Imagine all the people: how the brain creates and uses personality models to predict behavior
Open accessAbstract
The behaviors of other people are often central to envisioning the future. The ability to accurately predict the thoughts and actions of others is essential for successful social interactions, with far-reaching consequences. Despite its importance, little is known about how the brain represents people in order to predict behavior. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, participants learned the unique personality of 4 protagonists and imagined how each would behave in different scenarios. The protagonists' personalities were composed of 2 traits: Agreeableness and Extraversion. Which protagonist was being imagined was accurately inferred based solely on activity patterns in the medial prefrontal cortex using multivariate pattern classification, providing novel evidence that brain activity can reveal whom someone is thinking about. Lateral temporal and posterior cingulate cortex discriminated between different degrees of agreeableness and extraversion, respectively. Functional connectivity analysis confirmed that regions associated with trait-processing and individual identities were functionally coupled. Activity during the imagination task, and revealed by functional connectivity, was consistent with the default network. Our results suggest that distinct regions code for personality traits, and that the brain combines these traits to represent individuals. The brain then uses this "personality model" to predict the behavior of others in novel situations.
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The DMN and its imaginative capacities may instantiate this kind of creative dynamo, constituting sources of strongly internally coherent predictions, thus being capable of temporarily absorbing and then releasing free energy via the shaping of perception and driving of action.
“The DMN and its imaginative capacities (Beaty et al., 2014, 2015, 2018; Hassabis et al., 2014) may instantiate this kind of (informational) creative dynamo, constituting sources of strongly internally coherent predictions, thus being capable of temporarily absorbing and then releasing free energy via the shaping of perception and driving of action.”
From An Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) of Consciousness (2020) · cites this paper as Hassabis et al., 2014
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- Authors
- Hassabis, D., Spreng, R. N., Rusu, A. A., Robbins, C. A., Mar, R. A., & Schacter, D. L.
- Affiliations
- Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit (GB)
- Cornell University (US)
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL)
- Harvard University (US)
- York University (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Hassabis, Demis
- Venue
- Cerebral Cortex
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2013-03-05
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1979-1987
- ISSN
- 1047-3211 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-2199
- PMC
- PMC4089378
- OpenAlex
- W2107473960
- Cited by
- 247
- References
- 60
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 32 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 23 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 7
- FWCI
- 11.47
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Cerebral Cortex (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust
- National Institutes of Health
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH 060941, R01MH060941)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Keywords
- personality models, medial prefrontal cortex, agreeableness, extraversion, default mode network, functional connectivity, social cognition, personality traits, multivariate pattern classification
- MeSH terms
- Brain, Brain Mapping, Female, Humans, Imagination, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Personality, Social Perception, Thinking, Young Adult, Theory of Mind
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