Is Processors also more inclined for compassion and cooperation?

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    • Published: 03-24-2015 05:10 am
    • I am thinking about this because right now we associate Processors with collaborative behavior in relation to groups and Executors with autonomous behavior in relation to groups. Processors is defined as having a lower amount of prefrontal dopamine and higher amount of striatal dopamine which rewards them (anticipation, motivation) towards new stimuli while Executors is defined as having higher amount of prefrontal dopamine and lower amount of striatal dopamine which rewards them (anticipation, motivation) towards stimuli which resonates with their internal goals or targets.

      I think this association makes a lot of sense and is easy to spot, now I have a found a couple of studies linking low prefrontal dopamine vs high striatal dopamine with cooperation and compassion. Do you think in general Processors in NJT is more compassionate and cooperative as well?

      Here are the studies I found:

      "As mentioned earlier, homozygous 9/9VNTR DAT genotypes (higher dopamine levels) display the lowest scores on cooperativeness and compassion (Pełka-Wysiecka et al. 2012). Further, CC genotype carriers – associated with higher dopamine beta-hydroxylase (DBH) activity resulting in higher dopamine turnover to norepinephrine – manifest greater empathic ability compared to CT/TT genotypes (Gong et al. in press). Notwithstanding that for the latter, in addition to lower dopamine levels, empathy-related behaviors may also be determined by the noradrenergic system, these findings link lower dopaminergic activity to a genetic basis of prosocial behaviors (Ebstein et al. 2010). Because homozygote Val158 carriers display higher enzymatic activity resulting in less prefrontal dopamine (for the Met158 variant this is the reverse) (Heinz and Smolka 2006), our results further support the assumption that Val158 allele carriers display higher levels of social facilitation and cooperation and may have the tendency to be more altruistic than Met158 homozygotes (Reuter et al. 2011; Walter et al. 2011)."

      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4086367/

      "Brain imaging studies have shown that reciprocity, cooperativeness, and social rewards activate reward processing areas with strong dopaminergic input, such as the ventral striatum. Thus, candidate genes for social behavior are hypothesized to affect dopaminergic neurotransmission..
      Carriers of the DRD2 CT-haplotype block and at least one Val-allele showed a greater increase in performance in teamwork settings when compared with carriers of the CT-haplotype block and the Met/Met-genotype. Our results suggest that epistasis between COMTval158met and the two DRD2 SNPs contributes to individual differences in cooperativeness in teamwork settings."

      http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470919.2010.527169

      "Specifically, using the brain penetrant catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) inhibitor tolcapone [ 4, 5 ], we investigated the causal relationship between dopaminergic mechanisms and two prosocial concerns at the core of a number of widely used economic games: (1) the extent to which individuals directly value the material payoffs of others, i.e., generosity, and (2) the extent to which they are averse to differences between their own payoffs and those of others, i.e., inequity. We found that dopaminergic augmentation via COMT inhibition increased egalitarian tendencies in participants who played an extended version of the dictator game [ 6 ]."

      http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900135-9

    • ErikThor likes this post.
    • Published: 03-27-2015 05:09 am
    • I think there's a difference between long-term, indirect and direct cooperation and compassion. I agree with the studies results, I would say that Processors are more likely to share and to work together on a project, while Executive types are less likely to want this. Executive types tend to want to take projects on on their own and to pursue independent rewards.

      That's why I call them autonomous. I find that I'm most collaborative when it comes to Concrete and Mechanic tasks, and being collaborative tends to put me into a CMP state. So, a state where I am open to evaluate and feedback the groups performance, where I'm focused on what everyone is doing and that everyone has a task, that I'm focused on problems and what's possible and not possible. I give the most orders in this state. I tend to hate giving orders when I'm in AOE, but in CMP it just happens on autopilot. So I'd say group oriented is a better word than compassionate. I can't really say I was compassionate in that mode. I wasn't really in tune with my values or my intrinsical values systems.

      I didn't really think about the others feelings and needs and how I could be there fore others. It's just that the difference is independence / autonomy vs group dependence / collaboration / group-orientation. If you're goal oriented you basically need chemical impulses to get you to pursue those goals independent of group / peer pressure and you need to make choices on your own needs. But it's possible to create harmony where everyone can pursue their goals but at the same time help the group and the others on a long-term perspective. I've used the criteria "Easier to hold on to information when facing external pressure" to describe goal-oriented personalities, and that tends to ring very true to me. The thing is though, it might be good for the group that I'm stubborn about these things.
    • Christian likes this post.
    • Published: 03-31-2015 12:46 am
      Updated: 03-31-2015 04:02 am
    • Here they associate striatal dopamine with exploitative learning, in where one is "learning to exploit decisions that have yielded positive outcomes in the past". Prefrontal dopamine is associated with "making strategic exploratory decisions when the magnitude of potential outcomes is unknown". Belief learning is about making predictions about possible outcomes based on past history.

      "Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning is simulation based paper on organizational learning. It framed around the idea of exploring new possibilities versus exploiting existing ones but focuses primarily on two sets of models of organizational learning."

      http://acawiki.org/Exploration_and_exploitation_in_organizational_learning

      "We show that two genes controlling striatal dopamine function, DARPP-32 (also called PPP1R1B) and DRD2, are associated with exploitative learning to adjust response times incrementally as a function of positive and negative decision outcomes. In contrast, a gene primarily controlling prefrontal dopamine function (COMT) is associated with a particular type of 'directed exploration', in which exploratory decisions are made in proportion to Bayesian uncertainty about whether other choices might produce outcomes that are better than the status quo. "

      http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v12/n8/abs/nn.2342.html

      Another study which associates prefrontal dopamine with "modulated degree of belief learning across individuals" and striatal dopamine with the "learning rate".

      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24979760/

      Interestingly it seems that specific dopamine molecules create slightly different cognitive affects depending on gender.

      "Gender was also explored as an additional variable given previous research suggesting gender dopamine interactions.
      Results: Working memory and sustained attention task were both influenced by significant COMT X DRD2 X DAT1 X Gender interactions. Different aspects of switching of attention were influenced by significant COMT X Gender; DRD2 X Gender; and DRD2 X DAT1 interactions. Striatal dopamine (DRD2 and DAT1) but not COMT influenced inhibitory control.
      Discussion: The findings from this study have demonstrated how gene-gene-gender interactions variously influence different aspects of cognitive control in a large, non-clinical population. "

      http://www.frontiersin.org/10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.212.00164/event_abstract
    • ErikThor likes this post.
    • Published: 03-31-2015 12:49 am
    • I think that exploitative learning is similar to the concept of reactive cognitive control, where one responds to stimuli in the best way possible given the past history. Explorative learning is closer to proactive cognitive control where one does something driven by internal goals or targets, regardless of how stimuli matches the target or not.
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