Nov 9, 2018 08:39 PM
https://aeon.co/ideas/acting-like-an-ext...introverts
EXCERPT: . . . For decades, personality psychologists have noticed a striking, consistent pattern: extraverts are happier more of the time than introverts. For anyone interested in promoting wellbeing, this has raised the question of whether it might be beneficial to encourage people to act more extraverted. Evidence to date has suggested it might. [...] lab studies have similarly found that prompting people, including introverts, to act more like an extravert makes them feel happier and truer to themselves.
Before we all start doing our best extravert impressions in pursuit of greater happiness, though, a team of researchers [...] urge caution, writing in a paper at PsyArXiv: ‘Until we have a well-rounded understanding of both the positive and negative consequences of extraverted behaviour, advocating any real-world applications of acting extraverted could be premature and potentially hazardous.’
To get to the bottom of things, the team conducted the first ever randomised controlled trial of an ‘act more extraverted’ intervention but, unlike previous research, they looked beyond the lab at the positive and negative effects on people’s feelings in daily life.
[...] write the researchers, ‘the main effects of the intervention were wholly positive, and no costs of extraverted behaviour were detected for the average participant.’ The advantages were to a large extent mediated by participants acting more extraverted more often – though, interestingly, not by being in more social situations: ie, by changing the quality of their social interactions, not the quantity of them.
But the story does not end there, because the researchers also looked specifically at the introverts in their sample to see whether the apparently cost-free positive benefits of the ‘act extraverted’ intervention also manifested for them. Although previous research has suggested that both introverts and extraverts alike benefit just the same from acting more extraverted, this was not the case here.
First and unsurprisingly, introverts did not succeed in increasing their extraverted behaviour as much as other participants. [...] Unlike extraverts, they also did not show momentary gains in authenticity, and in retrospect they reported lower authenticity. The ‘act extraverted’ intervention also appeared to increase introverts’ retrospective fatigue levels and experience of negative emotions. [...] team [...] also made an important point that strong introverts might not desire to experience positive emotions as frequently as extraverts.
However, the idea that introverts could gain from learning to be more extraverted, more often, is not dead....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/acting-like-an-ext...introverts
EXCERPT: . . . For decades, personality psychologists have noticed a striking, consistent pattern: extraverts are happier more of the time than introverts. For anyone interested in promoting wellbeing, this has raised the question of whether it might be beneficial to encourage people to act more extraverted. Evidence to date has suggested it might. [...] lab studies have similarly found that prompting people, including introverts, to act more like an extravert makes them feel happier and truer to themselves.
Before we all start doing our best extravert impressions in pursuit of greater happiness, though, a team of researchers [...] urge caution, writing in a paper at PsyArXiv: ‘Until we have a well-rounded understanding of both the positive and negative consequences of extraverted behaviour, advocating any real-world applications of acting extraverted could be premature and potentially hazardous.’
To get to the bottom of things, the team conducted the first ever randomised controlled trial of an ‘act more extraverted’ intervention but, unlike previous research, they looked beyond the lab at the positive and negative effects on people’s feelings in daily life.
[...] write the researchers, ‘the main effects of the intervention were wholly positive, and no costs of extraverted behaviour were detected for the average participant.’ The advantages were to a large extent mediated by participants acting more extraverted more often – though, interestingly, not by being in more social situations: ie, by changing the quality of their social interactions, not the quantity of them.
But the story does not end there, because the researchers also looked specifically at the introverts in their sample to see whether the apparently cost-free positive benefits of the ‘act extraverted’ intervention also manifested for them. Although previous research has suggested that both introverts and extraverts alike benefit just the same from acting more extraverted, this was not the case here.
First and unsurprisingly, introverts did not succeed in increasing their extraverted behaviour as much as other participants. [...] Unlike extraverts, they also did not show momentary gains in authenticity, and in retrospect they reported lower authenticity. The ‘act extraverted’ intervention also appeared to increase introverts’ retrospective fatigue levels and experience of negative emotions. [...] team [...] also made an important point that strong introverts might not desire to experience positive emotions as frequently as extraverts.
However, the idea that introverts could gain from learning to be more extraverted, more often, is not dead....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/acting-like-an-ext...introverts
