Arthur C. Brooks will discuss the science of happiness live at 11 a.m. ET today. Register for “In Pursuit of Happiness” here. A year before the p

What Introverts and Extroverts Can Learn From Each Other

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2021-05-20 23:30:09

Arthur C. Brooks will discuss the science of happiness live at 11 a.m. ET today. Register for “In Pursuit of Happiness” here.

A year before the pandemic changed all of our lives, a friend sent me a link to a survey based on academic research that rates your personality traits on a numeric scale. He was particularly keen to know my extroversion score, to see if the test was accurate. His results had shown that he scored at the 15th percentile. He sent it to me as the most extroverted person he knows. Sure enough, I scored at the 96th percentile.

“Lucky you,” he remarked, “extroverts are a lot happier.” He was right about that, on average. Decades of research have consistently shown that extroverts have a significant happiness edge over introverts. They report higher levels of general well-being as well as more frequent moments of joy.

COVID-19, however, has given us extroverts our comeuppance. Research published in March in the scientific journal PLOS One studied the impact of the pandemic on people with various personality characteristics. The authors found that mood worsened for extroverts but improved for introverts. As my friend said, only half joking, “Why don’t we just stay locked down forever?”