LECTURE NOTES 3

Extraversion:
Enthusiasm &
Assertiveness
Lecture Notes 3

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson 

 LECTURE NOTES 3

This lecture covers the first of the Big Five personality traits: ​extraversion​.

In terms of behavior, people who are high in extraversion are sociable, fun-loving, talkative, and
spontaneous. People who are low in extraversion (also known as introversion) are reserved,
inhibited, quiet, and aloof. This trait is normally distributed, meaning that most people fall
somewhere in between these two extremes.

Dr. Peterson also discusses the concept of delay discounting, the functions of positive emotion,
and what happens when there is an excess of positive emotion.

What is extraversion?

Extraversion is the tendency to experience positive emotion. It’s composed of two

aspects: enthusiasm and assertiveness, which are two correlated, but distinct, subsets
of behavior.​ Enthusiastic people talk a lot, make friends easily, smile more often, and more
quickly reveal their feelings. Assertive people take charge, influence people, lead the way, and
like to share their opinions.

To understand extraversion, it helps to understand the psychological problem extraversion helps

us solve, which is ​how much to value the present​. High extraversion and low extraversion are
two different solutions to this problem. In some environments, high extraversion is the best
solution while low extraversion is better in others.

Because we solve the problem of how to weigh the present against the future with our
temperaments, it’s helpful to think about this at the population level. A population of humans
with a normally distributed tendency to experience positive emotion about the present is likely to
be able to handle the changing environment and therefore adapt to their current situation.

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson 

 LECTURE NOTES 3

Why do enthusiasm and assertiveness influence our social behavior

so strongly?

Some of the strongest human rewards are social in nature, meaning they are due to affiliation
and status. ​Enthusiasm as motivation for affiliation and assertiveness is motivation for
social status.​ Although social behavior is one of the most obvious cues to a person’s
extraversion, extraverts also tend to pursue negative rewards like sex, drugs, and gambling.

Delay Discounting: Valuing the Present Versus Valuing the Future

Delay discounting is a research method used to determine how much people value the present
over the future. In delay discounting experiments, people are asked whether they would like a
small amount of money now or a larger amount of money in the future. Their answers reveal
how much they value the present over the future.

The probability with which you can predict what the future will look like decreases with its
distance from the present. To account for this, we’re biased in varying degrees toward the
present. Extraverts value the present more highly and tend to discount the future more, while
the opposite is true of introverts.

Positive and Negative Emotion

If extraversion is positive emotion, neuroticism is negative emotion. These emotions

represent separate systems in the brain.​ ​Consider the following complementary questions:
How happy should you be when things are going well? How upset should you be when things
are going wrong? ​Fundamentally, there is no right answer to these questions. Best practices
change depending on the environment, which explains why variation in these traits has
persisted.

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson 

 LECTURE NOTES 3

What are the functions of positive and negative emotion?

Positive and negative emotion help orient you as you work toward achieving your goals.
Your mind acts as a series of maps that specify a journey. These maps help you perceive goals
and aims, understand where you are, and calculate a path forward. Positive and negative
emotion function to help you understand your location relative to your goals and to motivate you
toward or away from them. We perceive those emotions as a measure of how effective and valid
the map is.

We calibrate our emotions, both positive and negative, based on the emotions of those around
us. The optimal state of being, however, is not to be happy or to maximize positive emotion.
Instead, the goal is to be appropriately happy based on current circumstances. Additionally,
studies have shown that humans don’t crave happiness, but freedom from suffering (which are
two separate concepts).

What happens when there is too much positive emotion?

People who are extremely high in extraversion can struggle with impulsive and risky behavior,
including gambling, drugs, and unprotected sex. Because they value the present so highly,
they’re wired to exploit it, often at the expense of the future. Extreme extraverts act almost
exclusively in pursuit of current impulses.

Key Takeaways

1. Extraversion is the Big Five personality trait associated with positive emotion and is
composed of two aspects: enthusiasm and assertiveness.
○ Extraverted individuals know how to lead and tend to be the first to act in any
given situation. They can also keep their head in a crisis and are highly
persuasive.

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson 

 LECTURE NOTES 3

○ Individuals low in extraversion (introverts) don’t like talking about themselves,

rarely get excited, don’t show their feelings easily, and tend to hold back.
2. Traits associated with Assertiveness:
○ Take charge
○ Have a strong personality
○ Talent for influencing people.
○ Know how to captivate people
○ See myself as a good leader
○ Can talk others into doing things.
○ The first to act
3. Traits associated with Enthusiasm:
○ Makes friends easily
○ Reveal everything about myself
○ Warm up quickly to others
○ Show my feelings when I’m happy
○ Have a lot of fun
○ Laugh often
4. Traits associated with Extraversion:
○ They’re sociable
○ Fun-loving
○ Affectionate
○ Friendly
○ Spontaneous
○ Talkative
○ Make eye contact
○ Drawn to sales and personnel work like nursing and teaching
○ Impulsive
○ Gamble more
5. Personality traits are highly genetically influenced.

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson 

 LECTURE NOTES 3

6. Motivations establish goals, while emotions keep you on track. More specifically, positive
emotion moves you forward toward desired goals, while negative emotions can cause
you to stop or move backward.
7. We solve the problem of how much to value the present with our positive emotion
system. Experiments involving delay discounting can measure how we value these
different points in time.
○ Extraverts tend to value the present more than the future.
○ Introverts tend to value the future more than the present.
8. The optimal state of being is not to be happy or to maximize positive emotion. Instead,
the goal is to be appropriately happy based on current circumstances. Additionally,
studies have shown that humans don’t crave happiness, but freedom from suffering
(which are two separate concepts).

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson 

 LECTURE NOTES 3

Additional Reading and Material

● Delay Discounting (mentioned 9:21):
○ Studies:
■ Delay Discounting: I’m a k, You’re a k ​(free)
■ Experimental Manipulations of Delay Discounting & Related Processes
(free)
■ Delay Discounting: Concepts and Measures​ (free)
○ Videos:
■ The Present and Future of Delay Discounting​ (free)
■ The Marshmallow Test​ (free)
● The Development of Emotion in Left and Right Hemispheres (mentioned 40:18)
○ Studies:
■ The Neural Basis of Optimism and Pessimism​ (free)
■ An fNIRS Research on Prefrontal Cortex Activity Response to Pleasant
Taste​ (free)
■ Taste-related activity in the human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex​ (paid)

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson