October 6, 2025
Dr. El-Shaimaa Talaat Abumandour
Every one of us has unique personality characteristics, which are definitely like fingerprints. Sometimes we inherit close individual characteristics from our parents and ancestors, like inheriting genes, but never identical ones. From my point of view, our characteristics, manners, and/or behavior are shaped and influenced by many factors, like our nurture, roots, origin, education, and cultural context. Additionally, one of the key factors that shapes, illuminates, and changes our mindsets is reading and the passion to learn and be literate. On the other hand, other characteristics are more or less like natural personal traits. The most widely described and stated personality traits in psychological research are called the Big Five personality traits, or OCEAN, as the common acronym, which include Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism [3, 4]. Each one of us possesses different levels of these key factors that influence our opinions, choices, and actions.
In this article, I would like to highlight the extraversion personality trait and its effect on everyone of us. Extraversion could be defined as the way we deal with the external world and the level of being energetic, talkative, interactive, self-confident, and outgoing around others. “Extraversion” could also be written with a different spelling, like “Extroversion”. Both are interchangeable and reflect the same meaning.
Extraversion has a number of sub-traits that shape and define the way we deal with the external society. Psychologists usually classify these sub-traits into six main categories:
Friendliness (kindliness) is a proactive behavior toward others, which is the tendency to socialize, being cheerful, sincere, helpful, kind, and warm.
Gregariousness is the fondness of being accompanied by people rather than being alone.
Assertiveness, which includes leadership qualities such as the ability to lead, make fast and right decisions, be confident, take charge, have high self-esteem, take initiative, and make things happen rather than waiting for them to occur.
Activity level is the measure of the energy levels throughout the day, from being busy and active to reaching the recharge point.
Excitement-seeking is the term that describes the happiness in taking risks, intense experiences and sensations, and looking for adventures.
Cheerfulness (cheeriness) is the capability to feel and reflect positive vibes and attitudes like optimism, happiness, liveliness, and enthusiasm and the ability to stay positive even in hard situations.
Extraversion includes two personality types: the introverted and extroverted tendencies. It is worth noting that both types are not classified to say that one is black and the other is white, or one is good and the other is bad. However, extroversion is the wide spectrum between both types, the introvert and the extrovert, and each one of us can find her/himself anywhere in between. Understanding both types of personalities and the traits associated with each of them is quite essential and can help us develop ourselves and enhance our interaction with others. In general, the extrovert personality is very energetic and enthusiastic when surrounded by people and gatherings. This type of personality flourishes and recharges by being with others, and when their acquaintance circle is wider. They are easygoing, fast decision-takers, and thrive and illuminate in teams. The total opposite is the introvert personality, who prefers spending time in quiet and solitude. They find their rest in a calm environment where they can recharge and think better. They could be seen as more reserved. Unfortunately, this type of personality could be misjudged in some communities because of a lack of psychological literacy.
In the next article, we will get deeper into the extraversion trait and the effect of its qualities on our lives. Finally, extraversion is a wide-spectrum concept that specifies how we deal with others, the community, and the world in our daily lives. Starting from being highly extroverted and social to being introverted and reserved, these are the two extremes, and most of us exist somewhere in between.
For more read
Personality traits, introverts, extroverts and everything in between | by Emms | Curious | Medium
Women of Egypt Network 
This was a very interesting read and useful in project leadership 😊
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