Extrovert for a Day

Most of the time, I am a fairly quiet person.  I prefer to think before I speak.  I prefer to spend time alone or with a few friends, rather than at a party.  I absolutely hate small talk.  I agree with Gandhi’s philosophy to “Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”  In other words, I am a stereotypical introvert!

So, for my “Be a different person for a day” social experience, I chose to be an extravert!  To do this, I was extra-friendly, extra-talkative, and extra-sociable (puns fully intended :)).  For example, when I went out for coffee with a friend, I asked the barista how her day was and made small talk with her while she was making my coffee. 

Throughout the day, I found being an extrovert extremely challenging.  For instance, I noticed that I often reverted back to my “normal” self.  I think that this happened because I am a fairly low self-monitor.  Specifically, I scored a six on Snyder’s Self-Monitoring Scale (1974).  Self-monitoring is a characteristic that describes people’s ability to change their behavior to suit their environment (Snyder, 1987).  A person who is a low self-monitor (like me) is less capable of acting differently under various circumstances and tends to remain stable across situations (Snyder, 1987).  So, it logically follows that I would be less able to act differently for a whole day. 

People reacted to my change in behavior differently.  My interactions with people who I did not know (e.g., the barista at Starbucks, the cashier at HEB) were fairly similar to previous interactions with comparable others.  In other words, I did not notice a change in how others interacted with me.  People were slightly friendlier but, for the most part, I did not observe many differences.  One difference that I did notice was that I held longer conversations with people who I did not know.  This was most likely due to the self-fulfilling prophecy, which is the tendency for an individual’s beliefs about another person to influence their actions in such a way that increases the likelihood of that person acting in line to confirm that individual’s expectations (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968).  For instance, because I was trying to act overtly friendly with the cashier at HEB, he was friendly back, which influenced me to continue talking with him.  In other words, the cashier thought I was a friendly person and then continued talking to me, which enabled me to continue to act friendly.   

My interactions with people that I did know were much different.  The people that I did know asked why I was being so talkative and some of my friends asked why I was “so happy.”  One friend even remarked that I was being “a little obnoxious today” and that I needed to “tone it down a notch.”  My friends demonstrated Kelley’s Covariation Theory (Kelley, 1967).  For instance, the friend who I had coffee with stated that I had had too much coffee because I was being overly talkative.  Kelley’s Covariation Theory states that we attribute people’s behavior based on three different sources of information:  consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency (Kelly, 1967).  My friend noticed that (a) caffeine sometimes makes other people more talkative (high consensus), (b) my chattiness was a distinct behavior (high distinctiveness), and (c) other times I have been more talkative after drinking espresso (high consistency) and therefore, she attributed my eextroversionto the coffee.  Other friends who had not seen me drink coffee attributed my behavior to something good happening.   

Before I left my apartment for the day, I had to “prepare” myself to be extroverted  For example, I thought that I would be drawing more attention to myself (because I would be talking to others more than I usually do).  So, I ended up taking longer to put on makeup, fix my hair, and pick out my outfit.  Of course, at the time I did not realize that I was subject to the spotlight effect.  The spotlight effect is the tendency for people to feel as though others are focused more on them than they really are (Gilovich, Medvec, & Savitsky, 2000).  In other words, because I thought that people would notice me more than usual, I spent more time making sure that I looked my best.   

Throughout the day, I felt more awkward than I usually do.  Because I could not contemplate as long about what I was going to say before I said it, I kept thinking that what I said was stupid or silly and that whoever I was talking to would think so as well.  Again, I was subject to the spotlight effect.  I was overestimating the extent to which the person judged what I said (Gilovich et al., 2000); in reality, they were probably just as concerned about sounding dumb as I was. 

Furthermore, about halfway through the day, I ran out of things to talk about!  Generally, I don’t talk that much and in order to maintain my talkativeness, I just started saying the first things that came to mind (no wonder I felt awkward!).  Funnily enough, my incessant chatter led to me explaining to a friend what a eunuch is (If you don’t know what that is, click here).  I could finally relate to Kelly Kapoor in the TV show, the Office:

At the end of the day, I felt exhausted!  I felt like I needed some time for myself and give myself some peace and quiet.  The whole next morning, I don’t think I said one word!  I was even grateful that my roommate had gone out of town so that I wouldn’t have to talk anymore.

Acting as an extrovert for a whole day made me realize that I am fairly schematic for quietness.  Schematic traits (as discussed previously) are characteristics that we view as more important to our self-concept (Markus, 1977).  In other words, being an introvert is a large part of who I am and changing that was extremely difficult for me to do.  First, I also was not very good at it (based on my friend’s judgment of me as “obnoxious,” rather than just gregarious).  Second, for me, introversion is a fairly stable trait, judging by my continuous reversion back to being less sociable.  Lastly, I affirmed my beliefs that I am much more comfortable listening and thinking before I speak. 

After some insight, I realized I only try to be extraverted when I am trying to engage in ingratiation and self-promotion, two forms of strategic self-presentation (Stevens & Kristof, 1995).  Ingratiation is used when individuals are trying to fit in (e.g., trying to make friends) and self-promotion is often used when individuals are trying to gain respect or esteem (e.g., at a job interview).  In other words, because it is more socially appealing to be extraverted, I only act sociable when it is warranted.  According to Jones’s Correspondent Inference Theory, people infer whether a behavior corresponds to an individual’s personality based on whether (a) the person chose the behavior (b) the behavior is expected and/or (c) the behavior has positive or negative consequences (Jones & Davis, 1965).  Because in certain situations sociability (a) is expected and (b) has better consequences, I can attribute the acts of extraversion that I do to the situation, rather than to myself.  (N=1216)

References

Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: An egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one’s own actions and appearance.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 211-222.

Jones, E. E., & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception. Advances in Experimental Psychology, 2, 219-266.

Kelley, H. H. (1967) Attribution in social psychology. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 15, 192-238.

Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(2), 63-78.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development. New York, NY US: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30(4), 526-537.

Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances/private realities: The psychology of self-monitoring.  New York: Freeman

Stevens, C. K., & Kristof, A. L. (1995). Making the right impression: A field study of applicant impression management during job interviews. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80(5), 587-606.