The Face-Off: Extraverts versus Introverts
It’s a Friday night. You’re at your local bar and the crowd is buzzing with a cocktail of relief and weekend anticipation. You approach two of your close friends, eager to rant about the unreasonable requirement you failed to turn in and the way your team left you hanging. One of your friends is animatedly speaking with two casual acquaintances like they’ve been friends for ten years, while the other is in a corner quietly sipping a drink. The first friend engages you in dynamic conversation, peppering your attempts at communicating your distress with comments and salacious stories. The other keeps a wide berth and does not interrupt, but their muted response makes you unsure that you are being heard. You say your goodbyes with a wide smile and eyebrows scrunched in pent-up stress. As you walk towards the door, both friends follow you with their eyes. Which of them has an inkling of how you really feel?
Extraversion and introversion are probably two of the most overused psychology terms by the general public. Extraverts are often described as sociable and affectionate, while introverts are depicted as private and reserved. Contrary to common knowledge, extraversion is not something you either have or don’t, but a trait which all of us possess to a certain degree. The terms “extravert” and “introvert” actually represent the extremes of the extraversion spectrum, and most of us don’t fit into either category.
However rare they are, all of us know at least one person who’s always with a battalion of friends in their Facebook pictures, and that one person who is perfectly happy going solo in their pursuits. And since they present a striking contrast to each other, we are fascinated by the fundamental differences between people who possess these divergent characteristics.
What we are especially curious about is the perception of extraverts and introverts of other people’s emotions. We usually gain skill in decoding someone’s expression as we spend more time with them and learn which facial cues mean what. Of course, it may also depend on how clearly the person facially depicts their emotions and moods. Even our own affect could influence how we interpret facial signals. However, relatively stable characteristics like traits may also have an independent effect, as well as an interaction with the other factors mentioned above.
So who wins the perceptual face-off: extraverts or introverts?
Arguments could be presented for both sides. Extraverts, who are more likely to be exposed to people and social interactions, might be more experienced in decoding facial expressions. Furthermore, since they seek to be socially connected, they have more reason to learn how to understand others’ feelings. Conversely introverts, who are less likely to be in the spotlight, have more opportunities to observe the subtleties of communication from the sidelines. Having a smaller social circle may enable them to focus on individual moods, instead of seeing people as a blur of faces.
However, all of this is based on intuition. To get down to the science of it, we designed a perception experiment. With the help of a collaborator outside our team, we produced photos of facial expressions depicting happiness and sadness. To ensure the validity of these stimuli, we followed a checklist of facial cue criteria (Ekman & Friesen, 2003). For the clear condition, we portrayed all the criteria in the checklist, while for the ambiguous condition, we eliminated either the upper or lower face cues. We also added pictures showing fear, anger, and disgust.
We then invited extraverts and introverts, selected through the indigenized personality test Masaklaw na Panukat ng Loob (Del Pilar, Sio, Cagasan, Siy, & Galang, 2014), to participate in our experiment. They were to identify which basic emotion is portrayed in the pictures and to rate the intensity of these emotions. All of the participants rated the photos from both conditions.
We computed for the accuracy of each group in identifying happiness, sadness, clear and ambiguous stimuli. By examining the descriptives (percentages of Es and Is who got some items correct and some not) and using ANOVA (Analysis of Variance, a statistical test used mostly for determining whether differences between groups are statistically significant), we analyzed the differences between the extravert and introvert groups. For the perceived intensity, we gathered data from participants who correctly identified the clear stimuli of happiness and sadness. Using ANOVA, we analyzed the main (individual) and interaction (interconnected with other variables) effects of the independent variables (level of extraversion, emotion).
So what did we find from our study?
Let’s focus first on the effect of extraversion on the accuracy and perceived intensity of emotional facial expressions. No significant main effect was found on either accuracy or perceived intensity. This means that participants were more or less similarly accurate in identifying clear and ambiguous happy and sad facial expressions, and also gave similar intensity ratings to them, regardless of whether they were extraverts or introverts. This result does not support recent findings that extraversion does influence people to process specific emotions in different ways.
An interesting aspect we would like to add in that could contribute some explanation as to why this result came to be is culture. We recognize that much of the past research done on extraversion and emotion perception was done in the Western context, while this study is among the first to be done in the Philippine context. Every culture has its own unique dimensions to it, and one of those in the Philippines is the concept of pakikiramdam, a “heightened awareness and sensitivity” (Enriquez, 1994, p. 76) when interacting with one another that is shown through increased “attention to subtle cues and nonverbal behavior” (Mataragnon, 1987, as cited in Enriquez, 1994). Given that this is a value said to be intrinsic in all Filipinos, there is a possibility that any effect that extraversion may have could have been weakened by this factor.
Moving on to the effect of the type of emotion on emotion perception, we found that although clear happiness seemed to be more accurately identified than clear sadness, the type of emotion portrayed (whether happiness or sadness) did not contribute to any differences in participants’ overall accuracy in identifying these emotions. In the aspect of intensity, however, we found that happiness was consistently rated as more intense than was sadness regardless of whether the facial expression was ambiguous or clear. which was consistent with previous research done that found that among the basic emotions portrayed, happiness garnered the highest intensity ratings while sadness garnered the lowest (Hess, Blairy, & Kleck, 1997). It turns out that when unsure about the emotion portrayed due to any source of ambiguity, especially in the case of happiness, people use the formation of the mouth as the main basis for rating the intensity of the emotions (Kappas, Hess, & Kirouac, 1995).This explains our findings in that quirks of the mouth are more noticeable in happiness but less so in sadness, thus making it easier for people to perceive changes in the intensity of happiness than sadness..
Lastly, the effect of ambiguity was rather odd, to say the least.. Per emotion, we had one clear picture and two ambiguous pictures. As expected, the clear pictures were more accurately identified than the 2nd Ambiguous pictures, but only those ones. The 1st Ambiguous pictures, however, were more accurately identified than the clear pictures. In the end, we chalked it up to our own stimuli being faulty, since we used Western standards of emotion representation in constructing the facial expressions with the model.
At least for this particular study, it seems that extraversion and the emotion portrayed do not affect how accuracy of the facial expression is detected. So introverts can perceive both emotions just as accurately as extraverts, and vice versa. But when it comes to how intense emotions are portrayed, clear facial expressions are seen as more intense than ambiguous ones.
Planning to conduct a similar study? Here’s a few takeaway points future replications can benefit from:
Use culture-sensitive stimuli based on indigenous research. The basis of the features to express the emotions we wanted to test was from Western literature. While happiness and sadness are basic emotions, the little details that give away the emotion, beyond a smile or a frown, can differ from one culture to another. Watch out for these similarities and differences if you plan to conduct a similar study, or any study involving detection of emotion for that matter!
Use male and female actors. Hess, Blairy, & Kleck (1997) found that female faces are rated as happier while male faces as sadder. The next time stimuli in the form of photographed facial expressions are used, it would also be interesting to see how the accuracy and intensity would be viewed depending on the gender assumed from the face. For this study, there was only one face and it was female so this might also have affected how intense the emotion seemed. You can try to do it with a male face, or both.
Improve stimuli and measure validity. The keyword for every experiment that features such sensitive stimuli and employs the use of a scale is pre-test. Pre-test, pre-test, pre-test. If you plan to do a similar experiment, your pre-test should have enough sample to determine sufficiency of the difference in clarity and intensity of the expressions. It should also take into account cultural nuances. As for the scale, consider creating a continuous scale to determine accuracy and intensity. Participants might be seeing a number of emotions in one photo so make sure you consider that as well!
(Article by Clarysse Alfonso, Valerie Borja, Jem Cabanlong, Via Mendoza, & Jaoie Ocampo)
Ekman, Paul, & Friesen, Wallace V. (2003). Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues. ISHK.
Enriquez, V. G. (1994). Kapwa and the struggle for justice, freedom, and dignity. In From colonial to liberation psychology: The Philippine experience (pp. 49–67). Manila: De La Salle University Press.
Del Pilar, G. E. H., Sio, C. P., Cagasan, L. P., Siy, A. C., & Galang, A. J. R. (2014). Masaklaw na Panukat ng Loob [Measurement instrument].
Hess, U., Blairy, S., & Kleck R. E. (1997). The Intensity of Emotional Facial Expressions and Decoding Accuracy. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 21(4), 241–257.
Kappas, A., Hess, U., & Kirouac, G. (1995). Scaling the authenticity of facial expressions:
Perceived genuineness of smiling is dependent on mouth and eyes [Unpublished manuscript].
