Agreeableness and brain activity during emotion attribution decisions

Within the Big 5 model of personality, Agreeableness is a trait-dimension associated with the tendency to behave prosocially; highly agreeable people tend to be highly cooperative and altruistic. This study was designed to test for associations between Agreeableness and the way people decide the cause of another person’s emotional reaction (emotion attribution). Behavioral and neuroimaging (fMRI) data were collected while participants (n = 72) performed an emotional attribution task. During the emotion attribution task, participants decided which of two social–emotional scenes they believed caused another person’s emotional reaction. Converging evidence indicated that highly agreeable people tend to make emotional attribution decisions more quickly and exhibit greater temporoparietal junction activity during emotion attribution decisions, compared to low agreeable people.