Is There a Price to Pretending? Examining the Potential Cost of (Perceived) Counterdispositional Openness

Abstract

Although some studies demonstrated that counterdispositional behavior may be taxing, substantially more studies fail to provide evidence for this notion or even find beneficial effects of acting in a more extraverted or conscientious way. Because extraversion and conscientiousness are more socially valued and energizing in nature, it raises the question of what the consequences are of acting counterdispositionally on a more “neutral” personality dimension (i.e., openness). To address this issue, the current study examined the within-person relationship between (perceived) counterdispositional openness, positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), and exhaustion. Using a 14-day experience sampling methods dataset (N = 191 individuals and N = 14,095 repeated observations), we found that higher levels of (perceived) openness were associated with higher levels of PA and lower levels of exhaustion, while no relationship was found with NA. Hence, no costs were associated with acting out of character, even when considering subjective experiences of counterdispositional behavior.