Abstract
Initial studies suggest that agentic extraversion and executive functions (EF) are associated, because they share influences of individual differences in the dopamine (DA) system. However, it is unclear whether previously reported associations are specific to certain EFs (e.g., to updating or shifting) or due to shared variance among EF tasks. We investigated the DA-related relationship between agentic extraversion and two EF tasks in a placebo-controlled between-group design with the DA D2 receptor blocker sulpiride (200 mg) in 92 female volunteers. Our goals were to investigate whether (1) there is an association between agentic extraversion and EFs measured with two different tasks (3-back and switching), (2) this association is sensitive to a pharmacological manipulation of DA, and (3) the effects can be ascribed to shared or specific task variance. We observed the expected interaction between drug condition and agentic extraversion for both tasks in a multivariate multiple linear regression model, which supports the DA theory of extraversion. Subsequent univariate analyses revealed a highly similar interaction effect between drug condition and agentic extraversion on two of three performance measures and this effect was somewhat attenuated when we controlled for shared task variance. This pattern matches the interpretation that the association between agentic extraversion and both tasks is partly due to DA-based processes shared among the tasks. Our results, although limited by the low reliability of the switching task, suggest that variance components and measurement difficulties of EF tasks should be considered when investigating personality-related individual differences in EFs.
Highlights
According to a prominent psychobiological theory of extraversion, individual differences in extraversion, especially in its agentic component comprising reward responsiveness, assertiveness, activity, drive, and ambitiousness, are partly driven by individual differences in dopaminergic reward and incentive processing (Depue & Collins, 1999)
Our goal was to elucidate the link between executive functions (EF) and agentic extraversion by using more than one EF task to compare shared and task-specific variance in EF tasks
We found agentic extraversion in the placebo condition to be associated with performance in both the 3-back task and the switching task
Summary
According to a prominent psychobiological theory of extraversion, individual differences in extraversion, especially in its agentic component comprising reward responsiveness, assertiveness, activity, drive, and ambitiousness, are partly driven by individual differences in dopaminergic reward and incentive processing (Depue & Collins, 1999). The measurement difficulties of EFs caused by the several variance components in EF task performance are often addressed with a simultaneous analysis of performance in several EF tasks, e.g., with latent variable analysis, in order to differentiate variance components (Friedman & Miyake, 2017) This quite time-intensive approach seems less common for the investigation of third-variable associations, one EF task alone cannot separate individual differences within each of the variance components of task performance. It is possible that previous studies overestimated the specificity of reported associations between agentic extraversion and EF task performance, which could be attributable to the targeted particular EFs (i.e., updating and shifting) and to other systematic variance components. For the investigation of a relationship between agentic extraversion and EFs, it is necessary to take shared task-variance into consideration
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