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I know "introvert" is an important part of many people's identity, so I don't want to bash that, but this article[0] and some long talks with someone who didn't believe that "introvert" was a thing definitely increased my overall happiness.

TL;DR most people think of introvert/extrovert on one dimension, but in fact some people are both (happy alone, happy in groups) and others are neither (unhappy alone, unhappy in groups). So it makes more sense to think of it as two dimensions (some nice charts in article to visualise this).

Since reading this article I've tried to become more "extrovertable".

Not for everyone - for many it might be best to focus on a single dimension, but it's helped me thinking about it in 2 dimensions and explicitly practicing becoming better at both "skills".

[0] https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/there-are-no-such-things-a...

3 comments

Part of the issue is that many people don't really understand what introvert/extrovert really means. It's not about being happy alone or in groups, at all. It's about the "energy" you have, the opposite side is being tired as if you were riding roller coasters for hours. Extroverts "recharge" while socializing while introverts lose energy with (most kinds of) company, no matter how much they're enjoying it.

Knowing this, I think it's pretty obvious introverts can learn and appear as extroverts, but eventually they hit a point where they have to say "bye" and be alone doing nothing productive for a while.

Did you read the article? It discusses energy at length.

Yes but I found the definition I gave much more helpful to explain to people as an starting point, in one sentence or two. It helps dispel the relationship with happiness, (in)ability to change and other false dichotomies.

OK but you're skipping over the central point that the energy drain disappears as a person grows more "skilled" in extroversion. You're welcome to disagree, but your comment is closer to ignoring the entire debate than addressing it :)

I'm not sure that's true. There are alternative possibilities: That one learns to predict (some kinds of) people. That one's obsessed with a series of topics that gets oneself bored when not being able to discuss, etc. There's many, many small reasons an introvert's energy is depleted, that is not just "being with people".

As an anecdotal data point, I was very introvert and I did learn to "be extrovert" and many people wouldn't notice at all, but at the end of the day I need to be alone, sometimes for days to recover and be productive again.

Even though it's anecdotal I think we can't generalize and say "introversion doesn't exist". There's a lot of factors involved. Stuff may be even more complex when dealing with an ASD.

I understand from where you are coming from. But the very point that it takes a lot of effort to be "extrovertable" is an issue. I have tried this and on the weekends where i "extroverted" myself, I feel pretty exhausted by Sunday night and dread the Monday mornings.

Perhaps, I might lie in that "unhappy everywhere" group... but I think I was pretty happy in college around the bunch of other like-minded friends. It's just that those happiness activity metrics might not best match with society's generally accepted metrics. But now that I am more aligned to general things "happy" people do, I usually find myself more aloof and unhappy along with usually tired feeling with all the "extroversion". Have practiced enough for years (especially being a founder of a company now), but it's still pretty tiring :(

Also mostly the happiness experienced in such situations is often temporary and bonds formed are feeble, as I can't keep up the "extroversion" for too long and soon become boring for a lot of people, so I am actually trying to move away from that now :)

Yes! Thank you! I hesitate to commit to prolonged social situations because I know that if I hit the wall and run out of "extroversion energy" I will certainly "become boring" unless I magically find someone with whom communication is magically easy, a situation that is exceedingly rare.

I would rather people experience me as "elsewhere" than "boring" and I especially dislike when I internalize others' perception and start seeing myself as boring, too.

It's all so complicated.

Yeah the fact that society values the extroversion skill more, even to the point where alcohol abusers are "cooler" than people sitting alone working for years on end to solve society's problems, is pretty shitty.

Anyway, it's a topic that interests me a lot, so feel free to connect (twitter, email in my profile) if you want to chat about it.

Sorry, but that article's really annoying.

He accuses people of misunderstanding the terms "introversion" and "extroversion" but does the same thing himself by associating them with the stereotypical behavior that we commonly think of rather than the underlying neurological differences. Those differences are real (dopamine vs acetylcholine, different blood flow patterns in the brain) and appear to be linked to genetics [1] [2]. Yes, the terminology both in common use and within Psychology is imprecise and often misapplied, but that doesn't mean that there aren't actual differences.

He dismisses the "energy" interpretation as a simple matter of fatigue from undeveloped skills. I haven't seen any research that supports that or indicates that individuals can change their fundamental reaction to external/internal stimulus through practice and effort. Ie, an introvert can learn to work a crowd and present as an extrovert, but afterwards they will be exhausted compared to a true extrovert.

I do agree that the positive external traits that we typically associate with each (sociability, friendliness, assertiveness vs ability to focus on solo tasks without becoming bored) are enabled by skills that anyone can learn no matter where they are on the introversion/extroversion spectrum and people shouldn't give up just because they find it hard. But an introvert will have a fundamentally harder time developing the social skills and will need to recuperate afterwards (and same for an extrovert with solo skills). I don't think it's productive or helpful to encourage the "just toughen up, buttercup" dismissive approach.

1: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0926641005... 2: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/32/50/18087.short