The social evolution of individual differences: Future directions for a comparative science of personality in social behavior

Personality is essential for understanding the evolution of cooperation and conflict in behavior. However, personality science remains disconnected from the field of social evolution, limiting our ability to explain how personality and plasticity shape phenotypic adaptation in social behavior. Resea...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews 2023-01, Vol.144, p.104980-104980, Article 104980
Main Authors: Martin, Jordan S., Jaeggi, Adrian V., Koski, Sonja E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Big five
Biological Evolution
Eco-evo
Evolvability
Humans
IGE
Individuality
Personality
Sociability
Social Behavior
Social ecology
Social Evolution
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Personality is essential for understanding the evolution of cooperation and conflict in behavior. However, personality science remains disconnected from the field of social evolution, limiting our ability to explain how personality and plasticity shape phenotypic adaptation in social behavior. Researchers also lack an integrative framework for comparing personality in the contextualized and multifaceted behaviors central to social interactions among humans and other animals. Here we address these challenges by developing a social evolutionary approach to personality, synthesizing theory, methods, and organizing questions in the study of individuality and sociality in behavior. We critically review current measurement practices and introduce social reaction norm models for comparative research on the evolution of personality in social environments. These models demonstrate that social plasticity affects the heritable variance of personality, and that individual differences in social plasticity can further modify the rate and direction of adaptive social evolution. Future empirical studies of frequency- and density-dependent social selection on personality are crucial for further developing this framework and testing adaptive theory of social niche specialization.
ISSN:0149-7634
1873-7528
DOI:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104980