Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2022-4
Do You Feel Better When You Behave More Extraverted Than You Are? The Relationship Between Cumulative Counterdispositional Extraversion and Positive Feelings
The idea that increased levels of extraversion are beneficial to well-being is widespread. Drawing on the idea that behaving discordant to one’s trait level is demanding and effortful to maintain, and that repeated taxations of one’s self-regulatory resources are unpleasant, we examined the relationship between cumulative counterdispositional extraversion and positive feelings. In two experience-sampling (ESM) studies, participants repeatedly rated their level of state extraversion and positive feelings. Results revealed that cumulative positive deviations from one’s trait extraversion level were positively associated with positive feelings, whereas cumulative negative deviations were negatively associated with positive feelings. This confirms the idea that, also when looking at cumulative instances of extraversion-related behaviors, higher levels of extraversion go hand in hand with higher levels of positive feelings.
Abdel-KhalekA. M. (2006). Measuring happiness with a single-item scale. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 34, 139–150.
2.
AnglimJ.HorwoodS.SmillieL. D.MarreroR. J.WoodJ. K. (2020). Predicting psychological and subjective well-being from personality: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146(4), 279.
3.
ArendM. G.SchäferT. (2019). Statistical power in two-level models: A tutorial based on Monte Carlo simulation. Psychological Methods, 24, 1–19.
4.
BairdB. M.LeK.LucasR. E. (2006). On the nature of intraindividual personality variability: Reliability, validity, and associations with well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(3), 512–527.
5.
BarrickM. R.MountM. K. (2000). Select on conscientiousness and emotional stability. In LockeE. (Ed.), Handbook of principles of organizational behavior (pp. 19–39). John Wiley.
6.
BatesD.MächlerM.BolkerB.WalkerS. (2014). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.5823.
7.
BorkenauP.OstendorfF. (1993). NEO-Fünf-Faktoren-Inventar (NEO-FFI) nach Costa und McCrae: Handanweisung [NEO-FFI from Costa and McCrae: Instruction manual].
8.
BoyrazG.WaitsJ. B.FelixV. A. (2014). Authenticity, life satisfaction, and distress: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 61(3), 498.
9.
CainS. (2012). The power of introverts. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading.
10.
CarverC. S.SuttonS. K.ScheierM. F. (2000). Action, emotion, and personality: Emerging conceptual integration. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 741–751.
11.
ConnerT. S.LehmanB. J. (2011). Getting started: Launching a study in daily life. In MehlM. R.ConnerT. S. (Eds.), Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (pp. 89–107). Guilford Press.
12.
CooperA. B.ShermanR. A.RauthmannJ. F.SerfassD. G.BrownN. A. (2018). Feeling good and authentic: Experienced authenticity in daily life is predicted by positive feelings and situation characteristics, not trait-state consistency. Journal of Research in Personality, 77, 57–69.
13.
CostaP. T.McCraeR. R. (1992). Four ways five factors are basic. Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 653–665.
14.
DepueR.CollinsP. (1999). Neurobiology of the structure of personality: Dopamine, facilitation of incentive motivation, and extraversion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 491–517.
15.
DienerE.SandvikE. D.PavotW.FujitaF. (1992). Extraversion and subjective well-being in a US national probability sample. Journal of Research in Personality, 26(3), 205–215.
16.
FleesonW. (2001). Toward a structure-and process-integrated view of personality: Traits as density distributions of states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 1011–1027.
17.
FleesonW.GallagherP. (2009). The implications of Big Five standing for the distribution of trait manifestation in behavior: Fifteen experience-sampling studies and a meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 1097–1114.
18.
FleesonW.MalanosA.AchilleN. (2002). An intraindividual process approach to the relationship between extraversion and positive affect: Is acting extraverted as “good” as being extraverted?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1409–1422.
19.
FleesonW.WiltJ. (2010). The relevance of Big Five trait content in behavior to subjective authenticity: Do high levels of within-person behavioral variability undermine or enable authenticity. Journal of Personality, 78, 1353–1382.
20.
FurrR. M. (2009). The study of behaviour in personality psychology: Meaning, importance and measurement. European Journal of Personality: Published for the European Association of Personality Psychology, 23(5), 437–453.
21.
GableS.ReisH.ElliotA. (2000). Behavioral activation and inhibition in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 1135–1149.
22.
GallagherM. P. (2010). Contra-trait effort and trait stability: A self-regulatory personality process [Doctoral dissertation]. Duke University.
23.
GallagherP.FleesonW.HoyleR. H. (2011). A self-regulatory mechanism for personality trait stability. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 335–342.
24.
GeldhofG. J.PreacherK. J.ZyphurM. J. (2014). Reliability estimation in a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis framework. Psychological Methods, 19, 72–91.
GodinI.KittelF.CoppietersY.SiegristJ. (2005). A prospective study of cumulative job stress in relation to mental health. BMC Public Health, 5, Article 67.
27.
GoslingS.RentfrowP.SwannW. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504–528.
28.
GrossJ. J.SuttonS. K.KetelaarT. (1998). Relations between affect and personality: Support for the affect-level and affective-reactivity views. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 279–288.
29.
Headey WearingB. (1989). Personality, life events, and subjective well-being: Toward a dynamic equilibrium model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 731–739.
30.
HoekstraH.De FruytF. (2014). NEO-PI-3 en NEO-FFI-3: persoonlijkheidsvragenlijsten: handleiding [NEO-PI-3 and NEO-FFI-3:Personality questionnaire: instruction manual]. Hogrefe.
31.
HofmansJ.KuppensP.AllikJ. (2008). Is short in length short in content? An examination of the domain representation of the Ten Item Personality Inventory scales in Dutch language. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(8), 750–755.
32.
Jacques-HamiltonR.SunJ.SmillieL. D. (2019). Costs and benefits of acting extraverted: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 1538–1556.
33.
JusterR. P.McEwenB. S.LupienS. J. (2010). Allostatic load biomarkers of chronic stress and impact on health and cognition. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35, 2–16.
34.
KernisM. H.GoldmanB. M. (2005). Authenticity, social motivation, and psychological adjustment. In ForgasJ. P.WilliamsK. D.LahamS. M. (Eds.), Social motivation: Conscious and unconscious processes (pp. 210–227). Cambridge University Press.
35.
LeikasS.IlmarinenV. (2017). Happy now, tired later? Extraverted and conscientious behavior are related to immediate mood gains, but to later fatigue. Journal of Personality, 85, 603–615.
36.
LittleB. R. (2008). Personal projects and free traits: Personality and motivation reconsidered. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1235–1254.
37.
LucasR. E. (2018). Exploring the associations between personality and subjective well-being. In DienerE.OishiS.TayL. (Eds.), Handbook of well-being (pp. 1–15). DEF Publishers.
38.
LucasR. E.LeK.DyrenforthP. S. (2008). Explaining the extraversion/positive affect relation: Sociability cannot account for extraverts’ greater happiness. Journal of Personality, 76(3), 385–414.
39.
LucasR. E.FujitaF. (2000). Factors influencing the relation between extraversion and pleasant affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 1039–1056.
40.
LuhmannM.OrthU.SpechtJ.KandlerC.LucasR. E. (2014). Studying changes in life circumstances and personality: It’s about time. European Journal of Personality, 28, 256–266.
41.
LykkenD.TellegenA. (1996). Happiness is a stochastic phenomenon. Psychological Science, 7, 186–189.
42.
MargolisS.LyubomirskyS. (2020). Experimental manipulation of extraverted and introverted behavior and its effects on well-being. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(4), 719–731.
43.
McCraeR. R.CostaP. T.Jr. (1996). Toward a new generation of personality theories: Theoretical contexts for the Five-Factor Model. In WigginsJ. S. (Ed.), The five-factor model of personality: Theoretical perspectives (pp. 51–87). Guilford Press.
44.
MestdaghM.PeM.PestmanW.VerdonckS.KuppensP.TuerlinckxF. (2018). Sidelining the mean: The relative variability index as a generic mean-corrected variability measure for bounded variables. Psychological Methods, 23(4), 690.
45.
MeyerH. H. (1980). Self-appraisal of job performance. Personnel Psychology, 33(2), 291–295.
46.
MoskowitzD.CotéS. (1995). Do interpersonal traits predict affect? A comparison of three models. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 915–924.
OerlemansW. G.BakkerA. B. (2014). Why extraverts are happier: A day reconstruction study. Journal of Research in Personality, 50, 11–22.
49.
PavotW.DienerE.FujitaF. (1990). Extraversion and happiness. Personality and Individual Differences, 11, 1299–1306.
50.
PickettJ.HofmansJ.DebusscherJ.De FruytF. (2020). Counterdispositional conscientiousness and well-being: How does acting out of character relate to positive and negative affect at work?Journal of Happiness Studies, 21, 1463–1485.
51.
PickettJ.HofmansJ.De FruytF. (2019). Extraversion and performance approach goal orientation: An integrative approach to personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 82, 103846.
52.
PickettJ.HofmansJ.FeldtT.De FruytF. (2020). Concurrent and lagged effects of counterdispositional extraversion on vitality. Journal of Research in Personality, 87, 1–23.
53.
PreacherK. J.CurranP. J.BauerD. J. (2006). Computational tools for probing interactions in multiple linear regression, multilevel modeling, and latent curve analysis. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 31, 437–448.
54.
RauthmannJ. F.HorstmannK. T.ShermanR. A. (2018). Do self-reported traits and aggregated states capture the same thing? A nomological perspective on trait-state homomorphy. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(5), 596–611.
55.
RoeR. A. (Ed.). (2008). 16 Perspectives on time and the chronometric study of what happens in organizations. Time in Organizational Research, (3), 291.
56.
SandvikE.DienerE.SeidlitzL. (2009). Subjective well-being: The convergence and stability of self-report and non-self-report measures. In DienerE. (Ed.), Assessing well-being (pp. 119–138). Springer.
57.
SaucierG. (1994). Mini-markers: A brief version of Goldberg’s unipolar Big-Five markers. Journal of Personality Assessment, 63, 506–516.
58.
SchlegelR.HicksJ.ArndtJ.KingL. (2009). Thine own self: True self-concept accessibility and meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 473–490.
59.
SeitzN. E.WestbrookC. J.NobleB. F. (2011). Bringing science into river systems cumulative effects assessment practice. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 31, 172–179.
60.
SmillieL. D.CooperA. J.WiltJ.RevelleW. (2012). Do extraverts get more bang for the buck? Refining the affective-reactivity hypothesis of extraversion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(2), 306–326.
61.
SmillieL. D.DeYoungC. G.HallP. J. (2015). Clarifying the relation between extraversion and positive affect. Journal of Personality, 83(5), 564–574.
62.
ShodaY.LeeTiernanS.MischelW. (2002). Personality as a dynamical system: Emergence of stability and distinctiveness from intra and interpersonal interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6(4), 316–325.
63.
SosnowskaJ.KuppensP.De FruytF.HofmansJ. (2020). New directions in the conceptualization and assessment of personality—A dynamic systems approach. European Journal of Personality, 34(6), 988–998.
64.
SteelP.SchmidtJ.ShultzJ. (2008). Refining the relationship between personality and subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 138–161.
65.
SunJ.KaufmanS. B.SmillieL. D. (2018). Unique associations between Big Five personality aspects and multiple dimensions of well-being. Journal of Personality, 86(2), 158–172.
66.
ThompsonE. R. (2007). Development and validation of an internationally reliable short-form of the positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS). Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 38(2), 227–242.
67.
van AllenZ. M.ZelenskiJ. M. (2018). Testing trait-state isomorphism in a new domain: An exploratory manipulation of openness to experience. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 1964.
68.
WhelanD. (2014). Extraversion and counter-dispositional behavior: Exploring consequences and the impact of situation-behavior congruence [Doctoral dissertation]. Carleton University.
69.
WiltJ.NoftleE. E.FleesonW.SpainJ. S. (2012). The dynamic role of personality states in mediating the relationship between extraversion and positive affect. Journal of Personality, 80, 1205–1236.
70.
ZelenskiJ.SantoroM.WhelanD. (2012). Would introverts be better off if they acted more like extraverts? Exploring emotional and cognitive consequences of counterdispositional behavior. American Psychological Association, 12, 290–303.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
