In study after study, extroverts--social, outgoing people--report greater happiness and satisfaction with life. The explanation seems partly temperamental. "Extroverts are simply more cheerful and high-spirited," report National Institute of Aging researchers Paul Costa and Robert McCrae. Self-assured people who walk into a room full of strangers and warmly introduce themselves may also be more accepting of themselves. Liking themselves, they are confident that others will like them, too.
Such attitudes tend also to be self-fulfilling, leading extroverts to experience more positive events. When University of Illinois researchers Ed Diener and Keith Magnus studied students at the undergraduate level and then again four years later as alumni, they found that life had treated extroverts more kindly. Compared to introverts, extroverts were more likely to have gotten married, found good jobs, and made new, close friends.
Extroverted people are more involved with others. They have a larger circle of friends and they more often engage in rewarding social activities. They experience more affection and enjoy greater social support--an important wellspring of well-being.
IV: Personal Control: Happy People Believe They Choose Their Destinies
Summarizing the University of Michigan's nationwide surveys, researcher Angus Campbell commented that "having a strong sense of controlling one's life is a more dependable predictor of positive feelings of well-being than any of the objective conditions of life we have considered." And the 15 percent of Americans who feel in control of their lives and feel satisfied with themselves have "extraordinarily positive feelings of happiness."
Consider your own sense of personal control. Would you agree with the statement that "I don't have enough control over the direction my life is taking" or that "What happens to me is my own doing"? That "The world is run by a few powerful people" or that "The average person can influence government decisions"? Those whose responses to such statements reveal an "internal locus of control" typically achieve more in school, cope better with stress, and live more happily.
Increasing people's control can noticeably improve their health and morale as well. One study by Yale psychologist Judith Rodin encouraged nursing-home patients to exert more control--to make choices about their environment and to influence policy. As a result, 93 percent became more alert, active, and happy. Similar results have been observed after allowing prisoners to move chairs and control the lights and TV, and after enabling workers to participate in decision making.
Happy, too, are those who gain the sense of control that comes with effective management of one's time. Unoccupied time, especially for out-of-work people who aren't able to plan and fill their time, is unsatisfying. Sleeping late, hanging out, and watching TV leave an empty feeling. For happy people, time is "filled and planned; they are punctual and efficient," says Oxford University psychologist Michael Argyle. "For unhappy people, time is unfilled, open, and uncommitted; they postpone things and are inefficient."
Establishing pre-set deadlines for oneself--and then meeting them--can lead to the delicious, confident feeling of personal control.
Finally: How To Be Happy
It's easily enough said that happiness comes with having positive self-esteem, feeling in control of our lives, and having optimistic, outgoing dispositions, but how can we strengthen such traits? If we wish we were happier, can we somehow become more positive, inner-directed, confident, and extroverted? Just how malleable are we?
Well-meaning advice to "be more outgoing" or to "have a more cheerful outlook" can burden us with the responsibility to choose our basic temperament. More than such advice-givers realize, we bring our basic dispositions with us into the world.
More and more studies show that our basic personality traits endure, especially after childhood. While developmental psychologists are sometimes surprised by how often troubled, unhappy children mature into competent, successful adults, there is nonetheless an underlying consistency to personality. After the end of the teen years, traits such as outgoingness, emotional stability, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness seem to persist throughout adulthood.
But it's also true that we have the power to affect our own destinies, for we are the creators as well as the creatures of our social worlds. We may be the products of our past, but we are also the architects of our future. Personality isn't programmed like eye color. The predispositions we bring with us into the world leave room for nurture's influence, and our own efforts as well. What we do today shapes our world and ourselves tomorrow.
If social psychologists have proven anything during the last 30 years, they have proven that the actions we take leave a residue inside us. Every time we act, we amplify the underlying idea or tendency behind it. Most people presume the reverse: that our traits and attitudes affect our behavior. While this is true to a certain extent (though less so than commonly supposed), it is also true that our traits and attitudes follow our behavior. We are as likely to act ourselves into a new way of thinking as to think ourselves into a new way of acting.
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