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Personality and individual differences in plasticity

journal contribution
posted on 2016-12-01, 00:00 authored by J A Stamps, Peter BiroPeter Biro
In the last few years, investigators have documented individual differences in many different types of behavioral plasticity. Of particular interest are individual differences in the temporal plasticity of personality traits over extended (ontogenetic) periods of time, because of the relevance of these data to models of behavioral development. We discuss recent empirical studies of the temporal consistency of personality over ontogeny, and models that make contrasting predictions about individual differences in the developmental trajectories of behavioral traits. In addition, we consider recent advances in studies of relationships between personality traits and particular types of behavioral plasticity, including statistical methods which facilitate analyses of relationships between personality traits, contextual plasticity, temporal plasticity and intraindividual variability, and empirical tests of predicted relationships between personality traits and other types of behavioral plasticity (flexibility, learning rates). As the field of animal personality and behavioral plasticity moves from a largely descriptive to a predictive phase, we suggest that there is ample room for empirical tests of recent models that predict individual differences in behavioral developmental trajectories, and for the development of new formal models that make strong predictions about relationships between personality traits and specific types of behavioral plasticity.

History

Journal

Current opinion in behavioral sciences

Volume

12

Pagination

18 - 23

Publisher

Elsevier

Location

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ISSN

2352-1546

eISSN

2352-1546

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2016, Elsevier