Should you pay attention to studies that show extroverts are generally happier?
What if you knew being happier would help you be or at least appear more gregarious and lively and so then likely to increase performance?
Which approach would you take: play to your strengths or reinforce your weaknesses?
Wake Forest University published findings in a 2012 article in the Journal of Personality, which show that when introverts act extroverted, they too feel happier. It is a compelling finding that may invite introverts to move over to the extrovert way of being.
One theory put forth is extroverts are happier because they have a greater sensitivity to dopamine; they need more of it to make them happy. It wires the extrovert brain to act more motivated to get a reward, like giving a presentation and then either hearing applause or being recognized for good work.
But there is no conclusive evidence of why this happens. It's actually more scientific evidence that all is not always what it appears to be.
Furthermore, no one has broadened the study to explore whether this dedicated concentration to go against what nature wired us for is going to use up energy.
When we act in ways that are not natural to us, there can be a battle between what is comfortable and what is not comfortable. When our nature is to be prepared and suddenly we are called on in a meeting to make an impromptu presentation, guess what happens to our energy? We struggle to make it a winning performance and in the end, all the air is out of us like a popped balloon.
Here is one possibility of why acting like we are something we are not normally may work in the short term, but not necessarily in the long term.
If we have too much dopamine in the introvert brain then we can feel over stimulated, and have "stimulus fatigue". Our brains have a longer pathway of blood flow, and more blood traveling to it, making us even more sensitive. More dopamine just exhausts us and depletes our energy. That same longer pathway is activated by acetylcholine, which gives us a happy feeling that extroverts don't get from just thinking and feeling.
While studies may conclude introverts are happier when they act more outgoing, if it is at the expense of daily exertion which could lead to energy exhaustion, then it may work in smaller doses, not all day long.
Alice Domar, Ph.D., a psychologist and author of Be Happy Without Being Perfect, says, "If you think you should feel happy nearly all the time, it's going to make you miserable."
If being more extroverted means striving for constant contentment, then Domar's advice for the introvert might be to strengthen the introvert within.
If focusing, researching, and planning make you happy, then would it be more accurate to conclude, "do what makes you happy, not what someone else says makes them happy."
