Introversion and extroversion need to go.

[Jan Krüger]

This was going to be a reply in the thread Some thoughts on introversion, but I got a little carried away and now I think this is a separate topic. It's ironic how I kept thinking this would be the last forum I'd start a thread in... now it's the first.

Much of this post came to me exactly the moment I started writing it, so I'll be interested to see what you think about it. Regardlessly, I hope that it can be helpful to some of you, as well as to myself, in raising awareness of ourselves and the rest of the world, by sharing what I just became aware of about introversion and all that.


I thought for a long time that I was an introvert.
I was prone to getting very tired in groups larger than, say, four people. I still am, much of the time.
Solitude was much better. Still is. It's not good, though. If left to my own devices for too long ("too long" is a wildly changing timespam), I will become bored and even apathetic. I will resist going out, too, because I won't feel like doing *anything*. I have to trick myself into going out.

Let's leave it at that for a minute. Crowds? Terribly straining. Solitude? Okay but not sufficient. What's the logical conclusion to draw? Introversion or at least mostly introversion.

Now then. I can deal with few people very well. I even like doing so very much, provided I know these people well (more about that later). Going to university or work (part-time job) and being around colleagues or friends leaves me energized (if I subtract the work and long journey bits). That's like the textbook definition of extroversion. Hmmm.

Additionally, I am a member of a hobby choir that meets every week for practice. It took me quite a while to feel at ease there, but now I love it. And it's not just the singing (which was the original reason I went there, of course), but also the being around those people. We're usually around 20 people there. I hear the ominous sound of extroversion whooshing by.

Work and choir is each Friday, due to university schedule. I feel most down at the start of the week, unconditionally looking forward to Friday. Right now I realize the concept of introversion just doesn't work for me.

But does extroversion?
I don't think it's likely that I'd be happy if I was around good friends all the time. There have been occasions were I was able to. Eventually, ideas would start turning up that I absolutely had to ponder, and I got bored with talking. I got back to my room to work on them and forget all about those other people, until I grew bored again.
Also, picture me around the same people I enjoy being around during practices, but now after a performance, in a supposedly relaxing evening to celebrate. Lots of cluster forming with people talking about whatever. You'll see me heading off as soon as is polite.

The point is that labels like introversion and extroversion hide away parts of yourself. You don't act the same in all circumstances. Ignore that and you reduce your awareness of who you really are. Additionally, these differences in your actions have causes in yourself, and you're ignoring those too, and all the subtle interactions between all those traits of yourself.

Let's look into causes, briefly. I have certain issues with trusting people. The story behind that doesn't really matter anymore. I also have issues with rejection. Same goes for that. I don't think I need to explain the consequences.

I knew these issues before, but this insight casts them in a new light, and forces me to adjust my rating of their relevance. Apart from that, I am now closer to seeing that they are by no means static, and that's a good thing. Right? Right.
Another subtle change is that now that I can understand my interpretation of myself in terms of introversion. Everything actually becomes much clearer even if I really took away abstraction (namely introversion/extroversion). Whether this is just another illusion remains to be seen, of course.

So, in short, there are many different kinds of communication and exchange, and I propose to using the terms introversion and extroversion carefully when talking about individuals.
I take the same stance towards shyness and so on, but I suppose you've got to start somewhere.

All that said: have an exciting journey.

[Scorpio]

It's true, Introversion / Extroversion is a largely misleading false-dichotomy. Most people fall somewhere in the middle.

It's not so much whether you're more of an introvert or more of an extrovert. Rather that a certain level of 'introversion' can cause you to have social problems. If you have any of this bad, socially unhelpful 'introversion' in you, you may want to work on it.

[Jan Krüger]

I don't think introversion should generally be considered unhelpful. It's just different: you prefer being alone over being with people (basically).
I think you're actually talking about shyness, which means having trouble being with people. Shyness is an internal conflict by itself, introversion isn't. That doesn't say you can't make it into one if you choose to.

No, really, I don't just want to get rid of the extremes of introversion vs. extroversion in individual considerations. I want the whole scale gone. (And don't get me started about systems of scales like MBTI, Big Five and all that...)
Scales of this sort were made to be tools for understanding things. The downside is that when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail (and how I love this saying...).

[Michael Chui]

Worth pointing out is that peter posted this link, which points out the introversion and extraversion are far larger concepts than most people realize:
Socionics :: Extraversion / Introversion

I am personally a hardcore introvert. I dislike interacting with people, but I love a great conversation (something I haven't quite learned to initiate). I don't see bodies when I interact with people; I see minds (or lack thereof). Bodies are things you lust after or size up, to me, and I don't consider either detail a priority.

Social ineptitude is not a quality you'd ascribe me so easily, today. (It would have worked fine years ago, though.) I love people: individual people. Masses of faceless strangers I bend away from. I take pride in walking into a room and knowing every face, attaching a name, and recalling the their histories. I felt good, at the end of high school, because I knew the entire class by name, even if they didn't know me.

I hate crowds, but not because there are too many people and it's draining, but because all of the people have a herd mentality when they join into the crowd and that's unacceptable to me. Crowds are for threading through, for practicing the ability to feel energy and slipping past it, not for joining. It always grates on me to join a throng or stand in a line.

Jung's system wasn't bad. It strikes me as important that you don't mention him, since he was the progenitor of the system in the first place, and it's worth reading what he said before you say his system is flawed. If you look at the history of, for instance, the Meyers-Briggs, it is indeed based on Jung's scales.

[Jan Krüger]

As I see it, socionics redefines/extends introversion/extroversion beyond the common meanings. That's a bad thing to me because it makes people associate different things to the same word—not exactly useful for discussing about it.

I am not going to judge either the traditional meaning or the socionics ones; I just don't think any scale like that is not useful for "our" purposes. I also fail to find a reasonable classification of myself in terms of either (for the traditional terms, see my previous post; socionics give me a fairly mixed picture as well).

It seems like my point is not as clear as I had hoped. I'm not going to claim that these scales are totally worthless; I lack empirical data to back such a claim (I have heard that MBTI is not exactly universally accepted among scientists, but that's just an aside).
Scales like this one are designed primarily to optimally distinguish people; a set of personality scales is supposed to discriminate between different people with as few scales as possible. When dealing with individuals, that is not typically necessary and therefore I am opposed to it.

In other words, it's nice to know that (this is a contrived example) there are more people with primarily extroverted characteristics, but I don't think it's reasonable to compare your introversion with mine by using just one number.

In that spirit, I appreciate your detailed explanation; it's not what I'd typically have thought of as introversion, even given the table from the socionics website. This might serve as another demonstration that it's hard to use these terms for discussion. Of course, my interpretation might just be way off.

Another, less important, pitfall is that whenever the average person is introduced to a scale like this, they tend to look only at those criteria that confirm their membership to a certain class (confirmation bias), so there always is a basic distortion in people's claims about their introversion levels (or whatever we're talking about). Therefore, just by learning about a scale like the introversion spectrum, a person's view of themselves can get distorted (which apparently happened in my case).

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Jan Krüger

That's a bad thing to me because it makes people associate different things to the same word—not exactly useful for discussing about it.

So the problem, in short, is that people don't know what they're talking about, but like to pretend that they do.

This isn't really news, Jan. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[Shaden]

I prefer the version - people know what they are talking about, but they just don't know how to express themselves fully and accurately with appropriate verbiage.

I'm not an extrovert in the common sense of the word. But I do get along with people very well because I make the conscious effort to connect with them. I keep my major personality (my views, feelings, beliefs and purpose) inside me until I really get to know a person. But I'm not afraid to go out, meet new people and make new friends. I see social interaction as an exciting challenge as opposed to a gregorious task. And social interaction can be a challenge - just the other day a couple of girls I'd never met before asked me if I was gay (not in the literal sense)!! But I laughed it off and pretty soon we were good friends. If you can learn not to take offence to what people say to you - then you're sorted socially. Or at least I think so.

[Redisbest]

"a certain level of 'introversion' can cause you to have social problems."

I disagree - my MBTI is I(70s) N(70s) T(100) J(30s) and I have ZERO problem in social situations.
Well... not zero problem. I'm not the most expressive of my feelings, which I suppose makes some less comfortable, but I'm totally fine with others. I just dislike it when I don't get enough personal time to follow my own inner self.

It's a matter of a) practice - you have to put yourself in situations that aren't easy and decide you're just going to do your best socially
b) mentality
c) balance

I would argue that I am an 'on the extreme side' introvert - and so long as I regularily enough see people (balance) it's no problem. I might suggest telling your friends how much you'd ideally like to get out of the house, and make sure that they see to it that you do it.

[Stu]

I agree that it should be considered a scale, but one's introversion / extroversion is a symptom of very real brain 'settings' I guess you could call it. As the article linked below says, studies found that introverts and extroverts had more blood flow to different areas of the brain.

News in Science - Brain activity indicates introverts or extroverts - 06/04/1999

[stephencp]

Indeed, most people need to examine Jung's original concept of intraversion and extraversion, although it can be a difficult read.
Myers-Briggs is based on Jung and is alot easier to understand (albeit a little watered down.) Introverts get their energy from the inside and extraverts get thier energy from the outside. A party will be a energizer for one and a drain on the other (though both may like it.)
I am a crystal clear introvert and yet tremendously enjoy giving presentations on Myers Briggs - but it is draining. I'll stay by myself in a hotel room all day getting ready, but I love it.

Stephen
Personality and Growth Bookshelf

[Scott H Young]

Jan, I wrote almost the exact same thoughts when I brought up my own introversion/extroversion debate on my blog. Great to see someone who agrees with me. These labels need to go:

Scott H Young » Beyond Introversion and Extroversion

Stu,

Everything that is psychological is equally biological. There isn't a separation. Saying that introverts and extroverts have different brain patterns make sense, they are thinking differently. But that isn't the real question. The question is whether these brain patterns are unalterable or whether they are flexible like so many other brain patterns. Just because two people who are feeling differently in the same situation have a different brain pattern doesn't justify limiting our thinking to those labels. As someone who once registered very introverted on standard tests and now registers moderately extroverted I have my doubts.

[musiciano]

I think it's all about balance. It is good for extroverts to practice some introversion, and vice versa. Adding an extra hint of what's low, or subtracting a bit of what's too high. I'm sure it will do anyone good, whether they think so or not.