As promised, I hope to eventually get up a few posts about the neuroscience of Divergent.  First up…  mirror neurons.

Jeanine has her faults, of course, but she and her colleagues do a pretty good job of explaining what they are in Insurgent.  First discovered in monkeys in the early 1990’s, mirror neurons are in the motor control areas that fired both when the monkey did a specific action (like reaching for a peanut) and when the monkey saw another monkey (or human reasearcher) perform the task.  The first definitive recordings of mirror neurons in humans were made in 2010. In humans, mirror neurons appear to be both more numerous and more widespread, and have been credited with making everything from imitation, to language, to empathy to civilization itself possible in our species. For a brief overview of their potential importance, I suggest this 8-minute TED talk excerpt from neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran. Elsewhere, Ramachandran has been quoted as saying that the discovery of mirror neurons will do for psychology what cracking the DNA code has done for biology.  A pretty tall order for a bunch of cells.

Spoilers ahead!

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On her Harper Collins website, Divergent and Insurgent author Veronica Roth declares, “I’m interested in psychology, especially as it relates to personality, brain chemistry, and group dynamics.” Each of the five Factions of Roth’s  dystopian society corresponds to one of the personality dimensions described in the Five Factor Model of human personality. This model has its roots in 1960’s research by Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal, through which they identified five measurable dimensions that could be used to describe most variations in human personality. Their work remained largely ignored for 20 years, but was rediscovered in the 80’s and 90’s by a variety of independent research teams. Today, the Five Factor Model is one of the main driving forces in personality research. The component domains, often called the “Big Five Factors,” are today known as Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Psychology students often find the mnemonic OCEAN useful for remembering them.

When the characteristics of the Big Five are held up against the traits typical of the five Factions of the Divergent world, a near-perfect correspondence is apparent. Many of the phrases listed in tests used by researchers to measure the different personality domains could just as easily be used by Roth to describe her Factions. Let us visit each Faction, and each Factor in turn. Spoiler note: I will discuss some of the key plot points of both Divergent and Insurgent; do not continue if you do not want them spoiled. [Read more…]