Relationship between Extraversion and Delay Discounting of Social Interactions

Abstract

Extraversion is often conceptualized as the degree to which a person engages in social activities. A person with a high degree of extraversion is thought of as being more likely to engage in social interactions and a person with a low degree of extraversion is thought of as being less likely to engage in social interactions. Delay discounting, a behavioral measure, reflects how the value of a commodity decreases as time to its receipt increases. A discounting measure of social interactions would yield behavioral data as to how an individual values social interactions. The current research addresses three important questions: 1) Can a subjective value be applied to delay discounting of social interactions? 2) Will discounting occur for social interactions as it has been observed for other commodities? 3) Is a behavioral measure of extraversion correlated with a personality inventory measure of extraversion?