Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIV. Dispositional Theories 14. Eysenck, McCrae, and
Costa’s Trait and Factor
Theories© The McGraw−Hill^439
Companies, 2009in determining whether acting in an extraverted manner causes people to experience
positive feelings and whether acting in a neurotic manner causes people to experi-
ence negative feelings. To do this, McNiel and Fleeson had 45 participants come into
a psychology laboratory in groups of three and participate in two different group dis-
cussions. During the first discussion, one person in the group was instructed to act
“bold, spontaneous, assertive, and talkative” (all of which are extraverted behaviors),
one person was instructed to act “reserved, inhibited, timid, and quiet” (all of which
are introverted behaviors), and the third person received no instructions and instead
was a neutral observer of the behavior of the other two group members. After the
group discussion, the participants who were instructed to act extraverted or intro-
verted rated their own mood, whereas the neutral observer rated the mood of his or
her group members (those who were instructed to act extraverted or introverted).
During the second group discussion, the roles of those who were instructed to behave
either extraverted or introverted were switched so that whoever acted extraverted in
the first discussion acted introverted in the second discussion and vice versa. The
neutral observer stayed the same. This type of experimental design allowed the re-
searchers to conclusively determine whether extraverted behavior does indeed cause
positive mood.
Just as predicted, participants reported higher positive mood when they were
instructed to act extraverted than when they were instructed to act introverted. This
finding was also supported by the ratings of the neutral observer and was consistent
for people who were high or low on trait extraversion. This suggests that regardless
of your natural level of extraversion, just acting in an extraverted manner can make
you feel better than if you act introverted.
Recall that although positive mood is thought to be the core of extraversion,
negative mood is thought to be the core of neuroticism. McNiel and Fleeson (2006)
wanted to extend their findings for extraversion and positive mood, so they con-
ducted another study, but this time investigated the effects for neuroticism and neg-
ative mood. The procedure was essentially the same as their previous study, but in-
stead of one person being instructed to act extraverted or introverted, one participant
was instructed to act “emotional, subjective, moody, and demanding” (all of which
are aspects of high neuroticism) and another participant was instructed to act “un-
emotional, objective, steady, and undemanding” (all of which are aspects of low neu-
roticism). The roles of high neuroticism and low neuroticism were switched for the
second group discussion. As predicted, participants reported being in a worse mood
when they acted neurotic than when they did not. The general conclusion of this
research then is that if you are in a bad mood but want to be in a good mood, act
extraverted.
So far we’ve discussed how the trait of neuroticism is generally related to neg-
ative emotion and how acting neurotic can cause negative emotion. But there is some
recent research that suggests that it is not the case that everybody who scores high
on neuroticism experiences more negative emotion (Robinson & Clore, 2007). There
are individual differences for the speed with which people process incoming infor-
mation, and these differences might influence the relationship between neuroticism
and negative mood. These differences in speed are measured in milliseconds and are
therefore imperceptible both to the individual and to other people, but there are com-
puters that can measure these differences quite accurately. To measure these speed
Chapter 14 Eysenck, McCrae, and Costa’s Trait and Factor Theories 433