402 Part IV Dispositional Theories
It seems that to be open to the world is perhaps to set oneself up for more experi-
ences of awe and wonder. However, Openness was also significantly positively
correlated (though less strongly so) to joy, love, compassion, and amusement as well.
Finally, Neuroticism was significantly negatively correlated with joy, contentment,
pride, and love, with less emotionally stable people experiencing less of these posi-
tive emotions on a daily basis than their more stable counterparts. Though the effect
sizes were smaller, a similar pattern was seen among the correlations between self-
reported DPES positive emotions and peer-rated Big Five personality.
Because most studies of the relationship between personality and emotions
are correlational, what has not been clear is whether the trait of extraversion or
neuroticism causes the experience of positive and negative mood respectively or if
it is the experience of the emotions that causes people to behave in ways concordant
with the traits. For example, if people are in a good mood it makes sense that they
might be more jovial and talkative (i.e., extraverted behavior), but are they in a
good mood because they are acting extraverted or are they acting extraverted
because they are in a good mood? Similarly, if people are in a bad mood it makes
sense that they might act a little self-conscious and experience anxiety (i.e., neurotic
behavior), but did the mood cause the behavior or did the behavior cause the mood?
Murray McNiel and William Fleeson (2006) conducted a study to determine
the direction of causality for the relationships between extraversion and positive
mood and between neuroticism and negative mood. Specifically, they were inter-
ested in determining whether acting in an extraverted manner causes people to
experience positive feelings and whether acting in a neurotic manner causes peo-
ple to experience negative feelings. To do this, McNiel and Fleeson had 45 par-
ticipants come into a psychology laboratory in groups of three and participate in
two different group discussions. 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 introverted 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 researchers 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)