Numerous studies have found that people who are natural extroverts tend to be happier than shyer types, but introverts can get a hedonic boost simply by faking it, it appears. And there doesn’t seem to be a downside. After determining participants’ dispositions through questionnaires, psychologists assigned 117 people to three-person teams and gave them two make-work tasks (ranking the usefulness of tools after a wintertime plane crash, and planning a group day trip). Some participants were assigned to act boldly and assertively; others to be reserved and passive; still others (the control group) received no advice about how to act. Queried later, group members confirmed that people did, in fact, act as they were told to. Whatever their innate tendencies, the people who acted like extroverts enjoyed the task the most, according self-reports, and they also seemed to be enjoying themselves, according to participants. The researchers had thought that acting against type would cause... - × × ×