Enhancing Post-Covid Well-being of University Students Through Intentional Extraversion

A growing branch of literature suggests the use of state extraversion - a momentary level of extraversion, achieved through intentionally acting extraverted - as a well-being intervention. It was therefore studied in how far intentionally acting extraverted can enhance students’ well-being in the recovery process of the pandemic and how far the intervention’s duration influences its effectiveness. This research applied a randomised controlled trial and manipulated the levels of state extraversion through daily behavioural challenges (n = 25). The experience sampling method was used to assess the participants’ well-being and state extraversion after completing the daily challenges. The experimental group engaged in this intervention for 14 days and was compared to a control group. The analyses using linear mixed models revealed that although the manipulation through the behavioural challenges worked, the students’ well-being was not enhanced over the timeframe of two weeks. Still, well-being increased for completing the challenges and behaving more extraverted for the experimental group on a daily level. These results suggest that manipulating state extraversion through behavioural challenges works, but that well-being might be a too broad construct and rather has a small direct relationship with state extraversion. In addition, habituating to the challenge seems to influence the well-being increase and the participants’ trait extraversion does not seem to moderate the effect of the intervention on well-being.