Journal of Personality and Social Psychology1987. Vol. 53, No.4.718-726

Copyright 1987 by the American Psychological Association. Inc.0022-3514/87/J00.75

The Press of Personality: A Study of ConversationsBetween Introverts and Extraverts

Avril ThomeWellesley College

In a study of the transactional impact of personality, 52 women were grouped in pairs to get ac-

quainted in two conversations, one with an introvert and one with an extravert. The women were

selected from their scores on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and were asked to provide accountsof their conversations as they listened to playbacks of their interactions. The conversations were

analyzed by a system informed by interactants' accounts. The most distinctive conversational stylesoccurred in dispositionally matched dyads, with more moderate patterns in mixed dyads: Introvertswith introverts engaged in focused problem talk, whereas extroverts with extraverts showed a wider

range of topics and more claims of common ground. A qualitative analysis of the accounts suggested

that differing assumptions and strategies generated the styles. The findings are discussed in terms ofthe power of dispositions to create situations—an evocativeness referred to by Murray (1938) as"press"—and for transactional conceptions of introversion and extraversion.

A neglected assumption of personality psychology is that per-

sonality influences other people. Henry Murray's (1938) con-

cept of press, which he denned as the directional force of an

environment, object, or person, was an early recognition of this

impact. Murray highlighted the evocative nature of dispositions

in an unusual discussion of the process by which personality

gets named:

The [experimenter].. . . becoming as open and sensitive as possi-ble, feels how the subject's attitude is affecting him (the E). In thisway he apprehends the press (as it 'hits' him). If he feels excludedhe imagines Rejection in the S; if he feels that he is being swayedto do something he imagines Dominance; if he feels anxious orirritated he infers Aggression, and so forth. (1938, p. 248)

The considerable consensus that is often obtained with person-

ality descriptions demonstrates that individuals often make dis-

tinctive impressions on observers. The transactional impact of

personality, however, has only begun to be conceptualized and

explored empirically (Kiesler, 1983; Wiggins, 1974).

An impact approach to personality offers a dynamic and

more realistic alternative to the assumption that dispositions

and situations are independent from each other (cf. Olweus,

1977). In this alternative view, the expression of a disposition is

conceived as creating a situation for (the generalized) other by

eliciting particular kinds of responses. A sociable person, for

example, might elicit sociable conduct from the other, or a corn-

Portions of this article are based on a doctoral dissertation submittedby the author in partial fulfillment of the PhD requirements of the Uni-

versity of California, Berkeley.I am especially grateful to Kenneth H. Craik, my thesis adviser, to

F. L. J. Ball, Enrico E. Jones, Daniel Ozer, David Pillemer, and to several

anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on prior drafts of thisarticle.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Avri)Thome, Department of Psychology, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mas-sachusetts02181.

petitive person might evoke competition. The approach also

helps to account for apparent inconsistencies in personality. A

sociable individual, for example, might behave more sociably

when speaking with an extravert than with an introvert. This

waxing and waning of conduct, rather than indicating an incon-

sistency in personality, indicates the compellingness of person-

ality, the necessity of taking the other's disposition into account.

The study presented in this article examines the press of ex-

traverts and introverts as manifested in conversations between

strangers. The study of conversational style, if somewhat un-

usual in personality research, seems an important way of detect-

ing dispositional press because speech is a common vehicle for

expressing and responding to personality. Encounters between

strangers are selected because such relations are the primary

social context of extraversion-introversion theory and research.

The concepts of extraversion and introversion, however, present

a special challenge for an impact approach to personality be-

cause introverts would seem to have little social force and extra-

verts, a surfeit. Carl Jung(1923/1976), often credited with for-

mulating the constructs, described the public appearance of ex-

traverts as outgoing and sociable and that of introverts as

reserved, inscrutable, and shy. Self-report measures score as ex-

traverted someone who says he or she likes to meet strangers, to

mix socially, and so forth, and as introverted, someone who

does not (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975; Myers, 1962). This image

of extraverts as voluble with strangers and of introverts as silent

has been often pursued but, interestingly, not well supported

in behavioral research. Extraverts have been found to be more

talkative in triads or in groups (Bern & Allen, 1974; Shaw,

1976), but not necessarily in dyads, where findings have been

inconsistent (Campbell & Rushton, 1978; Cheek & Buss, 1981;

Gilford, 1981; Patterson & Holmes, 1966; Ramsay, 1968; Rut-

ter, Morley, & Graham, 1972; Siegman & Pope, 1965).

There has been little attempt in extraversion-introversion

theory and research to understand the particular kinds of talk

that introverts and extraverts promote. Jung (1923/1976) pos-

ited a cognitive difference in direction of attention, describing

718

PRESS OF PERSONALITY 719

extraverts as being guided by and directed toward the outer,

public world, and introverts as directed toward the inner, sub-

jective world. Eysenck (1967) proposed a biological difference

in level of cortical arousal: He posited that extraverts' relatively

low arousability leads them to seek external stimulation and

that introverts' higher arousability leads them to shy away from

external stimulation. These theories have focused on cognitive

or biological phenomena and do not seem to have facilitated

transactional research.

Studies of the speech of extraverts and introverts have gener-

ally ignored conversational content and style. In addition, the

research has often involved confederates who are urged to be-

have the same way with all subjects and has not reported the

behavior and personality of the confederate (Patterson &

Holmes, 1966; Ramsay, 1968; Siegman & Pope, 1965). This

practice has precluded the study of more spontaneous interac-

tions and obscured the mutual influence of personalities. The

only study (Cheek & Buss, 1981) that used naive subjects

throughout did not focus on conversational style and was cross-

sectional rather than longitudinal; consequently, the waxing and

waning of conduct depending on with whom one was speaking

could not be assessed directly.

My study offers methodological alternatives and provides a

relatively novel approach to the conceptualization of extraver-

sion and introversion: Interactants were asked to provide ac-

counts (Cacioppo & Petty, 1981; Harre & Secord, 1972) of their

conversations with other introverts and extraverts as they lis-

tened to playbacks of their interactions. The accounts were used

to inform the development of a coding scheme for the conversa-

tions and to interpret the patterns that emerged. Because of the

dearth of transactional personality research, the general hy-

pothesis of the study was derived from interpersonal theory

(e.g., Kiesler, 1983) and from nontransactional research. Nu-

merous studies, including research that has used Thematic Ap-

perception Test (TAT) stories, recall of prose passages, and ob-

servers' trait descriptions, have found that extraverts produce

more cheerful and upbeat material than do introverts (Costa

& McCrae, 1980; Lishman, 1972; Shapiro & Alexander, 1975;

Thorne, 1981). If such expressions are contagious, the most up-

beat conversations should come from extravert/extravert dyads,

the most serious from introvert/introvert dyads, and the most

moderate, accommodating patterns from speakers in extravert/

introvert dyads. The operationalization of extraversion-intro-

version in terms of particular speech acts, however, was induc-

tively informed by speakers' accounts.

Method

Subjects

Subjects were 52 college women from a large west coast universityfor whom participation in research fulfilled a course requirement. The

average age was 19 years, ranging from 18 to 25 years. The 26 womenwho tested as extraverts did not differ statistically from the 26 introvertsin age, year in school, reported grade point average, or distribution of

academic interests. College majors were about equally representedacross the fields of political science, business, the humanities, and thenatural and social sciences.

Measure of Extroversion-Introversion

Subjects were selected as a result of their scores on the Extraversionand Introversion scales of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Form F

(Myers, 1962; Myers & McCaulley, 1985). The two scales share a sub-stantial number of items and correlate approximately —.95. The scaleitems mostly refer to conduct in general social contexts or in unspecifiedgatherings of people (e.g., talking easily to almost anyone or only under

certain circumstances, and being a good mixer or being rather quiet and

reserved). The highest reported correlates for this Extraversioa scale arethe Extroversion scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and theSociability scale of the California Psychological Inventory, r = .74, .67,respectively (Steele & Kelly, 1976; Strieker & Ross, 1964).

Procedures

Pretest, Participants were part of a pretest group (n = 150 women)recruited from large introductory psychology courses. They were told

that the purpose of the testing was to provide information about a gen-eral sample of students. Introversion (I) and Extraversion (E) items con-stitute only one eighth of the test, but the entire inventory was used to

provide more extensive feedback to those who so desired once the re-search concluded. The E minus I difference scores were compiled intoa distribution (M = 3.3, SD = 12.9) and people scoring in the upperand lower quartiles were selected as candidates.

Recruitment. Approximately 1 week after completing the question-naire, candidates were telephoned and asked to participate in a second

study, which they were told, "will not be described until your arrival."This precaution was taken because it was felt that revealing the natureof the study would discourage introverts from participating. Acceptancerates did not ditfer between introverts (26/30) and extraverts (26/32).The E—I difference scores for the final sample averaged +15 (range = 9

to24)forextravertsand-13(range = -5to-21)for introverts.Collectionofconversations and of trait and comfort ratings. Schedules

were arranged so that two extraverts and two introverts arrived for thesame session. The research was introduced as an exploratory study ofconversations. The researcher determined that the women were not pre-

viously acquainted and asked them to participate in two randomlypaired conversations with each other. Participants were actually paired

according to a prearranged schedule so that each would converse witha dispositionally similar (I/I or E/E) as well as dissimilar (I/E) other. The

order of conversations was randomized. The women were seated at a45" angle about 3 ft apart from each other. An operating videotape cam-

era was visible across the room. Each conversation was 10 min long,

being terminated by a knock on the door. The pairings produced a totalof 52 conversations (13 I/I, 13 E/E, and 26 I/E). To validate the methodof subject selection, the researcher subsequently asked interactants torate each partner on a list of trait descriptions. Interactants were alsoasked to rate their degree of comfort with each partner.

Collection of accounts. To help to develop indexes of conversational

style, the researcher scheduled as many interactants as possible for indi-vidual playback sessions. More than three fourths of the subjects couldbe scheduled, with a few more introverts than extraverts participating(22/26 I; 18/26 E). Each session occurred 1 to 2 weeks following theconversations, lasted about 1 hr, and was audio recorded. The session

was conducted by the author or by one of several undergraduate womenassistants. In explaining the purpose of the session, we likened our role

to that of an outsider who can best understand the meaning of an en-counter through the eyes of its participants (Harre & Secord, 1972). Wetold the informant that we were interested in anything that she could

tell us about her conversations, from the most mundane proceedings tothe most striking events that may have happened. An audio recording1

of her conversations was then played back, and the informant was asked

to stop the tape whenever she wished to comment on the action. Such

' The decision to replay audio dubs of the audiovisual recordings wasdue to the inaccessability of videotape facilities during the overlappinghours in which playback sessions were scheduled.

720 AVR1L THORNE

questions as "What led (you/her) to say that?" and "What's happening

here?" were among the most directive forms of questioning used.

Debriefing. At no time were participants informed that extraversion-introversion was the focus of the research. The decision to withhold

this information was made when we found, during a pilot study, that

informing the subjects of this fact typically enhanced their tendency toremember each other as types instead of as persons.

Measures

Trait and comfon ratings The list of trait descriptors included

relevant as well as buffer items. The relevant items had been found

to correlate significantly with Myers-Briggs Extraversion-Intro-

version across pooled observers and various samples (cheerful, enthusi-

astic, outgoing, talkative, sociable; aloof, serious, reserved, shy). The

buffer items had been found to be independent of extraversion-introver-

sion (mature, intelligent, conventional, boastful, artistic, sincere, ob-

noxious, and worrying; Thome. 1981). Subjects were also asked to ratetheir degree of comfort in each conversation. For each descriptor, rat-

ings could range from very uncharacteristic (1) to very characteristic (5).

Speech acts. The conceptualization of speech acts was informed by

the accounts and refined through a pilot study. Eight kinds of utterances

appeared to meet the criteria of meaningfulness and codability. Compli-

ments, agreements, reaches for similarity, stories, and pleasure talk were

expected to be more characteristic of extraverts. Hedges and problemtalk were expected to be more characteristic of introverts. A final cate-

gory, disagree/criticize, was included because the women, in their ac-

counts, seemed to regard such utterances as potent acts of rudeness that

occurred occasionally.

In the first category, a compliment ("I like your blouse," "Your job is

impressive!") was defined as an expression of admiration for the other's

activities, given that the other had not already expressed that enthusi-asm. The initiatory nature of a compliment distinguishes it from the

next speech act, agreement, which is conditional on the other's having

first offered a definite opinion or evaluation. Compliments were some-

times described in the accounts as devices for perking things up (e.g., to

get the other to shift from problem talk to pleasure talk).

In the next category of speech acts, agree was defined as direct ac-

knowledgement of sharing the other's opinion, for example, "I think so,

too," in response to "Teaching assistants are more energetic than a lot

of professors," and "Yeah, me too," in response to "I hate looking for

work." In applying the category, coders were instructed to exclude non-interruptive overlay (e.g., "yeah," "mmm-hmmm") because, according

to the accounts, overlay was a conventional way of saying "I am listen-

ing" rather than "I definitely agree."The category reach for similarity was defined as the claiming of com-

mon ground, in which a connection with the other, at least once re-

moved, is announced; in this case, a third person would be brought in

to connect with the other's experience. Examples included "You'refrom Los Angeles? I have an aunt who used to live down there," and

"One of my roommates is taking foreign languages, like you." The most

unusual reach in the study came from an extravert who said, "You have

a turtle? A friend of mine has a kitty!"

Another speech act, the story, was defined as a recounting of a specific

sequence of events; it had characters, was located in time and space, andbore the semblance of a plot. Sometimes a story was signaled by "Let

me tell you this story"; other times it was not. Generic recountings of

events (e.g., "I used to always go to matinee movies and they had great

popcorn") were to be excluded. Unlike the other categories, a story

could span as many utterances as deemed to be included therein.

The category pleasure talk was denned as an expression of satisfaction

or enjoyment of one's own activities. Examples included "I like jogging"and "Steinbeck is wonderful." To qualify in this category, an utterance

had to be a definite statement of satisfaction unweakened by a qualifier

Table 1

Reliability of Judgments of Speech Act Categories

Speech act category

ComplimentAgreeReach for similarityStoryPleasure talkProblem talkHedgeDisagree/criticize

Interjudgereliability'

.81

.80

.84

.54

.87

.87

.74

.67

Agreed-onfrequency

621648021

196316119

4

Note: N = 2l conversations.• Percentages (agreements over agreements plus disagreements).

or tag hedge; that is, statements such as, "I sorta like her," and "I like ita lot, well, not really" qualified as hedges, not pleasure talk.

The speech act problem talk was defined as an expression of dissatis-

faction with one's own activities. Examples included "Whenever I take

an English class it really messes me up," and "I've got to look for an

apartment because my roommates are driving me nuts." As with the

previous category, hedged evaluations were to be excluded.

The hedge was defined as an expression of a qualification, or an am-

bivalent evaluation, as in "The exam was kind of hard" or "I sort of like

her." Instances of the category were signaled by qualifiers such as "kind

of," "sort of," and "not too much." Such hedges seemed to serve the

function of avoiding commitment. Even such apparently factual hedges

as "It stays light in Denmark the whole time, well, not the whole time,

maybe except for about 15 minutes" seemed to serve a protective func-

tion by averting the possibility of a factual challenge and the eventuality

that one might appear unknowledgeable.The final category, termed disagree/criticize in this article, tended to

be called "dump" in the accounts, for it denoted direct disagreement

or an expression of utter distaste for the other's activities. For example,

a person says, "I'm studying microbiology," to which the other dumps,

"Oh yuck! I can't stand that stuff!"

With the exception of the story category, the coding unit for all cate-gories was an utterance, a sentence containing at least a subject (or im-

plied subject), a verb, and often a predicate. A key event coding system

was used; that is, utterances judged not to exemplify one of the catego-

ries were not coded. Categories were to be mutually exclusive. The cod-

ers worked independently and directly from the videotape, writing down

and categorizing each key event as it occurred. The protocols func-

tioned both as a summary of the content of each conversation, as well

as the basis for checking exactly what was coded (the specific utterance)

and into what category. The coding required about l'/2 hr per 10-min

conversation.

Twenty-one of the conversations were randomly selected and inde-

pendently coded a second time to assess interjudge agreement. The reli-

ability of each speech act category was assessed by dividing the total

number of agreements across instances of the category by the total num-

ber of agreements plus disagreements. Interjudge reliabilities for the cat-

egories ranged from 54% to 87% (Table 1). The disagree/criticize and

story categories were the least reliable and least frequently applied,

emerging no more than once per conversation on the average. The story

category yielded the least consensus, apparently due to different percep-

tions of where a story began and ended and of what constituted generic

versus specific events. Due to relative infrequency and unreliability, the

story and disagree/criticize categories were dropped, bringing the me-

dian reliability to 81% for the remaining categories (range = 74%to 87%).

Topic categories. Topic categories were developed to construct a mea-

sure of topic focus and to elaborate differences in what extraverts and

PRESS OF PERSONALITY 721

introverts talked about. Two speech acts, pleasure talk and problem

talk, were chosen as topic carriers because the utterances, by definition,

directly declared the speaker's own interests and concerns. All such ut-

terances were copied from the coding records and given to a panel of

judges to develop a list of topics. The panel settled on nine categories:school, current living situation, roots (family, hometown), extracurricu-

lar activities (hobbies, travel, etc.), health, employment, miscellaneous

people (not relatives, housemates, or teachers), psychological research,

and self-characterizations (e.g., "I'm rowdy," "I'm shy"). Interjudge re-

liabilities for each category (agreements over agreements plus disagree-

ments across a random sample of 21 conversations) were adequate,

ranging from 95% for school and psychological research to 71 % for self-

characterizations. A breakdown is presented in Table 2. It is interesting

to note that the most ambiguous topic category concerned what consti-

tuted a self-characterization, or personality description, and what did

not. Statements of attitudes and interests (e.g., school, hobbies, living

situation) were sometimes difficult to separate from dispositional state-

ments.

Talking time. Two measures of talking time were obtained: a sum-

mary rating and an ongoing tally. The summary rating was made imme-diately after coding a conversation; coders were asked to assign an inte-

ger of speaking time to each participant so that the integers summed to

10, the length in minutes of the conversation. To ensure that coders were

assessing talking time and not the number of utterances they had just

coded, a second set of judges obtained an ongoing tally. The judges used

two-channel Rusttrack event recorders, on which a stylus was manually

triggered for the duration of each person's speech. Judges were in-

structed not to count time spent laughing or time associated with single-

word affirmations of the other's statements. Interjudge reliabilities, as-

sessed by Pearson correlations, were .92 for the ongoing method and .80for the summary method. The two measures correlated (.89), uncor-

rected for attenuation. The magnitude of the correlation attests to the

validity of the more efficient summary ratings of talking time.

Results

Design of Analyses

Each woman spoke in two conversations, with a disposition-ally similar and dissimilar other. The arrangement approxi-mates a 2 (subject disposition) X 2 (partner disposition) facto-rial design with repeated measures on the second factor. How-ever, the factors are not strictly independent because subjectsalso serve as partners in matched cells (E/E, I/I), whereas theroles are separated in mixed cells. For the conversational mea-sures, independent t tests were conducted between the I/I and E/E dyads, the only independent cells. The extent to which styleschanged in mixed dyads was assessed by separate repeated mea-sures ; tests for introverted speakers (I with I, I with E) and forextraverted speakers (E with I, E with E). For the questionnairedata, repeated measures analyses of variance were used to assessthe influence of rater and target disposition on trait ratings.

Trait and Comfort Ratings

Cell means and results for analyses of variance on the traitand comfort ratings are presented in Table 3. Seven of the ninetrait ratings showed significant partner effects and nonsignifi-cant rater and interaction effects. Regardless of the dispositionof the rater, Myers-Briggs extraverts were viewed as relativelyoutgoing, cheerful, enthusiastic, and talkative, and introvertswere seen as reserved, serious, and shy. The findings presentedhere validate the method of subject selection. In addition, the

Table 2Reliability of Judgments of Topic Categories

Topic category

SchoolCurrent living situationRoots (family, hometown)Extracurricular activitiesHealthMiscellaneous peopleEmploymentPsychological researchSelf-characterizations

Interjudgereliability'

.95

.92

.94

.90

.93

.79

.88

.95

.71

Agreed-onfrequency

2127934711358212024

Note:N = 2\ conversations.' Percentages (agreements over agreements plus disagreements).

findings suggest that the customary neglect of the influence thatobserver dispositions have on trait ratings is of little conse-quence, at least in the domain of extraversion-introversion (e.g.,Thorne, 1981).

Effects for rater disposition, although rare, occurred for judg-ments of sociability and comfort. Introverts rated introvertedpartners as less sociable and less comfortable to be with, thanthey rated extraverted partners. Extraverts, on the other hand,reported feeling comfortable with both extraverted and intro-verted partners, and reported that both partners were sociable.This discrepancy may indicate that extraverts are simply morelikely to attribute a sociable attitude to any interaction partner,or that an actual change existed in introverts' behavior in thedirection of greater sociability with extraverts. Introverts' re-ports of greater comfort with extraverts than with introvertsseem to indicate that extraverts were not merely attributing so-ciability to introverts but were also eliciting it. This possibilitywill be explored in the analysis of speech acts.

No significant differences were obtained for ratings of aloof-ness. Mean ratings were highest, however, for the I/I cell. In thecontext of conversations between strangers, it apparently takestwo introverts to feel uncomfortable, appear unsociable, and,to some extent, seem aloof. The significant findings for aloof-ness in the prior research (Thorne, 1981) may have been due toa prevalence of introverted observers in those assessments.

Results for the buffer items were wholly consistent with previ-ous findings (Thorne, 1981). No significant partner, rater, orinteraction effects were obtained for ratings of artistic, boastful,conventional, intelligent, mature, obnoxious, sincere, or worry-ing: Fs(l, 50) ranged from .01 to 2.51,p> .10.

Talking Time

Results for the summary and ongoing measures of talkingtime were similar, but findings are reported for the ongoingmethod because it calibrates minutes instead of relative per-centages. Average minutes of talking time by type of speaker areshown in the first row of Table 4. The results of independent ttests between introverted and extraverted dyads and of repeatedmeasures t tests for introverted and extraverted individuals, arepresented in the last three columns of the table.

Table 4 shows that mean amounts of talking time were equalfor introverted and extraverted dyads, with no significant

722 AVRIL THORNE

Table 3

Means and Analyses of Variance for Trait and Comfort Descriptions

Cell means'

Rater introvert Rater extrovert F ratios

Variable

CheerfulEnthusiasticOutgoingTalkativeSociableAloofSeriousReservedShyComfort"

Fannerintrovert

3.02.72.62.93.22.73.63.63.12.9

Partnerextravert

3.83.63.73.94.12.23.02.82.43.7

Partnerintrovert

3.43.33.13.43.92.03.33.42.73.9

Partnerextravert

4.13.73.93.94.12.22.92.72.03.8

Rater

3.162.762.341.405.38*2.120.980.543.638.31"

Partner

18.64**"11.00**19.95***14.42***9.87**0.516.00*9.95**9.49**3.99*

Rater XPartner

0.422.020.311.154.24*3.000.380.050.014.78*

' Ratings ranged from very uncharacteristic (1) to very characteristic (5).b Self-rating.*p< .05,two-tailed. **p< .01,two-tailed.***p<.001, two-tailed.

changes in dispositionally mixed dyads. The finding of equal

talking time, although not particularly surprising in light of the

inconsistent results of previous research, does seem inconsis-

tent with interactants' ratings of extraverts as more talkative

than introverts (see Table 3). In the accounts, the term talkative

appeared to refer to the relative ease with which talk unfolded,

rather than the amount of talk per se; extraverts generally were

perceived as more skilled at getting and keeping a conversation

going. Measures of talking time that are sensitive to instances of

the initiation of speech, and to volume and other paralinguistic

features, may be more appropriate criteria for talkativeness

(Scherer, 1979).

Speech Acts2

A breakdown of speech act frequencies by type of speaker is

shown in Table 4. Also shown are the results of independent

and repeated measures / tests. No significant differences were

obtained for total number of utterances coded, a finding that

parallels the results for talking time. Significant differences were

obtained, however, for type of utterance. Contrasts of intro-

verted and extraverted dyads showed significantly more hedges

and problem talk for introverts and significantly more pleasure

talk, agreements, compliments, and to some extent, reaches for

similarity (p < .08) for extraverts. In addition, means for dispo-

sitional act frequencies were more extreme in dispositionally

similar than in mixed dyads. Extraverts showed more pleasure

talk, reaches for similarity, compliments, and agreements with

extraverts than with introverts. Introverts showed more hedges

and problem talk with introverts than with extraverts. Thus,

as expected, expressions of extraversion and introversion were

accentuated by a dispositionally similar partner.

The last two columns of Table 4 assess the extent to which

styles changed significantly from one situation to the next. In-

troverts showed significantly more problem talk when convers-

ing with an introvert than with an extravert. Extraverts showed

significantly more pleasure talk when conversing with an extra-

vert than with an introvert. Repeated measures / tests for the

other speech act categories, although tending to show changes

in the expected direction, were not statistically significant. The

strength of the findings for pleasure and problem talk indicates

that the accommodations that did occur entailed shifts in the

expression of satisfaction with the world at large, rather than

changes in tendencies to specifically connect self with other (i.e.,agree, compliment, reach for similarity).

Topic Focus and Content

Topic focus was measured by converting the number of utter-

ances in each topic category into ipsative percentages and by

summing the squares of the percentages. Higher numbers on

the index indicated greater topic focus. Results for this measure

are shown in the first row of Table 5. The remainder of the table

presents a breakdown by topic category.

A t test between matched dyads showed significantly greater

topic focus for introverts than for extraverts. The difference was

due largely to introverts' focusing on the most obvious similar-

ity, school. School was the only topic on which introverted pairs

tended to exceed extraverted pairs (p < .07). Extraverted dyads,

on the other hand, extended beyond school talk to talk about

extracurricular activities (p < .01) and to some extent, roots

(family matters and hometown; p < .08).

Topic focus was more moderate for speakers in mixed dyads.

However, the accommodation approached statistical signifi-

cance only for extraverts (p < .12). When talking with intro-

verts, extraverts narrowed their focus by talking significantly

less about extracurricular activities and roots than they had

with extraverts. Introverts, on the other hand, talked signifi-

cantly less about school and somewhat more about miscella-

2 Results for speech acts and topics are reported for frequencies nor-malized by square root transformations, although the results did notdiffer when raw frequencies were used.

PRESS OF PERSONALITY 723

Table 4

Means and t Tests for Speech Act Categories and Talking Time

Mean frequency

Variable

Total talking time (minutes)Speech act category (Frequencies)

Pleasure talkAgreeReach for similarityComplimentHedgeProblem talk

Total speech acts

II'

4.7

3.73.01.01.23.59.2

21.5

IE

4.5

4.13.8

.91.12.47.0

19.1

El

4.7

5.14.11.51.61.87.1

21.2

EE

4.7

7.64.81.72.01.95.8

23.8

II-EE

0.01

-3.48**-2.62*-1.83-2.09*

2.11*3.48**

-1.40

rb

II-IE

0.71

-0.22-0.90

0.180.051.812.56*1.41

EI-EE

0.35

-2.15*-1.08-0.62-1.06-0.13

0.61-1.42

Note. I = introvert; E = extravert.' First letter of each cell designates speaker disposition and the second letter designates partner disposition.b First column gives I values for independent t tests between I/I and E/E dyads (df= 50). Second and third columns give repeated measures t testsfor introverted and extraverted speakers (df= 25).*p < .05, two-tailed. **p < .01, two-tailed.

neous people (p < .20) with extroverts than they did with intro-verts. Talk about the research was more frequent in mixed dy-ads than it was in matched dyads, although this trend was onlysignificant for extraverted speakers. The increase in researchtalk in mixed dyads may have been caused by extraverts' at-tempts to elicit or respond to the introverts' apparent discom-fort about the camera and the situation in general. For intro-verts, this discomfort was perhaps easier to admit to a comfort-able extravert than to an equally uncomfortable introvert.

Across all conversations, self-characterizations ("I'm outgo-ing") were relatively rare. The infrequent use of trait descriptorsto characterize oneself concurs with earlier findings for writtenpersonality descriptions (Bromley, 1977). In light of the signifi-cant findings for other aspects of conversational style, it appears

that personality does not have to be named to be an importantaspect of communication.

Accounts

The accounts were not analyzed systematically because ofbase-rate problems in the frequency with which observationswere volunteered. The nondirective method by which the ac-counts were obtained, although not optimal from the stand-point of verification, was deemed necessary in this context ofdiscovery. Many of the most interesting observations concernedconstraints and strategies because such concepts moved beyondact frequencies to more generative conceptions of conversa-tional style.

TableSMeans and t Tests for Topic Focus and Content

Variable

Mean frequency

II' IE El EE II-EE II-IE EI-EE

Topic focusc

Topic content (frequencies)Extracurricular activitiesRoots (family, hometown)Miscellaneous peopleHealthSelf-characterizationsPsychological researchEmploymentCurrent living situationSchoolTotal

0.53

0.90.60.50.10.40.50.63.26.5

12.8

0.47

1.70.61.00.30.50.80.32.53.6

11.0

0.49

1.50.70.80.20.40.80.21.86.0

12.2

0.40

3.51.31.50.30.40.20.61.84.4

13.5

2.53*

-3.02**-1.81-1.63-0.65-0.11

1.21-0.17

1.211.88

-0.43

0.94

-1.000.10

-1.35-0.88-0.46-0.30

0.740.572.60*1.62

1.63

-2.34*-2.40*-0.94-0.30

0.172.43*

-1.490.631.01

-0.86

Note. I = introvert; E = extravert.* First letter of each cell designates speaker disposition and second letter designates partner disposition." First column gives I values for independent t tests between I/I and E/E dyads (df = 50). Second and third columns give repeated measures I testsfor introverted and extraverted speakers (df = 25).' See text for metric.* p < .05, two-tailed. ** p < .01, two-tailed.

724 AVRIL THORNE

Cited in the accounts were descriptions of what seemed to betwo kinds of constraints, context press and dispositional press,and of the strategies underlying dispositional press. Observa-tions about context press tended to be phrased in terms of basicobligations or rules of politeness. For example, one woman, inresponse to a query about why she pretended to agree with herpartner when she felt otherwise, said, "Oh, it isn't nice to dis-agree!" It appeared that the women in the study, regardless ofdisposition, shared an understanding of what was appropriatefor getting acquainted: to find common ground, to share equallyin talk, and to maintain the appearance of common ground re-gardless of whether such avowals were less than genuine. Thesecontext rules seem to explain two quantitative findings: that in-troverts talked as much as did extraverts and that overt disagree-ment was seldom expressed by introverts or extraverts.

Accounts of dispositional press highlighted the constraints onmood and topic imposed by each partner. For example, Karen,an introvert, described her sedentary secretarial job to bothpartners. The introverted partner merely nodded, and Karencontinued to describe the drudgery of her job. The conversationthen spiraled into what both introverts perceived as a solemnrut. The extroverted partner, on the other hand, responded toKaren's description of her job with a joke by saying, "You sit allday at your job? That sounds real interesting!" Karen confessedthat she did not then pursue the job topic any further because,"I thought if I told her right out that I hate my work, she wouldthink 1 was a negative person." Many of the introverts felt thatthe conversation with the extrovert was a breath of fresh air.Some extraverts, on the other hand, said they did not feel sopressed to say nice things and to refrain from complainingabout problems when talking with an introvert, as opposed toan extravert. In general, introverts seemed more relieved by theconversation with an extravert than did extraverts; the latterwere about evenly divided in their preferences for talking withone partner or the other.

How did subjects account for their own particular press? Thesituation was less comfortable for introverts, many of whomsaid they disliked talking with strangers and avoided it wheneverpossible. Given such a predicament, introverts tended to de-scribe themselves as falling back on roles with which they feltcomfortable. One frequently noted introverted strategy was totake the role of interviewer. By so doing, one could get a back-ground on the other and avoid having to express one's own in-terests and concerns. Another introvert role, that of adviser,sometimes was mentioned by introverts as used with other in-troverts. The prevalence of problem talk in introverted conver-sations was perhaps partly constituted by speakers alternatingthe role of adviser as each took her turn at elaborating difficul-ties.

Instead of describing a strategy geared toward establishing adivision of labor, some extraverts perfunctorily characterizedtheir style as pursuing a mutual and general background of in-terests, with the basic assumption that there were a number ofpossible interests in common (i.e., everyone has hobbies, goes toschool, lives somewhere, and comes from somewhere). Unlikeintroverts, who did not seem to assume much common groundwas possible, extraverts assumed a considerable amount of sim-ilarity; their main concern was to explore its extent. For exam-ple, some extraverts described reaches for similarity as naturalways of finding common ground in what to them was a rela-

tively small, pleasant world that is shared easily. Introverts whodescribed this tactic, on the other hand, were more attuned tothe hazards of reaches for similarity and were less inclined tomake a reach in the absence of information about the possibilityof shared ground. These differences in perceptions of reachesare merely suggestive, because the means for this act did notdiffer significantly. However, the accounts are interesting in lightof literature on self-presentational approaches to social anxiety(e.g., Arkin, Lake, & Baumgardner, 1986; Schlenker & Leary,1982).

Discussion

In this study, I sought to examine the mutual impact of extra-verts and introverts on conversational style. As expected, themost extreme conversational patterns occurred for disposition-ally matched pairs, with more moderate patterns occurring formixed pairs. Extraverts promoted upbeat and expansive con-versations, whereas introverts promoted more serious and fo-cused discourse. This overall finding supports the view that theexpression of a disposition creates a situation for the personwho encounters it. The findings also help to explain apparentinconsistencies in personality: Changes in conduct from oneconversation to the next were due to the interacting press ofpersonalities.

Although extraverted and introverted dyads differed acrossnumerous measures of conversational content and style, theacts showing significant accommodations in dispositionallymixed dyads were pleasure and problem talk, expressions ofaffect. The tendency to match each partner's predisposed emo-tional tone is perhaps not surprising, for it would seem difficultto have a conversation if one speaker were insistently upbeatand the other serious.

Although the expression of affect may be an especially evoca-tive aspect of personality, the link between extraversion-intro-version and affect requires conceptual clarification. Extraver-sion-introversion theory cannot readily account for why extra-verts, when left to their own devices, showed more positiveaffect than did introverts, both in this study and in previous,nontransactional, research (Costa & McCrae, 1980; Lishman,1972; Shapiro & Alexander, 1975). The differences in affectivecontent of the conversations may relate to the tension that ispresumed to accompany social anxiety or shyness (Cheek &Buss, 1981). Other concepts that seem relevant to the affectiveand attentional differences obtained in the study presented hereare the notions of obsessive and hysterical style, particularly intheir more recent formulations (e.g., Shapiro, 1965). Jung(1918/1969) showed an early interest in these styles, and hissubsequent formulations of introversion and extraversion weresomewhat derivative of his earlier work. The connection be-

tween extroversion-introversion and affect cannot, of course, bereadily understood by invoking yet another set of distinctions.However, future research might profitably integrate extraver-sion-introversion theories with theories about affect and emo-tional experience. Psychodynamic theories, for example, gener-ally hold that early affective experience importantly shapescharacter and that dispositions in adult life have the importantfunction of management, control, and expression of affectivelife.

My results not only highlight an important gap in extraver-

PRESS OF PERSONALITY 725

sion-introversion theory, but also help to fill in another gap, byelaborating the social niche and phenomenology of extravertsand of introverts. Extiaverts' claims of similarity and esteem,and their promotion of comfortable social relations, suggest theniche of catalyst of sociability. The assumption of this socialrole seems to express an underlying expectation that experiencecan and should be shared. Introverts, on the other hand, re-ported that they fell back on the roles of interviewer or, in somecases, that of adviser. These roles require the elicitation of theother's world more so than the mutual construction and en-dorsement of shared worlds. The mutual discomfort of intro-verts appeared to be caused by the situated incompatibility oftheir role preferences. Both members of a dyad cannot be inter-viewers unless the role is alternated, and such alternationswould seem difficult to achieve within the confines of a briefconversation. The interviewer role in particular seems to ex-press an underlying expectation that experience cannot beshared so much as appreciated as different. A similar notion ofintroversion was proposed by Shapiro & Alexander (1975) in astudy of TAT responses.

A conception of extraversion-introversion as differing as-sumptions of commonality and as differing social niches orroles helps to account for the different kinds of demands thatintroverts and extraverts make and for the particular quality oftheir rapport. The framework is particularly useful for elaborat-ing introversion, which until the present study has been primar-ily conceived as an asocial, and sometimes antisocial, disposi-tion.3 The formulation may not, however, generalize to moreintimate social relations. Although studies of the quality oflong-term relations between extraverts and introverts have yetto be done, it seems unlikely that introverts presume that theyare different from all others. In addition, introverts do not al-ways dislike each other's company; in fact, studies of assortativemating suggest the opposite (Cattell & Nesselroade, 1967). It ispossible that the concepts of extraversion and introversion havea limited focus of convenience. The concepts may be most use-ful to understand how people characteristically influence gen-eral social encounters, whereas other dispositional conceptsmay be more useful to understand individual differences inmore intimate relationships.

From the perspective of past studies of extraversion and intro-version, the most relevant contribution of this study is an ac-count of the nonsignificant differences for talking time. Thefinding appeared to be due to the press of the dyadic context,which seemed to obligate each speaker in the pair to assume anequal share of the load. This obligation would presumably nothave been felt in triads or larger groups. For example, one of theintroverts said, "I was hoping you would put us in a group so Icould just sit back and take it easy." The few subjects who spokea large amount of the time were described in the accounts asimpolite, as violating what appeared to be a generally perceivedrule to share equally in talk. The equal talk imperative, as wellas the apparent taboo on disagreement, may have been accentu-ated by the fact that all of the speakers were women (Maltz &Borker, 1983;Miell&LeVoi, 1985).

The apparent imperative to share equally in talk and to sub-merge difference, however, was achieved differently by extra-verts and introverts. Extraverts actively claimed commonground and used compliments and agreements to pry it loose.Introverts maintained common ground by sticking to the most

obvious similarity—the problems of studenthood—and byhedging their assertions with phrases such as "kind of" and"sort of." Future research could profit from a more systematicexamination of context press and of the alternative ways bywhich its imperatives can be met. Such research would entailexamining relations between context press and dispositionalpress, the ways in which similarities and differences areachieved.

A final comment concerns implications for transactional re-search, specifically for the conception and measurement of per-sonality as expressed through acts. First, the finding that talk-ative did not refer transparently to the duration of speech dic-tates caution in translating dispositional terminology intobehavioral acts (cf. Block, 1968; Craik, 1979). Second, the highcorrelation found between ongoing tallies and summary ratingsof talking time (r = .89, uncorrected for attenuation) suggeststhat future behavioral research could be less time-consuming.Ongoing tallies were used because of an existing controversy, atthe time the study was conceived, about the relevance of sum-mary behavioral ratings for what people "actually do" (e.g.,Block, Weiss, & Thorne, 1979; Shweder, 1975). However, thefindings presented here, as well as those of previous research onactivity level (Buss, Block, & Block, 1980) and those on expres-sions of disapproval and assertiveness (Wish, D'Andrade, &Goodnow, 1980), indicate that summary behavior ratings donot necessarily sacrifice accuracy for efficiency. Finally, transac-tional studies can benefit from the collection and from moresystematic analysis of interactants' accounts (Carlson, 1984;Ickes, Robertson, Tooke, & Teng, 1986; Peterson, 1979; Thorne,1985). The value of these naive commentaries for conceptualiz-ing the press of personality, the press of the general context, andthe niches or role possibilities within it, was unanticipated. Al-though there is reason to believe that people sometimes tell usmore than they can possibly know (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977),another maxim seems true for studies of human interaction:People know more than they have customarily been asked totell.

3 The distinction Cheek & Buss (1981) proposed between nonshyness

and sociability essentially separates the ability to be sociable (nonshy-

ness) from the preference to be sociable (sociability). The present con-

ception of extraversion as an assumption that experience can and should

be shared combines the ability aspect (can) and the preference aspect

(should). The conception is thus consistent with Cheek & Buss's view

that extraversion is a superordinale construct that includes nonshynessas well as sociability.

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Received July 9,1985Revision received March 4, 1987

Accepted March 30, 1987 •