Acting like an extrovert
even if you are an introvert
makes people all around the world feel happier, recent research
suggests.
The findings come from surveys of hundreds of people in the
US, Venezuela, the Philippines, China and Japan.
Across the board, people reported that they felt more
positive emotions in daily situations where they either acted or felt more
extroverted.
The study, published in the Journal of Research in
Personality, also found that people tended to behave in a more upbeat way when
they felt most free.
This is the first study to show the positive effects of
extroverted behaviours in countries with more group-oriented and less
individualistic cultures, like those in South America and Asia.
Professor Timothy Church, one of the study’s authors, said:
“Cross-cultural psychologists like to talk about psychic
unity.
Despite all of our cultural differences, the way personality
is organized seems to be pretty comparable across cultural groups.
There is evidence to show that 40 to 50 percent of the
variation in personality traits has a genetic basis.”
The findings complement an earlier experiment which looked
at the effects of extroverted behaviours, such as being talkative, adventurous
and having high energy levels .
Participants in the study were told to act in an outgoing
way for 10 minutes and then report how it made them feel.
Even amongst introverts
people who typically prefer solitary activities acting in an extroverted way gave them a
boost of happiness.
Professor William Fleeson, who led the earlier study, said:
“We tend to look at the external world for being responsible
for our happiness — good things happen to us and then we get happy.
What’s exciting about this is that it brings attention to
the role we have in our own happiness.
All you have to do is act extraverted and you can get a
happiness boost.”
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