Extroverts and Dopamine?

[Da Blob]

I just tripped across this and my first thought was "Hey, introverts like rewards too!"

There is evidence that people with extraverted (reward-seeking) personality types tend to show higher levels of dopamine activity than people with introverted personalities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine

so some questions

What evidence?

Why?
How?

How doe this fit into the Jungian model?

 

[Moocow]

It's probably because our external behaviors tend to be a composite of habits and automatic motions such as would be the subject to things like classical or operant conditioning. Dopamine, being the reward queue, is more relevant to maintaining or developing repetitions of behavior- conditioning. I think our introverted functions are more involved in interrupting automatic conditioning through some kind of conscientious self-monitoring and a focus on a more abstracts concepts of self.
I guess what I'm saying is, perhaps extroverts think less and act quicker on the queues of their conditioning.

 

[PhoenixRising]

I don't see how this finding would conflict with the Jungian model. Care to explain this thought?

As far as dopamine level variance goes, different people have different brain chemistry, that's one of the things that makes us who we are. Here's an article (hopefully not the same one you've referenced) about the differences between introvert and extrovert brain chemistry that explains it pretty well: http://suite101.com/article/extroversion_v_introversion-a24464

I do not agree with this article in that it says introverts are typically not leaders. It also says that introverts avoid thrilling roller coasters, which is strange to me because I'm a total adrenaline junky

Anyway, it could be that because extraverts tend to think outside themselves more, their brain chemistry reflects their thought processes in dopamine production. Dopamine is associated with many types of thought processes besides external pleasure, although its relationship to this type of experience does have a very causal link to the extraverted personality. Dopamine could be involved in sensing and interpreting the outside environment. Elevated dopamine levels in extraverts could be a sign of the basic way they tend to think, not just of how much they like external pleasure and rewards. As stated in the article, they are desensitized to dopamine, so they need more of it to feel the same way as an introvert feels with less. If dopamine is involved in external sensing, this could explain why extraverts tend to build up tolerance for it.

 

[Da Blob]

Hmmm? so it may be that introversion and extroversion are the results of drug of choice? Extroverts chose Dopamine, Introverts chose Adrenaline. As far as the Jungian model it was just speculation. I have difficulty accepting anything from the Freudian school of thought that has no documented basis in neurology.

@ moocow Indeed I think that Introversion, Pness and a tendency towards delayed gratification may well insulate us from the force of classical conditioning that depends on immediate gratification via dopamine dependency

 

[PhoenixRising]

Hmmm? so it may be that introversion and extroversion are the results of drug of choice? Extroverts chose Dopamine, Introverts chose Adrenaline. As far as the Jungian model it was just speculation. I have difficulty accepting anything from the Freudian school of thought that has no documented basis in neurology.

@ moocow Indeed I think that Introversion, Pness and a tendency towards delayed gratification may well insulate us from the force of classical conditioning that depends on immediate gratification via dopamine dependency

That's a good way of putting it. Although, acetylcholine has more diverse applications than dopamine, stimulation of epinephrine release by the adrenal cortex is only one of its functions. I am curious, though, if the majority of introverts are adrenaline junkies. I wonder if a survey has been taken to address that question?

 

[Da Blob]

I don't about that, but my own investigations of stress led me to believe that some people loved eustress responses and the chemicals associated with them to the point of addiction and burn out from the build up of toxic byproducts.

 

[MissQuote]

I stumbled across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion#Biological_factors some months ago and thought about making a thread, but hesitated until I had time to work out, at least somewhat, the very questions you posed. Which I have not done, at least not much.

Biological factors
The relative importance of nature versus environment in determining the level of extraversion is controversial and the focus of many studies. Twin studies find a genetic component of 39% to 58%. In terms of the environmental component, the shared family environment appears to be far less important than individual environmental factors that are not shared between siblings.[15]
Eysenck proposed that extraversion was caused by variability in cortical arousal. He hypothesized that introverts are characterized by higher levels of activity than extroverts and so are chronically more cortically aroused than extroverts. The fact that extroverts require more external stimulation than introverts has been interpreted as evidence for this hypothesis. Other evidence of the "stimulation" hypothesis is that introverts salivate more than extroverts in response to a drop of lemon juice.[16]
Extraversion has been linked to higher sensitivity of the mesolimbic dopamine system to potentially rewarding stimuli.[17] This in part explains the high levels of positive affect found in extroverts, since they will more intensely feel the excitement of a potential reward. One consequence of this is that extroverts can more easily learn the contingencies for positive reinforcement, since the reward itself is experienced as greater.
One study found that introverts have more blood flow in the frontal lobes of their brain and the anterior or frontal thalamus, which are areas dealing with internal processing, such as planning and problem solving. Extroverts have more blood flow in the anterior cingulate gyrus, temporal lobes, and posterior thalamus, which are involved in sensory and emotional experience.[18] This study and other research indicates that introversion-extraversion is related to individual differences in brain function.
Extraversion has also been linked to physiological factors such as respiration, through its association with surgency.[19]

I've wondered if this could be tested in some way with the other functions in mind, and if so what chemicals, if any, or if any different ones, would be associated with a preference for Thinking vs. Feeling or Judging vs. Perceiving or Sensing vs. Intuiting.

I have no clue how to go about starting to form a theory on this, on my own at least, with out massive more amounts of information I haven't found the time to get to acquiring yet.

I think it would be interesting to take different types and see how their brains light up in response to being given different kinds of problems to solve/questions to answer. Such as how a sensing feelers brain would respond while trying to answer a question about something logical and theoryish (like this topic perhaps) and how a intuiting thinkers brain would light up trying to respond to something like being given a huge cuddle and told they are loved. and all the other combinations of types of people and ways they could be screwed with to see what their brain does with it.

 

[Teohrn]

I think that the way this could be relevant to Jungian psychology is that this could explain why Introverts need alone time while extroverts need to spend time with others. (As well as the introvert and extrovert approach to life in general.)

Introverts are more sensitive to dopamine hence if they are doing some extrovert activity they will burn out because of the overload. Extroverts will partake in the extrovert activity because it will energize them and make them feel good.

I think brain chemistry is at the root of the problems of whether we are innately personality type 'x'. Which is why I believe that (if it is as such) this would go further than being the difference between introvert and extrovert but also the other letters.

 

[scorpiomover]

Dopamine is is currently blamed for the source of all physical addictions, alcholism, drug addiction, addicted gamblers, sex addicts, workaholics, shopaholics, the lot.

The evidence, I would imagine, is that such addicts show much higher levels of dopamine than non-addicts.

The why, is that the dopamine is supposed to be the drug that makes you motivated to chase after and get things. So if you get hooked into a feedback loop between dopamine and sex, then the dopamine makes you go for the sex, and the sex increases your pleasure, which increases your dopamine levels to go after sex again.

As it happens, Jung's descriptions of how psychological disorders tend to manifest within extroverts, indicated to me, that he believed that it was extroverts who suffered with such disorders, while introverts suffered with psychological disorders due to Adlerian inferiority and superiority complexes. So it agrees very well with what I've understood of Jungian typology.

 

[Da Blob]

One of the major problems with addictive drugs is that of tolerance. Drug use often becomes drug abuse as a function of needing more of a drug to achieve the same state of mind. As to the drugs produced by the body via the the HPA axis or amygdala, one would think that much has been written about the behavior of those who have become dependent on certain drugs.

I, personally, have wondered about those who attend Horror movies on a regular basis. What kind of high are they experiencing? Perhaps, there could be a movie genre for each drug or each personality type (?)

To me, the foundation is stress and responses to stress or in other words, change and adaptation to change so that whatever chemical preference there may in individuals it must be in some way serve an adaptive purpose. The question is though, for a social animal, adaptive for the individual or adaptive for the group?