An Introvert’s Perspective Is...
Wanting to be Far from the Madding Crowd.
Being an introvert is not a choice or an affliction, but I think it often gets misinterpreted as one, or the other, or both. So here is my description of how the world rolls for those of us who see the world through a different lens. For those of you who are extroverts, I hope this post makes some otherwise perplexing social preferences of introverts make more sense to you.
Society defaults to the extroverts. Approximately 60-75% of our herd are extroverts. Being outgoing and friendly, energetic and very busy is what our current culture treats as normal, healthy and desirable. Those traits are strong in extroverts. Most of us expect those we interact with in business and retail to project those sterling qualities. We don’t care if the clerk is truly “happy” to help us, but we expect them to say that they are and we like them for it when they do.
Our culture celebrates extroverts. They seek attention and social media rewards them. Extroverts thrive in social media because they want lots of friends and social media encourages them to collect as many as they can. Social media even helps extroverts to keep score by counting and displaying how many likes and followers one has.
Maximizing likes and followers appears to be its own goal. Maybe there aren’t a lot of besties among the collector’s “friend”s, but having lots of hits and likes is what matters to get a good dopamine hit.
Liking someone’s post so that they will like yours isn’t friendship or even an honest reaction to your post. Likes are given to get them making them meaningless. Back scratching to get back scratching.
Introverts and extroverts are contrasting personality types. The concept of these two types was introduced in 1910 by Carl Gustav Jung, He described these personalities as being on a continuum with extroverts and introverts at opposite ends of the scale. (See graph below)
For the record, introversion is not the same thing as being shy. Introversion is a personality trait and shyness is an emotional response. Introverts aren’t all shy and extroverts can be shy. Introverts don’t need to live in a cloud of friends.
I am not anti-social, I’m just not very social. Less is more for me. Too much humanity close at hand is a lot of work. I don’t fear groups or crowds, I just don’t like being in them. I can love mankind more easily than most of the individuals that comprise humanity.
Being in a group doesn’t excite me the way it seems to excite extroverts. I lived in Indianapolis for 25 years and never attended the legendary Indy 500 auto race where 350,000 people congregate once a year. I did go to see the carburetor trials, because these micro-events interested me—you could get much closer to the cars and almost no one else was there. I enjoyed seeing the cars and drivers without being buffeted by people milling around, crawling over each other to get to seats, spilling food and incessantly talking.
I was quite lucky to have had an opportunity to ride around the 500 track on my bike. My son and I went with my bike club to ride laps on the famous track with its banked turns. A unique experience for me and a very big deal for a 10 year old. There was no crowd there that day.
An introductory social gathering, e.g., meet-and-greet or cocktail party, is time badly spent for me. And you should not be surprised that I have never been to a rock concert. I love music, but not being embedded among hysterical devotees. Music can move me deeply, but it doesn’t do that to me.
I don’t really care to exchange boasts and to schmooze with people I am not likely to ever see again or have nothing in common with. I don’t want to boast or try to impress the other guest any more than I want to talk about personal matters with them.
The subtext of most meet-and-greets is the human equivalent of what dogs do when they encounter a new dog at the dog park. Everyone is sizing up everyone else, who is with whom, who projects success (money) who do I need to connect with.
Class reunions are little more than this. Who made it big, who looks old, who got fat, did she have a facelift? Reminisce? That’s the pretext. The kids who didn’t have a good time in school usually don’t attend reunions, so the popular crowd compare their successes and rag a bit on the losers who aren’t present.
An introvert’s recurring worst nightmare—being imprisoned on a cruise ship to nowhere. Caged with thousands of strangers with only a tiny cabin as a retreat and you are probably sharing it. At ports you and your thousands of new very close friends will all invade the tourist traps and canned tours together. Crowds, noise and commercial gaiety—not serene. I’d rather read a book or visit that spot with people I know.
Introversion, like intelligence, autism and skin color is not bi-modal. Being an introvert is neither good nor bad, but if I were offered a red or the blue pill to become an extrovert, I’d definitely decline. The extrovert’s life looks superficial and chaotic to me and I’ll bet that my life looks boring to an extrovert. Vive la différence!
Assuming I was a typical introvert, I took an online quiz by Psychology Today of twenty questions purporting to sort introverts from extroverts. I repeated the test 3 weeks later and got similar results confirming it hadn’t taken the first test on a particularly good or bad day. Here’s the test I took, Introversion/Extroversion .
As you can see, I am way into the introvert camp—I should be the flag bearer for this group when it becomes an Olympic event. Perhaps my score indicates that you should consider my view of how an introvert sees the world as a bit extreme rather than archetypal. If you think you might straddle the Introvert/Extrovert divide, you are an “Ambivert.”
Since our culture now tells us that we no longer have failings, deficiencies or faults, introversion can be my excuse for whatever I did, or didn’t, do that is earning me opprobrium. It’s not my fault; it is my nature.😍 I declare myself a misunderstood member of an under-represented minority who needs forgiveness, benefits and, let’s talk reparations.
I believe most dogs are extroverts and most cats are introverts.
A manifesto for introverts! One definition that helped me a lot is the one that talks about how introverts gain energy when they are not in social settings, and extroverts get charged up by social encounters. That is an exact description of what happens with me and my energy levels and feels to me like it's a foundational component of our preferences regarding being around others. We aren't misanthropes, we aren't antisocial, we aren't necessarily shy or lacking in social graces. But we have wiring that requires quiet and space and solitude.