A New Explanation for Why Extraverts Are Happier

Extraversion and Happiness

One of the most robust findings in personality psychology is that people who are more extraverted also tend to feel happier. And by "happier", which I'm using as shorthand, what I really mean is "high activation positive affect", e.g., feeling excited, enthusiastic, energetic and lively. Psychologists, however, have had more difficulty explaining exactly why it is that people who are more talkative, bold and assertive experience more happiness than their more quiet, reserved and passive counterparts.

One class of structural explanations suggests that it's something that extraverts have that explains their greater happiness. Perhaps extraverts just have a higher biologically determined "set-point" or fixed level of happiness. Or maybe extraverts "get more bang for their buck" and experience a stronger positive reaction when good things happen to them.

A second class of explanations proposes a role for social processes. The social activity hypothesis suggests that since extraverts are more sociable, and social activities tend to be enjoyable, their increased quantity of social activity explains why extraverts tend to feel happier. However, a particularly strong study showed that the amount of time spent in various social situations only explained about a sixth of the relationship between extraversion and positive affect.

Studies employing a "counter-dispositional behaviour" paradigm present a further difficulty for all of these explanations. In these studies, participants are instructed to act extraverted, act introverted or given no acting instructions during a group discussion task. A consistent finding that has emerged is that participants report feeling happier after acting extraverted than after acting introverted, and that surprisingly, this applies for dispositional introverts and extraverts alike! 

These studies show that the quantity of social experience can't explain this relationship because all participants spent the same amount of time interacting. And structural explanations also can't explain why simply acting like an extravert is enough to increase one's momentary levels of happiness. This suggests that it's the extraverted behaviours - in other words, what extraverts do - that cause increased happiness.

This still doesn't tell us much about how one gets from being talkative to feeling excited, but a recently published study finally sheds some light on the processes that may be at work here.


A Social Quality Explanation

Smillie and colleagues (2015) first surveyed 225 undergraduates and showed that social wellbeing, a measure of the quality of one's social life, explained a third of the relationship between extraversion and positive affect. This effect was driven almost entirely by one dimension of social wellbeing, social contribution, a person's sense of having an influence on their social world, or having something valuable to give to society.

Since the correlational design of Study 1 could not establish causality, Smillie et al. ran a counterdispositional behaviour experiment for Study 2. In groups of 3, 81 undergraduate students completed two fun problem-solving tasks. One participant was instructed to act extraverted (i.e., bold, talkative, energetic, active, assertive, adventurous), another was asked to act introverted (i.e., reserved, quiet, lethargic, passive, compliant, unadventurous), and a third participant was given no acting instructions.

Consistent with previous research, participants who acted extraverted experienced more positive affect than participants who acted introverted, whether they were naturally more extraverted or introverted. But the key contribution of this study was in revealing that perceived contribution to discussion tasks explained 70% of the effect of acting extraverted on positive affect. In other words, participants who were acting extraverted felt happier because they felt that they contributed more to the group activities.

So, it looks like social processes do matter - but instead of the mere amount of time spent with others, it's the qualitative aspects of social experience that help to explain the relationship between extraverted behaviours and positive affect. Specifically, this study suggested that one reason why extraverts (and pseudo-extraverts) feel happier is that extraverts feel that they are contributing more strongly to their social world. A follow-up Honours thesis (not yet published) also replicated this effect and found that it extended to another mediator, social power - an individual's perception of their ability to influence others in a social context.

This is interesting - but before extrapolating further, we'll need to consider a couple of limitations. First, like all other studies using the counterdispositional behaviour paradigm, participants were university students. This means that further research is needed before it's safe to generalise that all people feel happier after acting extraverted. And it's especially important considering that the explanation for the extraversion-happiness link may vary depending on age. For example, as Smillie et al. suggest, it's plausible that social coherence, one's ability to make meaning out of social affairs, could have a stronger effect on positive affect for older adults.

A second limitation is that it's unclear whether the difference in positive affect was due to the happiness-boosting effects of acting extraverted, or the happiness-lowering effects of acting introverted. After all, it can't be much fun to be asked to be quiet, reserved and lethargic while being dominated by an extraverted participant and another participant who tends to act quite extraverted in this context anyway. Yet, there seems to be a lack of research on how acting extraverted makes other people feel ("affective presence"), compared to how it makes the extravert (or pseudo-extravert) themselves feel.

Similarly, at the Positive Psychology Interest Group Journal Club a few weeks ago, some suggested that the instructions for acting introverted were overly-negative. Maybe - but according to the dominant Big Five descriptive framework of personality, these are more-or-less the terms that describe introverted behaviours. Being introverted does not actually mean being "introspective" or "imaginative", although popular misconceptions abound regarding what introversion is.


Should Introverts Act More Extraverted?

A final few caveats on whether it's a good idea to act more extraverted. First, extraverted behaviours are most reliably linked to activated positive affect states and are unrelated to "deactivated" positive affect states (e.g., calm, relaxed, at-ease); states that some people may see as more long-lasting, valuable end-goals. 

Second, how a person feels is of course only one component of wellbeing, and this research does not say much about the effect of extraverted behaviours on, say, one's perceptions of meaning and purpose in life (although it's also worth noting that positive affect does predict an increased sense of meaning). Smillie et al. do show that extraversion predicts positive affect via one's sense of social contribution - an important aspect of wellbeing - but there is clearly plenty of scope for further research to clarify the nature of the relationship between extraversion and wellbeing more broadly construed.

Third, whereas there's been no evidence to suggest that acting extraverted incurs costs for introverts (interestingly, extraverts do seem to suffer cognitive costs after acting introverted), no research has investigated the long-term effects of counterdispositional behaviour, as it's possible that extended periods of acting extraverted could be more challenging for introverts. Brian Little has a lot more to say about the need for "restorative niches" after acting out of character.

Taken together, however, Smillie et al. contribute a valuable new perspective on why it feels good to be or act like an extravert. And despite the need for further investigation with broader samples, in everyday life, and across longer periods of time, I'm excited by the optimistic view that these studies present. It looks like happiness isn't dependent on a fixed property specific to dispositional extraverts, but is something that anyone can experience more of - and that it might be as simple as strategically choosing to act more extraverted when the situation calls for it.

--
Smillie, L., Wilt, J., Kabbani, R., Garratt, C., & Revelle, W. (2015). Quality of Social Experience Explains the Relation Between Extraversion and Positive Affect. Emotion DOI: 10.1037/emo0000047

Gratitude through Gmail

As I wrote earlier, gratitude is a vital ingredient for wellbeing, and one way to increase our gratitude is to remember and reflect on the good things that happen to us, or what went well (WWW).

Recently, I realised that I've received a lot of emails this year that have brought a smile to my face. For example, emails where people have kindly agreed to help me out, have given me positive feedback, have replied to a thank you note I've sent or have thanked me, and where I've been accepted into programs. What if we could create an easy-to-access digital repository of such good events, harnessing technology to support our gratitude practice?

I'd like to share with you a really simple system that I use, harnessing Gmail's built-in Labels and Filters.

Basic Method: Create a Label

1. Scroll down to the bottom of the left column of your Gmail. Click "Create a label". You can name this whatever you want - e.g. Gratitude, Hope, WWW, Good Things in Life, Positivity. I named mine Smiles, because after all, these are emails that made me smile!

2. Select all the positive messages in your inbox and move them to that folder.

At this point, you're pretty much done! Click through to the label in your left column, and there are all your positive messages, ready for easy access and appreciation.

Ok, so what if you have more than one email inbox, but you want all your positive messages in one location? This is the case for me, with a university email address and a personal email address. Or if you want to email yourself your daily WWWs and have them automatically stored in this folder? Here's how to extend this basic method.

Extension: Create a Filter

3. Create a filter: Settings → Filters → Create a Filter.

In the "To" box, type in: yourusername+yourlabelname@gmail.com. Then click through to "Create filter with this search".

Select the checkboxes for "Skip the Inbox", "Mark as read", and "Apply the label: Your label". Click "Create filter".

4. Forward your positive emails from your other account to your "WWW email address" (yourusername+yourlabelname@gmail.com). These emails will automatically appear in your designated folder.

5. It is even possible to use this system to email ourselves our daily WWWs, instead of writing them down in a physical journal, if that's what you'd prefer. Just email them through to your WWW email address.

6. Did something good happen elsewhere on the internet (e.g. a nice Facebook message)? Take a screenshot, and email that to your WWW email address. The possibilities are endless.

Try it out!

So there you have it. An easy way to set up a system for creating a digital bank of gold, ready to access and savour on the go, especially in those times when you find it difficult to think of anything that's going well in your life, or when you just want to increase your feelings of gratitude.

Let me know if you end up trying it out! I'd love to hear if you find it useful.

The Power of Gratitude

In a society where negativity often predominates and entire conversations centre around complaints, the experience of gratitude, an awareness and appreciation of the good things that happen, is refreshing and grounding. However, with the negativity bias, the human tendency to notice, remember and pay attention to the negative much more quickly than the positive (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001), gratitude requires conscious effort to rewire habitual patterns of thinking. Luckily, positive psychology research has empirically validated certain techniques, showing that "counting your blessings" is no longer a platitude, but a tried-and-tested way of enhancing your wellbeing and positive emotion.

Why be grateful?

Individual differences in gratitude have been linked with subjective well-being (high positive affect, low negative affect, and high life satisfaction) in 12 studies (as reviewed by Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010). Wood, Joseph, and Maltby (2008) also found that gratitude predicts psychological well-being (autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships, purpose in life, and self-acceptance) above the effect of the Big Five personality traits. Furthermore, gratitude has also been negatively associated with depression (e.g. Wood, Maltby, Gillett, Linley, & Joseph, 2008), perhaps because positive life orientation is incompatible with the negative cognitive biases associated with depression. Gratitude is also related to perceived quality of relationships, forgiveness, low narcissism, greater perceived social support, relationship connection and satisfaction, conflict resolution and reciprocally helpful behaviour (as reviewed by Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010). Finally, gratitude improves your quality of sleep (Wood, Joseph, Lloyd, & Atkins, 2009), as grateful people are more likely to think about positive things as they are falling asleep, promoting sleep quality, instead of negative thoughts that impair sleep (Nelson & Harvey, 2003).

Not currently oriented towards gratitude? Not a problem at all - gratitude is a skill that everyone can develop, and that's where gratitude interventions come in! These are exercises specifically designed to increase your levels of gratitude, changes that can persist through practice. Indeed, Emmons and McCullough (2003) found that participants who were asked to reflect on five things they were grateful for in the past week, over 9 weeks, had more positive and optimistic appraisals of their life, fewer physical symptoms, higher levels of positive affect and lower levels of negative affect, were more likely to offer emotion support to others, had better sleep quality, and a sense of connectedness to others. Similarly, Seligman, Steen, Park, Nansook, and Peterson (2005) asked participants to write down three things that well well each day and their causes every night for one week. These 411 participants experienced increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms, with the effect lasting for six months after the intervention. Seligman et al. (2005) also found that participants who were instructed to go on a "gratitude visit", where one writes a letter to someone they are grateful to, and reads it out to them in person, reported increased happiness and decreased depression both at the immediate post-test and at the 1 month follow-up. For these reasons, gratitude interventions are seen as the most successful psychology interventions yet.

The exercises...and some reflections

The exercises themselves are deceptively simple, but as pointed out above, are effective. Here are the basic steps:

What went well (WWW)? 

Try this for a week (or more!):

1. Write down three things that went well with your day. These can be mundane (e.g. "The sun was shining today") or important (e.g. "I got a new job!").
2. For each of these things, answer the question, "Why did this happen?" (e.g. "Because Spring is coming!"; "I worked hard to prepare for the interview").

Easy, right? Extending this into daily life, I've decided to start asking people WWW? more often, instead of the typical "How's it going/How was your day?". So far, there have been interesting responses. When I asked a group of peers at lunch the other day, they kinda looked a bit baffled, before responding along the lines of not being able to think of anything, or "nothing much", or even "nothing at all". Another friend thought that it was a nice question to ask. Recently, and more positively, one friend thought it was "kinda touching", because she felt that asking WWW instead of the standard "how are you" shows that you care, and also that it reminded her that things actually did go well that day, despite it being a difficult day. For the most part though, people are taken by surprise when they are asked this question. For me, this just illustrates the negativity bias. I bet you, if I had asked, "What went wrong today?", the response time would have been far quicker, and people would have thought of many more things to complain about. The threshold of activation seems far higher for positive events than negative events, as even minor annoyances seem to be remembered more readily than even relatively major positive events. However, any change in attitudes or norms takes repetition (and education), so I'll keep trying!

The Gratitude Visit 

People like to be thanked, but tend to be under-appreciated. It means something special to people when they are recognised for their efforts, to know that they are valued. So here's my challenge to you:

1. Think of a person in your past who has benefited you in some way and who you have not properly thanked.
2. Write them a gratitude letter, expressing your thanks and appreciation for what they have done for you. Be as specific as you can, and try to illustrate just what impact they have made in your life. Aim for around 1/2 a page to one page of text.
3. Make a time to visit the person, but don't say what the visit is about. (If the person is overseas or interstate, Skype is ok, but probably not the phone)
4. Visit the person and read the letter out loud to them. Read it slowly and mindfully, with meaning, intent, and eye contact. 
5. Give the person time to respond to the reading. This will be probably be a highly emotional experience for them.
6. Optional, but a highly likely outcome: Hug them! :)

I personally tried this out last week (I would be a hypocrite if I was writing this and I hadn't done it myself!), and thought I'd share a few reflections, which will be a bit unspecific when talking about the reactions of the person I thanked as I guess it is a personal experience in a way. 

I'll admit it, despite being in the habit of writing thank you letters and telling people I appreciate them, I felt quite a bit of aversion to the idea of actually reading a whole letter out loud to the person. To be honest, it took me awhile to think of exactly who I would write my letter to, but once I did, it made complete sense to thank them for what they had done for me. Writing out the letter helped me to further clarify exactly what I was grateful to them for, and enhanced my sense of appreciation for what they had done. It was actually quite a profound realisation. 

Before visiting her, I felt slightly nervous and awkward, but mildly excited. When I told her I had written a thank you letter and would like to read it out loud to them, she was surprised but went along with it. The actual reading felt really natural and authentic. Afterwards, she was clearly touched, and teary, and had realised the difference she had made in my life. There were smiles all around and a great sense of connectedness, understanding, and of course, gratitude, for both of us.

Immediately post-visit, I felt enthused, excited, and just plain HAPPY that I had helped her feel appreciated and valued. I felt connected and peaceful, and motivated to spread more kindness. I also took the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) questionnaire online at the Authentic Happiness website (it's free!) the night before and immediately after the visit, and my positive affectivity had increased from 23/50 (~30th percentile of respondents) to 36/50 (~80th percentile), while my negative affectivity remained stable (11/50, minimum = 10). While that was probably rather unscientific as I was tired the night before, the subjective experience of increased positive emotion was undeniable.

In the end, the visit reminded me of how important it is to tell people you appreciate them, and how much it means to them. It also taught me that it is important to have the courage to SAY THESE THINGS. You will not be ridiculed or rejected or embarrassed. You will make someone's day, touch their hearts, and help them feel like they matter. This is the beautiful thing about positive psychology - it not only enhances individual wellbeing; it enhances the wellbeing of those around you too, contributing to the flourishing of whole communities.

Conclusion

A growing scientific knowledge base is showing that cultivating gratitude could be one of the most important things you can do to not only insure yourself against mental illness, but to support your overall wellbeing and flourishing. Granted, this requires active, intentional effort to overcome the negativity bias and focus on what you do have (vs. what is missing in your life), what has gone well (vs. what went wrong), and the good in others (vs. what's wrong with others). However, if you can achieve this subtle shift in mindset as often as you can, the most likely outcome is increased happiness and flourishing for you, as well as for those around you. The power of gratitude is in your hands.

Try it out!

What went well for you today, or this week? Would you go on a gratitude visit? If not, what's holding you back? Let me know in the comments!

References

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C.,, & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323-370.

Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(2), 377-389.

Nelson, J., & Harvey, A. G. (2003). An exploration of pre-sleep cognitive activity in insomnia: Imagery and verbal thought. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42, 271-288.

Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410-421.

Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 890-905.

Wood, A. M., Joseph, S., Lloyd, J., & Atkins, S. (2009). Gratitude influences sleep through the mechanism of pre-sleep cognitions. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 66, 43-48.

Wood, A. M., Linley, P. A., Maltby, J., Baliousis, M., & Joseph, S. (2008). The authentic personality: A theoretical and empirical conceptualization, and the development of the Authenticity Scale. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 55, 385-399.