Integrating Personality/Character Neuroscience with Network Analysis

Abstract The existing interfaces between network science and personality research are reviewed, and the other ways in which these two vibrant areas could interact in the future are examined. First, a summary of extant attempts to relate various aspects of personality to brain network characteristics is provided. Contemporary accounts of personality and their development are reviewed in conjunction with a consideration of how they might best be used to devise a research program that could be integrated with network science approaches. An illustration of one such approach is provided using a network science-based analysis, modularity, to extract the community structure from a set of behavioral personality data. The similarities and differences between this approach and the outcome from using a more traditional factor-analytic approach are examined.