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Personality Psychology Assignment I:

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Reinforcement sensitivity theory

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• Article history

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• ... that Reinforcement sensitivity theory can be used to predict individual differences in job performance?

5x expanded by Plroseman (talk). Self nom at 17:20, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Course description

The goal of this course is to evaluate contemporary solutions to important problems in personality psychology, with special attention to historical context and anticipated future directions.

The course provides an understanding of what problems personality psychologists are working on, an evaluation of how far personality researchers have gone, and speculation about what will be next.

Brainstorming Article Ideas

New articles on Wikipedia:

Gray's Biopsychological Theory of Personality: This page in Wikipedia is currently a stub and does not contain a lead. Also, the theory has been re-named Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory, which is on another page and orphan article status. I aim to effectively combine and expand these resources.

1. Origin of the theory.
2. Critique and revisal of the theory.
3. Current applications of the theory in anxiety disorder research.
4. Internal Wiki links and links to external pages to reverse orphan status.

I entered this information on the Talk Page for Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory. I would appreciate all feedback regarding the utility of these proposed changes. Plroseman (talk) 18:30, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Current Wikipedia articles to edit:

1. Last section under Personality Psychology main page: Personality and Inner Experience: Expand.
2. Minor reference edits to Social Psychology: Famous Experiments.
3. Minor reference edits to Cognitive Psychology: Backwards Inhibition Model.

Natural Bridge, Virginia

Origins and Evolution of the Theory

Gray's biopsychological theory of personality was informed by his earlier studies with Mowrer on reward, punishment, and motivation and Eysenck’s study of the biology of personality traits. Eysenck linked Extraversion to activation of the Ascending Reticular Activation System (ARAS). Eysenck’s Extraversion-Arousal Hypothesis stated that under low stimulation conditions, introverts (defined as low in Extraversion) will be more highly aroused than extraverts; however, under high stimulation, introverts may become over-aroused, which will feedback to the ARAS and result in decreases in arousal. Alternatively, extraverts tend to show greater increases in arousal under high stimulation. Eysenck also studied the relationship between Neuroticism and activation of the Limbic system using classical emotional conditioning models. His theory focused more on Anxiety as a disorder than a personality Trait theory. For example, Eysenck’s theory predicts that introverts are more likely to develop anxiety disorders as because they show stronger emotional conditioning responses under high arousal. His theory was criticized because introverts often show the opposite pattern, weaker classical conditioning under high arousal, and some supporting data confounded personality traits with time of day.

Gray’s Biopsychological Theory

Unlike Eysenck, Gray believed that disorders could not be explained by classical conditioning and Arousal alone. Gray’s Biopsychological theory emphasized the relationships between emotion, motivation, and learning, especially individual differences in sensitivity to Reinforcement (i.e. reward and punishment).

Eysenck’s theory included Extraversion, Neuroticism, and arousal, while Gray’s theory was based on trait Impulsivity, trait Anxiety, and Motivation. Eysenck’s Extraversion and Neuroticism dimensions were rotated 30 degrees to Anxiety (punishment sensitivity) and Impulsivity (reward sensitivity) in Gray’s model such that individuals high in Anxiety are most sensitive to punishment, whereas individuals high in Impulsivity are most sensitive to reward. As Smilie and colleagues noted in their 2006 review, the original RST was conceived as a reward system (BAS), punishment system (BIS), and threat response system (FFS).

• Fight/Flight System (FFS): Proposed to mediate reactions of rage and panic emotions, flight versus fight; sensitive to unconditioned aversive stimuli.

• Behavioral Activation System (BAS): Associated with trait impulsivity, sensitive to conditioned appetitive stimuli; proposed to underlie approach behavior.

• Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS): Associated with trait anxiety, sensitive to conditioned aversive stimuli, fear and novel stimuli; proposed to underlie avoidance behavior.

Measures

High BAS corresponds to high extraversion, low neuroticism, and trait Impulsivity, while high BIS corresponds to low extraversion, high neuroticism, and trait Anxiety. Work in Gray’s laboratory confirmed predictions that extraverts, in comparison to introverts, are more sensitive to rewards, experience higher levels of positive affect, and learn faster under rewarding conditions.

In addition to predicting traits and behaviors from these systems, Gray also theorized that BAS activation from reward leads to higher positive affect, while BIS activation from punishment leads to higher negative affect. . The most widely used personality measure is the BIS/ BAS scale developed by Carver and White which correspond roughly to approach/ avoidance orientation. The Generalized Reward and Punishment Expectancies Scales (GRAPES) were also used to operationalize BIS and BAS. Using these self-report measures, affective modulation of startle response, and other physiological and behavioral measures, there is mixed support for predictions based on Gray’s theory.

Critique

These measures were constructed under the assumption that BIS, BAS and associated traits Anxiety and Impulsivity are independent. Gray first described BIS and BAS as opposing systems with bidirectional inhibitory links in animal models. Empirical results that claimed to falsify the theory may instead have relied on false predictions based on independent systems. Gray’s theory was also criticized because the boundary between FFS (threat response system) and BIS (punishment system) was difficult to define empirically, akin to differentiating between fear and anxiety. Matthews and Gilliard, 1999 argued for separate cognitive systems underlying fear and anxiety and emphasized the need to study these systems outside of animal models. These critiques lead to a major revisal of the Rejection Sensitivity Theory in 2000. This theory redefined the three systems and their functional relatedness.

Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory

• Fight-Flight-Freeze-System (FFFS): Proposed to mediate reactions to all aversive/ punishing stimuli (conditioned and unconditioned); avoidance behavior; underlies Fear.

• Behavioral Activation System (BAS): Proposed to facilitate reactions to all appetitive/rewarding stimuli (now including unconditioned stimuli versus previous theory only conditioned); approach behavior.

• Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS): Proposed to mediate conflict both within and between FFFS and BAS: FFFS (avoidance) and BAS (approach) (or BAS-BAS, FFFS-FFFS). These conflicting are proposed to underlie anxiety.

Improved RST Measures

FFFS was expanded to include all aversive/punishment stimuli, conditioned and unconditioned. Similarly, BAS was expanded to include all appetitive/rewarding stimuli. BIS was associated with trait Anxiety, a conflict system activated whenever both BAS and FFFS are activated together, or multiple inputs compete within the systems. If the systems are assumed to be dependent, the effect of a given stimulus is dependent upon the strength of that stimulus, reactivity in the activated system, and strength of the competing system. Thus, for a reward, BAS is dependent on the strength of that reward, behavioral reactivity of the BAS system, and inhibition strength of BIS. If a reward outweighs threat, BIS should excite BAS and inhibit FFFS, which will likely result in approach behavior.

The new RST clearly defined anxiety and fear: FFFS is related to fear and BIS is related to anxiety. This distinction is still debated, especially in clinical settings wherein BIS scores are sensitive to panic-reducing, not anxiety-reducing treatments. Furthermore, anxiety can trigger panic and panic, anxiety which supports a dependent model of the BIS and FFFS. Conflicting results exist regarding the relationship between fear and anxiety, and may reflect outdated measures not updated to reflect the functionally interdependent systems of the new RST. A review by Perkins and Corr (2006) showed that BIS as measured in Carver, 1994 scales and similar constructs tap into FFFS (fear) and not true BIS (anxiety) as it is defined in revised RST model. These results support the development and use of measures that reflect the revised model. A notable exception, D.C. Blanchard and colleagues (2001) created vignettes with response options that modeled rodent reactions to anxiety (BIS, ambiguous/partially threatening) and fear (FFFS, pure threat situations) to study these constructs in humans. These behavioroid scales, while accurately reflecting the revised RST, have not been widely used.

Separable and Joint Subsystems Hypotheses

While the revised RST reflects functional dependence of the systems, two competing hypotheses developed for testing RST predictions: the separable and joint subsystems hypotheses. The separable systems hypothesis (SSH) is defined by two independent systems, reward and punishment. Independence implies that reactivity to rewards should be approximately equal across all levels of punishment; and reactivity to punishment should be equal across all levels of reward. Thus, rewarding stimuli activate BAS, without exerting effects on BIS/FFFS. SSH is proposed to operate in extreme circumstances, with individuals extremely high/low in BIS/BAS, and/or experimental conditions that only present rewarding or punishing stimuli, for example. SSH has received support in explaining learning and motivation in clinical populations. Alternatively, the joint subsystems hypothesis (JSH), in concordance with Gray’s original animal models and the revised RST, states that reward and punishment exert combined effects, while BIS resolves conflict. The reward and punishment systems are defined as dependent, such that reward reactivity both increases responses to appetitive stimuli and decreases responses to aversive stimuli. The JSH is most applicable in real-life contexts that contain mixed stimuli: strong, weak, punishment, and reward.

In a recent review on RST measurement, authors differentiated between dependent system inputs and behavioral output. BAS, FFFS, and BIS are dependent systems (and current research attempts to define under what task situations and to what degree they interact). A rewarding stimulus will activate all three systems to some extent such that high scores on a BAS-related behavioral trait, for example, may include high BAS, low FFFS, and low BIS sensitivities. These complex, dependent systems are not reflected in questionnaires, such as Carver’s BIS/BAS, that are oftentimes used to test RST predictions. Joint action of the three systems will determine behavioral output. A variety of different experimental findings, originally viewed as inconsistent with Gray’s Biopsychological theory, are now consistent with RST joint systems hypothesis.

Corr and colleagues tested separate and joint subsystems predictions against each other and defined evidence for JSH as a statistically significant interaction between BAS and BIS. Results were consistent with the joint subsystems hypothesis: high anxiety individuals reacted more strongly to punishment/ aversive cues, and this effect was stronger in simultaneously low impulsive, high anxiety individuals. Likewise, high impulsivity individuals reacted more strongly to reward/ appetitive cues, and the effect was stronger in low anxiety, high impulsive individuals. The JSH has been redefined from Corr’s view to include main effects as well as non-significant interactions: The output from these systems could reflect competing inputs from BIS and BAS, without a statistically significant interaction term (Corr, 2002). Pickering used regression and neural network models to show that patterns of BIS/FFFS and BAS inputs generate large range of outcomes that support the JSH (all three system mean reactivity inputs were needed to determine best fit for behavioral output). There is now pharmacological evidence to support interdependence of underlying RST systems, from serotonergic (5-HT) modulation of the dopamine pathway to BAS activation linked to in reward learning paradigms to dopamine firing towards both reward and non-reward stimuli.

Renaming Impulsivity

Smillie, Pickering, and Jackson (2006) advocated for re-naming Impulsivity, associated with BAS in the revised RST. The authors propose Extraversion instead because empirical tests find that Extraversion is a better predictor than Impulsivity for reward learning. Some components of the BAS are better explained by association with Extraversion, especially high positive affect, while the cortical arousal loop originally proposed to underlie BAS is still tied most closely with Impulsivity. Regardless of the trait name, the authors point out that the RST did not develop as a theory to explain personality constructs, Anxiety and Impulsivity. Rather, the RST was a theory based on learning and motivation used to help predict individual differences in behavior.

Current Applications

Workplace Performance

Previous studies have used Carver and White’s 1994 BIS/BAS scales to demonstrate that employees high in BIS show lower work performance and engagement, while employees high in BAS show higher performance in rewarding situations only. These measures are not based on the revised theory, and may confound fear and anxiety. The Jackson 5, has recently been validated as a measure of the revised RST, and shows convergent validity with measures of fear and anxiety. Clark and Loxton (2011) used the Jackson 5 to investigate mediators between fear, anxiety, and work engagement. The proposed fear (FFFS) subscale is associated with avoidance behaviors (example item: ‘If approached by a suspicious stranger, I run away’) while the anxiety (BIS) subscale includes social situations wherein reward and punishment stimuli result in conflict between approach and avoidance motivations (example item: ‘I prefer to work on projects where I can prove my abilities to others’). . Thus, the first step is to develop and implement measures based on revised RST to more accurately clarify relations between fear, anxiety, and performance.

Clinical Research

BIS and BAS sensitivity are associated with individual differences in positive and negative affect. This association has been largely explored in clinical populations exhibiting extreme scores on BIS/BAS. In their 2009 review, Bijttebier and colleagues summarized studies showing that high BIS sensitivity is present in anxiety, depression, and anorexia nervosa, whereas low BIS sensitivity is associated with psychopathy. Extremely high BAS sensitivity is present in bipolar disorder, ADHD, and bulimia, while extremely low BAS characterizes anhedonic depression. BIS and BAS may differentiate, as illustrated above, between sub-types of eating disorders and depression. These studies are correlational, and causal mechanisms were not directly tested. One future goal of RST application is to capture the mechanism whereby these systems are associated with personality traits and psychopathology. A current focus on mechanisms includes work in the field of cognition, self-regulation, and attention.