Sexual Hormones Influence Gray’s Theory of Personality

Abstract

Personality is believed to be stable throughout adulthood. However, many personality theories are based on the construct of measuring subjectively reported reactions of a person during specific, mostly emotional situations. Thus, the component “emotion” plays a cr ucial role in determining personality traits, especially within the BIS (behavioral inhibition system)/BAS (behavioral activation system) questionnaire. Sexual hormones, in terms of the menstrual cycle, are found to be influential on emo tional processing (e.g., emotion recognition, mood, and emotional evaluations). As a consequence, we hypothesized that personality measured with the BIS/BAS shows menstrual cycle effects and thus gender differences dependent of the menstrual cycle phase. In Study I, we collected BIS/BAS data from female subjects (n = 48) in different menstrual cycle phases (23 follicular/25 luteal). Comparing both phases, we found significant values within the BAS-dimension for the follicular women with medium effect sizes. In Study II, we collected additionally BIS/BAS data from men (n = 22). Comparing them to the female data, we found significant higher BIS values for women in genera l and especially for luteal women. These differences are discussed to be estrogen and progesterone mediated.