Abstract
Evidence across countries indicates that as parasite stress increases, so does introversion and closed-mindedness to new experiences. Also, the number of nonzoonotic human infectious diseases predicted significantly cross-national differences in the personality traits; the number of zoonotic parasitic diseases did so only marginally at best. A follow-up study, presented for the first time in our book and involving nonzoonotic versus zoonotic disease severity (rather than disease number), provided results similar to those based on number of diseases. Thus, cross-national variation in the personality dimensions appears to be attributable almost entirely to the adversity of nonzoonotic diseases, as expected from the parasite-stress theory of values. Other evidence shows that when people were primed with stimuli simulating a contagion threat, they shifted immediately toward an avoidance of interaction with people: they were less agreeable, less open to experience, less extraverted, and reacted with avoidant arm movements to strangers. Other research has shown that people’s classical immune system is activated by the parasite-salient cues that cause shifts in personality. Many important aspects of personality are features of the behavioral immune system. Future research in human personality will benefit from consideration of the parasite-stress theory of values and its relationship to each of the big five personality factors. Future research in personalities of nonhuman animals may benefit from studying the personality traits as traits of behavioral immunity. The research overall indicates that the parasite-stress theory of sociality may provide a new and general theory of personality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Andrews, P. W., & Thomson, J. A. (2009). The bright side of being blue: Depression as an adaptation for analyzing complex problems. Psychological Review 116: 620–654.
Barber, I., & Dingemanse, N. J. (2010). Parasitism and the evolutionary ecology of animal personality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B–Biological Sciences 365: 4077–4088.
Carney, D. R., Jost, J. T., Gosling, S. D. et al. (2008). The secret lives of liberals and conservatives: Personality profiles, interaction styles, and the things they leave behind. Political Psychology 29: 807–840.
Chiao, J. Y., & Blizinsky, K. D. (2010). Culture–gene coevolution of individualism–collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277: 529–537.
Curtis, V., Aunger, R., & Rabie, T. (2004). Evidence that disgust evolved to protect from risk of disease. Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Supplement) 271: 17–31.
Curtis, V., de Barra, M., & Aunger, H. (2011). Disgust as an adaptive system for disease avoidance behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366: 389–401.
Gurven, M., von Rueden, C., Massenkoff, M. et al. (2013). How universal is the Big Five? Testing the Five-Factor Model of Personality Variation among forager–farmers in the Bolivian Amazon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104: 354–370.
Hamrick, N., Cohen, S., & Rodriguez, M. S. (2002). Being popular can be healthy or unhealthy: Stress, social network diversity, and incidence of upper respiratory infection. Health Psychology 21: 294–298.
Hatemi, P. K., Byrne, E., & McDermott, R. (2012). Introduction: What is a ‘gene’ and why does it matter for political science? Journal of Theoretical Politics 24: 305–327.
Ludeke, S., Johnson, W., & Bouchard, Jr., T.J. (2013). “Obedience to traditional authority:” A heritable factor underlying authoritarianism, conservatism, and religiousness. Personality and Individual Differences 55: 375–380.
MacMurray, J., Comings, D.E., & Napolioni, V. (2014). The gene-immune-behavioral pathway: Gamma-interferon(INF-) simultaneously coordinates susceptibility to infectious disease and harm avoidant behaviors. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 35: 169–175.
McCrae, R. R. (2002). NEO-PI-R data from 36 cultures: Further intercultural comparisons. In The Five-Factor Model Across Cultures (eds. R. R. McCrae and J. Allik), pp. 105–126. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, NY.
McCrae, R. R., Terracciano, A., & 78 Members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project. (2005). Universal features of personality traits from the observer’s perspective: Data from 50 cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 547–561.
Mortensen, C. R., Becker, D. V., Ackerman, J. M. et al. (2010). Infection breeds reticence: The effects of disease salience on self-perceptions of personality and behavioral avoidance tendencies. Psychological Science 21: 440–447.
Nettle, D. (2005). An evolutionary approach to extraversion continuum. Evolution and Human Behavior 26: 363–373.
Oaten, M., Stevenson, R. J., & Case, T. I. (2009). Disgust as a disease-avoidance mechanism. Psychological Bulletin 135: 303–321.
Park, J. H., Faulkner, J., & Schaller, M. (2003). Evolved disease avoidance processes and contemporary anti-social behavior: Prejudicial attitudes and avoidance of people with disabilities. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 27: 65–87.
Park, J. H., Schaller, M., & Crandall, C. S. (2007). Pathogen-avoidance mechanisms and the stigmatization of obese people. Evolution and Human Behavior 28: 410–414.
Raison, C. L., & Miller, A. H. (2012). The evolutionary significance of depression in pathogen host defense (PATHOS-D). Molecular Psychiatry 18: 15–37.
Schaller, M., & Murray, D. (2008). Pathogens, personality, and culture: Disease prevalence predicts worldwide variability in sociosexuality, extraversion, and openness to experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95: 212–221.
Schaller, M., & Murray, D. R. (2010). Infectious diseases and the evolution of cross-cultural differences. In Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind (eds. M. Schaller, A. Norenzayan, S. J. Heine et al.), pp. 243–256. Psychology Press, New York, NY.
Schaller, M., Miller, G. E., Gervais, W. M. et al. (2010). Mere visual perception of other people’s disease symptoms facilitates a more aggressive immune response. Psychological Science 21: 649–652.
Sherman, P. W., & Billing, J. (1999). Darwinian gastronomy: Why we use spices. BioScience 49: 453–463.
Sih, A., Cote, J., Evans, M. et al. (2012). Ecological implications of behavioural syndromes. Ecological Letters 15: 278–289.
Stevenson, R. J., Hodgson, D., Oaten, M. J. et al. (2011). The effect of disgust on oral immune function. Psychophysiology 48: 900–907.
Thornhill, R., Fincher, C. L., Murray, D. R. et al. (2010). Zoonotic and non-zoonotic diseases in relation to human personality and societal values: Support for the parasite-stress model. Evolutionary Psychology 8: 151–169.
Watson, P. J., & Andrews, P. W. (2002). Toward a revised evolutionary adaptationist analysis of depression: The social navigation hypothesis. Journal of Affective Disorders 72: 1–14.
Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Knopf, New York, NY.
Wolf, M., & Weissing, F. J. (2012). Animal personalities: Consequences for ecology and evolution. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 27: 452–461.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Thornhill, R., Fincher, C.L. (2014). Personality. In: The Parasite-Stress Theory of Values and Sociality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08040-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08040-6_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-08039-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-08040-6
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)