Are People Becoming More Extraverted?

Is that a strange question? Perhaps to those who view personality as largely hard-wired. But anyone who believes the environment shapes who we become will find it worth exploring. And this isn’t idle speculation. We do have data, even if it can be read in more than one way.

Before tackling the question, two things need clarifying: what we mean by Extraversion, and what might influence how it is expressed.

What Exactly Is Extraversion?

Personality measures usually break Extraversion into facets such as sociability, assertiveness, social confidence, warmth, communication and action-orientation. These behaviours tend to cluster together, though there’s debate about whether they arise from a single cause or simply form a useful bundle.

Jung, who coined the term, saw Extraversion as a fundamental orientation: some people draw energy from the outer world, while introverts draw it from their inner one. This framework doesn’t dictate how Extraversion looks in behaviour - it just describes the underlying style that might lead to various expressions. Crucially, it allows room for both nature and nurture, and for changes in outward behaviour even if the core disposition stays stable.

Is Extraversion Being Expressed Differently Today?

Our own data - collected from school pupils, university students and working adults - shows a consistent pattern: younger groups report higher Extraversion. My early interpretation was developmental. Teenagers often display “extraverted” behaviours (or at least believe that they prefer them) because of a powerful need to belong, not necessarily because they’re natural extraverts. As people age, I reasoned, they gravitate toward environments that match their true preferences, leading to lower Extraversion scores overall.

But the data is cross-sectional. The differences might not reflect maturation (i.e. becoming more accepting of one’s inner nature) but rather some fundamental changes in culture.

What Could Be Driving the Change?

One possibility lies in how modern life crowds out quiet moments. Attention spans appear to be shrinking, and periods of boredom - once fertile ground for reflection -are increasingly filled by screens and stimuli. If introversion is partly rooted in a habit of turning inward, then less practice means weaker skill. The culture may not be changing who people are, but it may be reshaping how comfortably they access their inner world. However, many of the major personality questionnaires focus on the relational expression of extraversion – and it may be that this is going the other way since screen time may be reducing relationship building time.

So, Are We Becoming More Extraverted?

Perhaps - but not necessarily in our underlying temperament. What seems clearer is that our environment now rewards constant stimulation, visibility and rapid engagement. In such a world, behaviours that look extraverted become more common, whether or not they reflect a person’s underlying personality.

In conclusion.

We may not be becoming more extraverted by nature, but we are becoming more extraverted by habit – at least as defined by the inner versus outer-world focus. When culture trains us to look outward rather than inward, the expression of Extraversion shifts - sometimes enough to make it seem like the trait itself is changing.