry, it is oftensuspected that the efficacy of certain psychotropic

agents may interact with pre-existing personalitystrengths and weaknesses, leading to differentialefficacy of agents such as serotonin, norepinephrine,and dopamine directed antidepressants (Cloninger,1987; Cloninger, Svrakic, & Przybeck, 1993). Like-wise, the potential for psychological disturbancesand aptitudes for particular skills, jobs, and life-styles may be influenced by emotional strengths andweaknesses.

At present there appears to be some emergingconsensus that an understanding of the diversity ofnormal human personality must be the foundationupon which we build an understanding of personal-ity disorders (Knutson & Heinz, 2003). However,there is no agreement whether personality should bestudied without any theoretical preconceptions or

whether theoretical views of human nature are es-sential to identify the most important psychologicaldimensions that need to be evaluated. Perhaps themost common modern adjective-based approach,the FFM, sometime referred to as the Big Five,has yielded personality categories that are based onthe raw facts as opposed to preconceived theoreticalviewpoints (yielding temperaments that are typi-cally called Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscien-tiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness toExperience) (Hofstee, Raad, & Goldberg, 1992).Since this approach is not biased by any theoretical

preconceptions, it is generally regarded as a sub-stantial step forward in personality assessment (fora review of the FFM, see Digman, 1990; Hough &Schneider, 1996).

In their seminal article on Big Five traits andblends, Hofstee, Raad, and Goldberg (1992) de-scribed the lexical approach to personality as asoft theory in which the researcher refrains froma priori theorizing (p. 161). Goldberg and Saucier

Neuro-Psychoanalysis, 2003, 5 (1 ) 57


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58 Kenneth L. Davis, Jaak Panksepp, and Larry Normansell

(1995) have shared the view that the FFM repre-sents phenotypic personality descriptors, al-though they acknowledge others (McCrae & Costa,1996) who conceived of the FFM as representinggenotypic personality traits.

Cattell (1986) has hypothesized that sourcetraits had physiological roots, and he along withothers have demonstrated a strong genetic basis forthe FFM (Eysenck, 1990; Loehlin, 1992; Pedersen,Plomin, McClearn, & Friberg, 1988; Viken, Rose,Kaprio, & Kowkenvuo, 1994), which argues infavor of a physiological basis of source traits. Somehave made general proposals for what these sourcecharacteristics might befor example, Extraversion

being associated with approach (Tellegen, 1985) orarousal (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985) tendencies.

Other work also suggests that biological factors

may be more important than cultural ones in deter-mining personality traits (Bouchard & Loehlin,2001). Lucas, Diener, Suh, Shao, and Grob (2000)completed an analysis of Extraversion using partici-

pants from 39 nations and concluded along withDepue and Collins (1999) that internal sensitivityto rewards were a basis for Extraversion and wereunaffected by culture, although the rewardingnessof social situations may be more influenced byculture. Their concluding sentence was a call formore understanding of why differences in pleasantaffect and sensitivity to rewards exist in the first

place.Some have used technologies such as positron

emission tomography (PET) and functional mag-netic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how

brain activity is associated with sadness, happiness,disgust, fear, and euphoria (see Canli et al., 2001).These investigations supported the existence of se-lective neural mechanisms associated with Extra-version and Neuroticism (negatively framed FFMEmotional Stability) and related their findings to

previous conceptualizations of brain reactivity toemotional stimuli (e.g., Davidson, 1995; Eysenck& Eysenck, 1985; Gray, 1987). Although brain-

imaging work provides suggestive evidence formeasured brain differences related to personalitydimensions, this work remains largely descriptiveand without a solid organic foundation.

In our estimation, optimal emotional personalityevaluation should be based on empirically basedviewpoints that attempt to carve personality alongthe lines of emerging brain systems that help gener-ate the relevant psychological attributes. Spiel-

bergers State-Trait Personality Inventory (STPI:Spielberger, 1975) could be taken as an early exam-

ple of test construction based on psychologically

relevant brain systems.There have been some attempts to achieve similarends with respect to well-studied neurochemical

systems (Cloninger, 1987; Cloninger, Svrakic, &Przybeck, 1993), as well as certain functional sys-tems (Depue & Collins, 1999; Gray, 1987). Theseapproaches represent coherent ways to proceed, al-though they are by no means generally accepted.

The former is based on the major amine pathways ofthe brain and the latter on a rather limited set of

brain emotional operating systems such as those thatgenerate binary reactions that mediate eitherbehavioral activation or behavioral inhibition.

Our current attempt to view emotional tempera-mental variability according to basic emotion theory

provides an alternative way to proceed, and thepresent scales were constructed to reflect activity insubcortical brain emotional systems that help gener-ate key components of affective experience in allmammalian species. Thus, our intent was to use the

emerging knowledge from affective neuroscienceand the study of subcortical emotional systems toguide the construction of a psychometric tool toevaluate temperamental variability related to theactivity in such affective systems, which includedistinct substrates for seeking, anger, fear, maternal-type nurturance, separation-distress, and playful-ness (see Panksepp, 1998a).

In sum, our guiding assumption was that a greatdeal of personality variability that is especially im-

portant for understanding some of the foremost,internally experienced psychological dimensions ofindividuals should be related to the activity level ofspecific emotional systems. A more comprehensivemultidimensional affective-trait evaluation toolcould have clear benefits in future psychiatric andneuro-psychoanalytic research. Indeed, for manyhuman psychological research questions, it might bedesirable to characterize the emotional tempera-ments of participating individuals. For instance, thesuccess of many psychotherapeutic interventionsmay depend on preexisting emotional dispositions.Likewise, transference reactions during psycho-therapy may exhibit characteristic trajectories inindividuals with different emotional styles. It is

possible that repressive patterns or neuroticdefenses are more likely in individuals with certaintemperamental tendencies than in others. Manyother possibilities could be envisioned, but to evalu-ate such possibilities, a straightforward psychomet-ric tool is needed. In this work we followed the leadof Spielberger (1975) whose STPI, which evaluatedthe traits of curiosity, anger, and anxiety, provided asimple questionnaire-based emotional-trait evalua-tion tool. However, neural substrates for additionalingrained emotional processes of the mammalian

brain have been identified, and in the construction

of the present scale we also attempted to evaluatetendencies to exhibit sadness, nurturance, and play-fulness.


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The Affect ive Neuroscience Personalit y Scales 59

Accordingly, we constructed a tool that repre-sented six basic affective tendencies that haveemerged from affective neuroscience research(Panksepp, 1998a), including scales for the follow-ing urges/tendencies: PLAYFULNESS, SEEKING,

CARING, FEAR, ANGER, and SADNESS (capi-talization is a convention established for labelingneurologically based emotional primes; the systemformerly called PANIC has been modified to SAD-

NESS to be more semantically straightforward).Scales modeled after the STPI framework wereconstructed to evaluate these six affective tenden-cies. We also added one higher human emotionalattribute that we deem important in future psychiat-ric research, namely Spirituality, which has been animportant factor in the treatment of alcoholism(Kendler et al., 2003; Miller & Thoresen, 2003).

This paper summarizes our initial version of theAffective Neuroscience Personality Scale (ANPS)so that it can be freely used and further developed

by others. We provide norms for several populations(undergraduate students and adult job applicants),and we also attempt to contrast how these scalesrelate to estimates of the Big Five personalitydimensions. We offer this as a work in progress, andwe make no claim that this is a comprehensiverepresentation of human personality. Yet, the ANPSdoes focus on ancient mind/brain processes thatmay serve as a foundation for many higher mentalattributes and abilities. It is a specific tool that wehope will allow investigators to bridge neuroscienceand depth-psychological topics. We share it as afirst-order attempt to harvest relevant self-reportdata concerning major affective tendencies that may

be important for understanding the emotional vari-ability of the members of our species.

The limitations of any such tool arise from thefact that the human brain/mind reflects a grandevolutionary progression that remains to be conclu-sively charted. However, it is clear that there aremany homologies in brain emotional systems acrossall mammalian species (MacLean, 1990; Panksepp,

1998a), and it seems likely that many species-typi-cal cortico-cognitive developments have been builtupon more primitive subcortical systems for basicemotions and motivations that we still share withmany other creatures. This overall conceptualiza-tion has an obvious resemblance to Freuds struc-tural theory, in which higher brain abilitiesreflecting ego and superego functions were builtupon more ancient instinctual tendencies of the id.

The evidence that various kinds of affective expe-rience are critically dependent on subcortical sys-tems is substantial (Damasio et al., 2000; Panksepp,

1998a, 2003). Although there certainly are well-defined affective systems associated with sex, hun-ger, thirst, and temperature regulation, those

systems are commonly deemed to be motivationalrather than emotional systems, and they appear to

be less specifically related to our traditional under-standing of what constitutes human personality. Forthat reason, those dimensions of affect were not

dealt with in this research. The ANPS is offered as atool to monitor what we believed to be defensiblecore elements of emotional experience: PLAY-FULNESS, SEEKING, CARING, FEAR, ANGER,and SADNESS. A Spirituality scale was added for ahypothesized higher-order affective human at-tribute. Norms are provided for these scales, and wealso determined the extent to which self-reports ofaffective temperament as measured by the ANPSscales were related to self-report measures of theFFM. Relationships between the ANPS and FFMwould help identify the underlying source traits of

the FFM (cf. Cattell, 1986). Although there may beother affective systems in the human brain (andsome other mammals) such as those for dominance,embarrassment, guilt, greed, disgust, jealousy,shame, and pride, the existing neurological evidencewas judged insufficient for inclusion of those factorsin this project. It is possible that many of thosefeelings are derived largely through social learning,and the manner in which the more ancient affectiveneurodynamics of the core emotions influence the

psychodynamics that emerge from more recent areasof the brain remains very unclear. The aim here wasto try to generate a tool that aspired to monitor theinfluence of the more primal emotions in humantemperamental variability.

Method

In devising the ANPS, six major emotions werecategorized. The basic positive emotions, whichmay conjointly constitute a measure of general Posi-tive Affect, included three factors:

1. PLAYFULNESS was conceptualized as having

fun vs. being serious, playing games with physi-cal contact, humor, and laughter, and being gen-erally happy and joyful.

2. SEEKING was defined as feeling curious, feel-ing like exploring, striving for solutions to prob-lems and puzzles, positively anticipating newexperiences, and a sense of being able to accom-

plish almost anything.

3. CARING was defined as nurturing, being drawnto young children and pets, feeling softheartedtoward animals and people in need, feeling em-

pathy, liking to care for the sick, feeling affectionfor and liking to care for others, as well as likingto be needed by others.


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60 Kenneth L. Davis, Jaak Panksepp, and Larry Normansell

The basic negativistic emotions, which may con-jointly constitute a measure of general NegativeAffect, included three factors:

4. FEAR was defined as having feelings of anxiety,

feeling tense, worrying, struggling with deci-sions, ruminating about past decisions and state-ments, losing sleep, and not typically beingcourageous.

5. ANGER was defined as feeling hotheaded, beingeasily irritated and frustrated, experiencing frus-tration leading to anger, expressing anger ver-

bally or physically, and remaining angry for longperiods.

6. SADNESS was conceptualized as feeling lonely,crying frequently, thinking about loved ones and

past relationships, and feeling distress when notwith loved ones.

Finally Spirituality, which was added becauseof our interest in the highest human emotions, wasdefined as feeling connected to humanity andcreation as a whole, feeling a sense of onenesswith creation, striving for inner peace and harmony,relying on spiritual principles, and searching formeaning in life.

Items for all scales were written with the goal ofaccessing personal feelings and behavior rather thanmore cognitive social judgments. For example, Iam known as one who keeps work fun was pre-ferred over It is important to keep work fun. Aneffort was also made to minimize the repetitivenessof items. Items were written, rewritten, and some-times piloted until consensus among the authorswas reached. Each scale was limited to fourteenitems, consisting of seven positive and seven re-versed-scored items, except for the Spirituality scalewhich consisted of twelve balanced items. Our in-tention is eventually to reduce the scale to ten items

per category. Various filler items were interspersedin the scale to provide for validity checks, as well as

questions of personal theoretical interest (e.g., Isometimes feel chills or goosebumps when lis-tening to music, which can easily be modified byother investigators to look for interesting relation-ships to topics in which they are interested).

Figures 1A and 1B depict the back and front ofthis single-page personality inventory. The ANPSquestions are arranged in fourteen blocks usingthe following sequence: SEEK, FEAR, CARE,ANGER, PLAY, SADNESS, and Spirituality (withonly twelve items), followed typically by a singlefiller question. The items in the even blocks (Nos. 2,

4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14) are reverse-scored. To helporient the reader, the seven SEEK items on the frontof the form (Fig. 1A) are Nos. 1, 9, 17, 25, 33, 41, 49

and the seven on the back of the form (Fig. 1B) areNos. 57, 65, 73, 81, 89, 97, 105. The scoring for theitems alternates from normal to reverse seventimes.

Because the end of the scale may seem confusing,

let us provide a bit more detailed explanation. Sincethe Spirituality scale only has twelve items relativeto the other scales, which have fourteen items, Item95 is the last Spirituality item, with Item 96 being afiller item that is part of the faking scale. Then Items97 through 102 are the thirteenth items for the sixANS scales. Item 103 is the chills or goose-

bumps item and was included purely as a personaltheoretical interest item, and Item 104 is a socialdesirability or faking item. Items 105 through110 are the fourteenth items for the six ANS scales.Again, the order of the ANS scales is always SEEK,

FEAR, CARE, ANGER, PLAY, and SADNESS,with Spirituality being the seventh in the sequence(until all 12 items have appeared) and the eighthitem being the filler items (7 of which are unlikelyvirtue items, which can be used as a indices ofdeceptive reporting).

The FFM adjective scales used here weremodeled after Goldberg (Goldberg, 1992; Hofstee,Raad, & Goldberg, 1992). In an effort to keep thetests short, the FFM scales each consisted of 14adjectives, although not all of the scales were ex-actly balanced between positive and negative items.A confirmatory factor analysis of all 70 adjectivesusing an unpublished sample of 190 students af-firmed the FFM structure of the scales. Extractingfive orthogonal factors accounted for 43.1% of thevariance and all but 3 of the adjectives loadedhighest on their own scale.

Both the ANPS and the FFM tests were adminis-tered at two different colleges to students who weretaking psychology classes. A total of 214 studentscompleted the tests during class but did not do so as

part of a course requirement. However, only datafrom 171 students (50 males and 121 females) whoanswered all of the ANPS and FFM items were used

in the analysis. The mean age for the student samplewas 20.0 years (standard deviation = 3.5). A sampleof 598 job applicants also completed just the ANPSscales as part of a broader assessment not reportedhere. The mean age for the applicant population was41.9 years (standard deviation = 10.3).

Results

ANPS scales

Reliabilities for the ANPS scales were computedas Cronbachs alpha and ranged from .65 to .86.These were considered adequate and in the range


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Figure 1A.Figure 1A.Figure 1A.Figure 1A.Figure 1A. The front of the ANPS. The blocking of items and the scoring procedures are described in the text.


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Figure 1B.Figure 1B.Figure 1B.Figure 1B.Figure 1B. The back of the ANPS. The blocking of items and the scoring procedures are described in the text.

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The Affect ive Neuroscience Personalit y Scales 63

Table 1

Affect ive Neuroscience Personality Scales: Mean s by Gender

College students Job applicants

Male (n = 50) Female (n = 121) Male(n = 492) Female(n = 106)

Mean SEM Mean SEM Mean SEM Mean SEM

PLAY 28.68 .66 29.50 .42 29.28 .20 28.81 .41

SEEK 27.68 .68 26.31 .35 28.07 .20 28.52 .42

CARE 26.62 .73 31.07 .46 28.40 .22 30.03 .41

FEAR 24.28 .90 25.64 .58 15.53 .23 16.58 .52

ANGER 23.96 1.02 23.80 .58 15.14 .23 13.89 .52

SADNESS 20.86 .74 22.94 .43 15.58 .18 16.52 .40

Spirituality 18.64 .94 21.46 .51 24.03 .27 24.40 .56

observed in psychological tests, with the PLAY-FULNESS and SEEKING scales below .70 and theFEAR, ANGER, and Spirituality scales above .80.

Table 1 lists data means by gender for the studentsample. Gender differences were examined using t-tests. Except for the CARING scale, where femalesscored about one standard deviation higher thanmales (t= 5.23,p< .001), gender differences weregenerally modest. There was a small but statisticallysignificant differences between males and femaleson the SADNESS scale (t= 2.54, p< .05), withfemales being higher than males, and a marginal

differences on the SEEKING scale (t= 1.95,p< .1),with males being slightly higher. Females alsoscored higher on the Spirituality scale (t= 2.8,p

8 the affective neuroscience personality scales: normative data and implications

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