Personality traits vary in their association with brain activity across situations

Abstract Human cognition supports complex behaviour across a range of situations, and traits (such as personality) influence how we react in these different contexts. Although viewing traits as situationally grounded is common in social sciences it is often overlooked in neuroscience. Often studies focus on linking brain activity to trait descriptions of humans examine brain-trait associations in a single task, or, under passive conditions like wakeful rest. These studies, often referred to as brain wide association studies (BWAS) have recently become the subject of controversy because results are often unreliable even with large sample sizes. Although there are important statistical reasons why BWAS yield inconsistent results, we hypothesised that results are inconsistent because the situation in which brain activity is…