The Effects of Mood and Personality on Self-Disclosure

Patti Dean

Introverts: Individuals that prefer to stay away from loud social settings

Extraverts: Individuals that prefer loud social settings where there are a lot of people

Anger: A powerful, negative emotion that sometimes elicits aggression

Self-Disclosure (emotional): When one individual shares personal feelings with another individual

Article #1

Sannikova, O.P. (1982)

Extraversion is associated with positive emotions and introversion is associated with negative emotions.

Article #2

Howell, A. & Conway, M. (1990)

Individuals are more expressive in their self-disclosure of positive emotions than negative emotions because it is seemingly more appropriate to self-disclose positive emotions.

Article #3

Boddeker, I. & Stemmler, G. (2000)

Results of study on who would respond when and how to anger showed that introverts reported feeling more anger than extraverts. Researchers believe that extraverts may not have shown an anger response because of the discomfort of not being able to retaliate against the anger.

My Study (2X2):

Since introverts are not as concerned with forming new relationships as extraverts are, is it more likely that introverts will “break” the social rule and self-disclose on negative emotions thus taking the risk of offending another individual and not forming a new relationship?

IV #1: personality (introversion or extraversion)

IV #2: mood level (anger or no anger)

DV: willingness to self-disclose for anger (score on ESDS)

My hypothesis: Introverted individuals that are placed in an anger state will be more likely to self-disclose on the subscale of anger than extraverts placed in an anger state.

	Introverts	Extraverts
Anger	80	60
No Anger	60	80