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Psychologists have not determined the defining characteristics of extroversion. In four studies, the authors
tested the hypothesis that extraversion facets are linked by reward sensitivity. According to this hypothesis,
only facets that reflect reward sensitivity should load on a higher order extraversion factor. This model was
tested against a model in which sociability links fee facets. IDS authors also tested the generalizability of the
model in a diverse sample of participants from 39 nations, and they tested the model using widely used
extraversion scales. Results of all studies indicate that only facets tfiat reflect reward sensitivity load on a
higher order extraversion factor and that this factor correlates strongly with pleasant affect. Although
sociability is undoubtedly an important part of extraversion, these results suggest that extraverts' sociability
may be a by-product of reward sensitivity, rather than the core feature of the trait.
Richard E Lucas, Ed Diener, Eunkook M. Suh, and Liang Shao, Department
of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;
Alexander Grob, Institute of Psychology, University of Berne, Berne,
Switzerland.
Alexander Grob is now at the University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany, and
Eunkook M. Suh is now at the University of California, Irvine.
Research presented in this article was supported by a National Science
Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship awarded to Richard E, Lucas.
We thank the following international colleagues for providing the data for
the present study: Adriana Cudnik de Amato in Argentina; John Brebner,
Joe Forgas, Eraiko Kashima, and Yoshi Kashima in Australia; Gerold
Mikuk and Wolfgang Schulz is Austria; Nahid Osseiran in Bahrain: Dela
Coleta in Brazil; Fernando Berrera in Colombia; Eggert Peterson in Denmark;
Aziz H, Daoud in Egypt; Toomas Niit in Estonia; Katariina SalmelaAro
in Finland; Klaus Fiedler and Ulrich Schimmack in Germany; Charity
Akotia in Ghana; Loukas Ananikas and Andreas Demetriou ia Greece;
John Christopher in Guam; Harry Hui and Chung Leung Luk in Hong
Kong; Robert Urban in Hungary; Naveen Kaplas in India; Ratna Wulan in
Indonesia; Anne Maass and Donatella Martella in Italy; Miyuki Yukura in
Japan; Jungsik Kim and Myunghan Zoh in Korea; Danguole Beresneviciene
in Lithuania; Murari Prasad Regmi in Nepal; Ruut Veenhoven in the
Netherlands; Akinsola Olowu in Nigeria; Joar Vitterso in Norway; Afzal
Imam in Pakistan; Reyoaldo Alarcon in Peru; Felix Neto in Portugal;
Ineana P. Rodriguez-Maldouado in Puerto Rico; Anthony Kennedy in
Singapore; Maja Zupancic in Slovenia; Arvin Bhana and Valerie Moller in
South Africa; Maria D, Avia, Rosario Jurado, Jose F. Valencia, and
Salustiano del Campo Urbana in Spain; Min-Chieih Tseng in Taiwan; K.
Okoso Amaa in Tanzania; Saovakon Sudsawasd in Thailand; Sami Guven
in Turkey; Sara Staats in the United States; and Bias Mpofu in Zimbabwe.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Richard
E. Lucas, Department of Psychology, 603 East Daniel Street, Champaign,
Illinois 61820: Electronic mail may be sent to rlucas[at]s.psych.uiuc.edu of Jung (1921/1971) and James (1907), and the trait is central to
current conceptualizations of personality. Most modern taxonomic
approaches to personality and most major personality inventories
include some form of extraversion (Watson & Clark, 1997). Yet
after almost a century of study, psychologists are still unsure of the
fundamental nature and defining characteristics of the extraversion
personality dimension. Does extraversion represent a tendency to
be sociable, or is it a tendency to experience positive emotions? Is
the extravert a fundamentally dominant and self-confident individual,
or is he or she a fundamentally warm person? Although the lay
person may define an extravert simply as one who is sociable, the
trait of extraversion as studied by personality psychologists is
more complex: There are a number of conceptually distinct facets
that consistently cohere to form a broad, higher order trait.
Understanding the Common Variance Ajmong
Extraversion Facets
To understand the fundamental features of extraversion, it is
first necessary to understand how theories of the trait have developed
(for a review, see Watson & Clark, 1997). Although the
earliest theories of extraversion emerged before the widespread
use of modern factor analysis (e.g., Jung, 1921/1971), later researchers
quickly adopted factor analytic techniques to identify
which primary traits went together to form the higher order trait.
The factors that emerged were then interpreted by examining the
content of the factors; once the content was understood, theories of
extraversion could be developed. Unfortunately, the interpretation
of factors that emerge from factor analyses is rarely unequivocal.
In this article, we examine two possible conclusions about the
nature of the higher order extraversion factor: The core (or shared
variance) of the trait may reflect (a) sociability or (b) reward
sensitivity.
It is necessary first to define the terms that we will use throughout
this article. We use the term extraversion inclusively, referring
to the broad factor that has emerged from various factor analyses
of trait adjectives, questionnaire items, and primary traits. Al- though the nature of this trait changes across various theorists'
models, Watson and Clark (1997) argued that six facets have been
included at one point or another in the different models of extraversion.
These six facets are venturesome (feelings of excitement
seeking and desire for change), affiliation (feelings of warmth and
gregariousness), positive affectivity (feelings of joy and enthusiasm),
energy (feeling lively and active), ascendance (feeling dominant
or being an exhibitionist), and ambition (valuing achievement
and endurance). Depue and Collins (1999) provided a more
succinct model, arguing that there are three central characteristics
of extraversion: ".. . affiliation (enjoying and valuing close interpersonal
bonds, being warm and affectionate) and agency (being
socially dominant, enjoying leadership roles, being assertive, being
exhibitionistic, and having a sense of potency in accomplishing
goals)" (p. 491), as well as impulsivity, which they (like Watson
and Clark) ultimately argued should not be included in
extraversion.
We use the term sociability simply to refer to individual differences
in the enjoyment of social activities and the preference for
being with others over being alone. Sociable individuals should be
more likely to enjoy parties and other large gatherings, whereas
less sociable individuals should be more likely to enjoy being
alone. This sociability component is clearly included in most
theorists' description of the extravert; but sociability is a narrower
construct than extraversion. Sociable individuals react to whether
a situation provides the opportunity to interact with other people.
Sociability has not always been used in precisely this way in the
literature. Depue and Collins (1999), for example, stated that
sociability is synonymous with affiliation and that both reflect
"enjoying and valuing close interpersonal bonds and being warm
and affectionate" (p. 492). We believe that it is necessary to
distinguish between enjoyment of social situations and enjoyment
of "close interpersonal bonds." We refer to the former as sociability
and the latter as affiliation.
Our analysis also requires some way to separate sociability from
affiliation. In other words, we wish to assess whether certain
individuals enjoy situations simply because those situations involve
interactions with other people. Unfortunately, it is difficult
to create such a scale, because social situations often (though not
exclusively) involve warm interactions with friends and family.
For example, the statement "I enjoy spending time with others"
can refer to spending time either with friends and family members
or with people in general. It is impossible to determine whether an
affirmative response to this statement reflects sociability or affiliation.
Therefore, for the purposes of this study, it was necessary
to create a new scale.
Our Social Interaction Scale assesses preference for social activity
in a way that is different from traditional extraversion
measures. Specifically, the items on this scale were written to
assess whether a person bases his or her enjoyment of a situation
primarily on the extent to which the situation provides opportunities
for social interaction. On the basis of this principle, we created
questions that tapped three types of preference for social interaction:
(a) reverse-scored enjoyment of nonsocial situations (e.g.,
"You enjoy being alone," "You enjoy reading quietly"), (b) preference
for specific social situations over equally enjoyable (or
unenjoyable) nonsocial situations (e.g., "You prefer working on
projects alone rather than in groups," "When relaxing, you prefer
being with others rather than being alone"), and © participation in
social activities without describing specific activities (e.g., "You rarely spend time alone," "You always prefer being with others to
spending time alone"). We often use modifiers such as "always,"
"often," or "rarely" to emphasize that the person who responds
affirmatively to these items will almost always choose a social
situation over a nonsocial situation, even when there is an attractive
nonsocial alternative.
In addition, we will discuss and examine two additional facets of
extraversion: ascendance and venturesome. Ascendance is comparable
to Watson and Clark's (1997) ascendance trait as well as
Costa and McCrae's (1992) assertiveness facet and Depue and
Collins' (1999) agency component. It reflects "social dominance
and the enjoyment of leadership roles, assertiveness, exhibitionism,
and a subjective sense of potency in accomplishing goals"
(Depue & Collins, 1999, p. 492). Venturesome is comparable to
Watson and Clark's venturesome trait and Costa and McCrae's
excitement-seeking facet. Venturesome individuals seek out and
enjoy exciting, stimulating situations.
Ultimately, we seek to understand why these facets are linked to
form a higher order trait of extraversion. Specifically, we examine
whether the core feature that links the facets is sociability or
reward sensitivity. Individual differences in reward sensitivity
reflect an underlying motivation system first proposed by Gray.
(1970) and later elaborated on by Fowles (1987) and Depue and
Collins (1999), among others. According to Gray, there are three
fundamental biologically based motivational systems in the brain:
the Behavioral Activation System (BAS), which regulates reactions
to signals of conditioned reward and nonpunishment; the
Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), which regulates reactions to
signals of conditioned punishment and nonreward; and the FightFlight
System, which regulates the response to signals of unconditioned
punishment and nonreward. Depue and Collins argued
that extraverts are characterized by a strong BAS and that extraversion
can be interpreted as reward sensitivity.
The function of the BAS is to motivate and guide goal-directed
behavior. Activity in this system usually co-occurs with feelings of
pleasant affect. According to Depue and Collins (1999),
Exposure to ... incentive stimuli (or activation of their central representation)
elicits an incentive motivational state that facilitates and
guides approach behavior to a goal. In humans, incentive motivational
states are associated with strong positive affect characterized by
feelings of desire, wanting, excitement, enthusiasm, energy, potency,
and self-efficacy, (p. 495)
Individual differences in reward sensitivity should result in
differences in approach behavior as well as individual differences
in the experience of pleasant affect. The challenge for reward
sensitivity models of extraversion is to explain why extraverts
appear to be more sociable than introverts when the underlying
individual difference reflects differential strength of incentive motivation
and reward sensitivity.