What is an extrovert?

What is an extrovert?

An extrovert is a person who sits toward the high end of Extraversion, one of the five broad dimensions psychologists use to describe how people differ. In plain words, that dimension is how much you enjoy being around people, talking, and doing lively things, and how much energy that gives you. An extrovert draws more of that charge from the outside world and goes looking for more of it.

The trait bundles two things that usually travel together. One is social: wanting company, enjoying it, seeking it out. The other is energetic and emotional: pace, readiness to speak up, and a tilt toward positive feeling that shows even when nobody else is in the room. The second half is why Extraversion is the trait tied most closely to everyday cheerfulness.

It is not confidence and it is not social skill. Someone can want company badly and still handle it clumsily, and a skilled host can find the whole evening tiring. Extraversion measures the pull toward social and lively stimulation, not how well you manage once you are there.

Extrovert names a region of a scale rather than a kind of person. The dimension came out of decades of research on the words languages keep for describing people, not from one study, and it emerged as a continuum every time (Goldberg, 1993). When the best-known type instrument was examined against continuous trait measures, its scales behaved as dimensions rather than as either-or preferences (McCrae & Costa, 1989).

Is it extrovert or extravert?

Both are fine, and they mean the same thing. Extraversion with an a is the form the research literature settled on, so questionnaires, journal articles and trait manuals almost always write extraversion and extravert. Extrovert with an o is the ordinary English form, and it is far more common in everyday writing and in search.

The o spelling probably survived because extro- looks like the opposite of intro-, which is tidy even though it is not the Latin. Nothing rides on the choice. This page uses extrovert for the person and Extraversion for the trait, because that is how most people arrive at the question.

What are the signs of an extrovert?

The signs are small, repeated preferences in situations everyone meets. Neither column below is the better one.

If most of the middle column is an ordinary week for you, extrovert is a fair description. If the two columns split evenly, the word for that is ambivert, and it is the most common result there is.

Why do two extroverts seem so different?

Because broad traits are hierarchies. Beneath the domain sit narrower traits called facets, and two people with the same Extraversion score can be unalike underneath. The NEO inventories report six facets per domain (Costa & McCrae, 1992), and the BFI-2 uses a leaner set of three, with facet scores adding prediction the domain score alone misses (Soto & John, 2017).

Wellington reports 11 traits beneath Extraversion: Cheerfulness, Friendliness, Gregariousness, Assertiveness, Activity Level, Excitement Seeking, Social Boldness, Liveliness, Sociability, Playfulness, Activity Pace. The kind of extrovert someone is shows in the pattern.

• High gregariousness with low assertiveness: first to the party, last to run the meeting.
• High assertiveness with modest sociability: leads readily, and goes home when the work is done.
• High excitement seeking with high liveliness: the person who suggests the second venue.
• High sociability with low social boldness: wants the room badly and dreads the doorway.

That last combination is the shy extrovert, and it is more common than the folk picture allows.

What does the research say about extroverts?

The evidence is about the dimension as a whole and is reported as averages across many people. Read it as a tendency, not as a prediction about one life.

• Positive feeling. Extraversion is linked to positive mood and Neuroticism to negative mood, as separate systems, and personality measured earlier predicted happiness ten years later (Costa & McCrae, 1980). Across six studies the relation between extraversion and pleasant affect was moderate to strong, though diary reports of mood give lower correlations than retrospective ones (Lucas & Fujita, 2000).
• Leadership. In a review of 222 correlations from 73 samples, Extraversion was the most consistent trait correlate of leadership, at r = .31, ahead of Conscientiousness at .28 (Judge et al., 2002). The criteria in that literature mix emerging as a leader with being rated effective, which are not the same thing.
• Acting the part. People report more positive feeling in the moments when they act more talkative and energetic than usual, and that holds for introverts too (Fleeson et al., 2002). In experiments assigning people at random to act introverted or extraverted, the cognitive cost showed up only among extroverts asked to act reserved (Zelenski et al., 2012). Acting against your setting is the more expensive direction if you are already at the high end.
• Age. A meta-analysis of 92 longitudinal samples split Extraversion in two: social dominance, the assertive side, rose through young adulthood between about 20 and 40, while social vitality, the sociable side, rose in adolescence then fell in later life (Roberts et al., 2006).

The costs are worth naming plainly. Saying yes quickly produces weeks with no room in them, and over-commitment is the most reliable extraverted failure mode. Thinking out loud crowds out quieter people with better ideas, so the high end under-listens by default rather than by intent. Appetite for stimulation shades into risk that was not worth taking. And more company is not automatically better company: in one study of 340 call-centre representatives, sales revenue peaked at moderate extraversion rather than at the very extraverted end that sales folklore favours (Grant, 2013).

How does Wellington measure this?

Wellington is a science-based personality assessment from Therabot Labs LLC. It measures personality as continuous traits, built on the Big Five and HEXACO models, and writes the results back as a personal report rather than a type.

The free Snapshot is 60 questions, about 7 minutes, across six dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Openness to Experience, Honesty-Humility. Each statement is rated on a five-point accuracy scale, your Extraversion score is the average of the statements that measure it, and that average is placed against a reference sample as a percentile. The first ten questions are answered before anything is asked of you; after question ten you sign in with an email address so answers are saved and results can be shown. There is no card.

The percentile is reported in one of three bands: Quiet below the 30th percentile, Balanced to the 70th, High above it. Those norms are provisional until the norming sample is complete. The bands and the Portrait names exist to make the result easier to talk about; the percentile is the measurement, and it is always shown alongside. Every band has its own page, written in advance by the writing and psychology team. The High band page for Extraversion is The Open Door, headed "You are lit from the outside in, and it shows". The others are The Steady Current and The Quiet Room, and none of the three is the good one.

The Wellington Membership, $4.99 a month, adds the Portrait, 336 questions in 4 chapters, reaching 90 traits including every Big Five facet and all 24 VIA character strengths, so the 11 traits beneath Extraversion are scored separately. The membership adds a weekly module over 104 weeks toward all 255 traits. See the methodology.

Wellington is a wellness tool for reflection, not a medical or psychological diagnosis, and it does not replace care from a qualified professional. It is not built for hiring or selection, and you can export or delete your data at any time.

Questions people ask

Is extrovert or extravert correct?

Both. Extravert with an a is the spelling the research literature uses, so it is what you will see on questionnaires and in journals. Extrovert with an o is the everyday English form and is much more common in ordinary writing. They refer to the same trait and nothing hangs on which you choose.

Can an extrovert be shy?

Yes, and the combination is common. Shyness is discomfort at the start of social situations; Extraversion is appetite for them. Someone can want company strongly and still find walking into the room hard, which is an uncomfortable pairing to live with. In facet terms it looks like high sociability with low social boldness.

Do extroverts make better leaders?

They emerge as leaders more often. Extraversion was the most consistent trait correlate of leadership at r = .31 in a review of 222 correlations (Judge et al., 2002), but a correlation of that size shifts the odds rather than sorting people, and the criteria mix emerging as a leader with being rated effective. Conscientiousness ran close behind. See personality and leadership.

Can you become more extroverted?

You can act more extraverted whenever you choose, and people report more positive feeling while doing it, including people low on the trait (Fleeson et al., 2002). Moving the underlying score is slower and smaller, and it happens through repeated behaviour rather than resolve. Most people who want to change here want a wider range for the occasions that need it.