What is the central feature of extraversion? Social attention versus reward sensitivity.

TLDR

Extraversion has been argued to stem from reward sensitivity rather than sociability. The study posits that the central feature of Extraversion is the drive to attract social attention. Using 200 participants, the authors compared reward‑sensitivity and social‑attention measures to assess which better explained the shared variance of Extraversion scores. Results demonstrate that social attention, not reward sensitivity, constitutes the core of Extraversion.

Abstract

R. E. Lucas, E. Diener, A. Grob, E. M. Suh, and L. Shao (2000) recently argued that the core of the personality dimension of Extraversion is not sociability but a construct called reward sensitivity. This article accepts their argument that the mere preference for social interaction is not the central element of Extraversion. However, it claims that the real core of the Extraversion factor is the tendency to behave in ways that attract social attention. Data from a sample of 200 respondents were used to test the 2 hypotheses with comparisons of measures of reward sensitivity and social attention in terms of their saturation with the common variance of Extraversion measures. The results clearly showed that social attention, not reward sensitivity, represents the central feature of Extraversion.