A bunch of my Twitter friends (yes, you know who you are) were having a heated discussion on extraversion - every single one of them proudly proclaimed their introversion, yet each of them has a fairly high ratio of outrageous tweets - maybe even an outrageous ratio. Hmmm. Maybe it's a twitter thing? You know, the effect of being painfully truthful to millions of people you've never met? (Facebook, of course, is the place to tell lies to your friends...)
There's nothing better than a puzzle.
Wikipedia is fairly conventional in its description of the two traits, describing them as if they were different points on a common axis, so that the less introverted someone is, the more extroverted they are. The introverted are more reserved, less outgoing, with fewer friends, while the extraverted are gregarious, assertive, and excitement-seeking.
On the other hand, Daniel Nettle, who taught me the "5 factor" model of personality in his book "Personality: What Makes You The Way You Are", ("One of those books that makes you feel smart for understanding it" -- Mark Funnel) (and who has my copy? I WANT IT BACK!!! please) describes "extraversion" as something like susceptibility to others' reactions. The need for others' reactions. In other words, "extraverts" respond to other people; if these are wild, so will our E, while if they are quiet, our E will mirror them.
Not sure I wholly believe that - I know a few obnoxious people who are always inappropriately bouncy - Tiggers even when the group calls for a bit more Eeyor. They'd be described as extraverts, I think by most people.
On the other hand, Nettle's description has a ring of truth, too - and forgive me for taking the excuse to show off my soul to the world.
Ten years ago, I was an introvert. Always was, always would be. The life and soul of the staying-away-from-parties-because-there's-never-anyone-to-talk-to. With a small and static set of friends. Preferred a book and a glass of wine to a visit to the pub or a networking event.
There was just one thing I didn't understand - put me in front of a class, a compulsory audience, and I became a different character. Gestures larger-than-life; outrageous analogies; king of tragedy; fool of comedy - that was me. And it wasn't just once - it was every lecture. For decades. For those 50 minutes, I could smell the greasepaint and love the spotlight -- and then retreat into my cave afterwards.
One of the key tenets of personality typing, since Jung, is that personality types are relatively fixed, that they don't change much over a lifetime - an adult lifetime, anyway.
Today, not a single one of my recent friends or contacts would dream of describing me as an introvert. I'm first up into the networking session; I'm the one describing wide arcs with his wineglass (don't stand near me, especially wearing a light-coloured dress); I'm dragging people off to the gliding club, the kite-surfing, the snorkelling and the ski-slope. (Especially the ski slope!)
So, how come I've crossed the chasm? It can only be learned behaviour, surely - aided by a couple of exogenous influences -- SSRI's, for one, reduced social anxiety and helped me learn how to network -- and learning that a certain community of my peers treat me like a Rock Star is another. I'm now pleased to report that I'm prescription-drug free, and that the groupies have (mostly) moved on.
So, I sort-of-believe, then, that the Nettle description works well for me - I am addicted to the reactions of others, I always revelled in it at the front of the class, and only when I learned to overcome the neuroticism that prevented me from seeking it in other situations did I discover how much fun it is to network and be consistently outrageous.
And then, I go back to Nettle's description and see: "Extraversion: low scorers are aloof, quiet", which sounds as if it's going back to the more conventional, Wikipedia-like definition.
Someone just suggested to me that Extra- or Intro- defines where we look to define our own sense of self - do we look internally, to our own resources? Or to the mirror that others hold up to us?
Again, that sounds very plausible until I try to use it as a lens to examine myself. Yes, I love the reflected approval of other people (maybe, just maybe, this blog entry is written as an extended essay in search of this approval -- there, is that self-referential enough?), but I think I have a very, very strong internal sense of Who I Am. "Truthful, to the point of painful honesty" is a phrase that cost me about £25,000 to hear about myself. "His own worst enemy" is used regularly, and costs me never a moment's anguish. "Competence. Wit. A touch of fanaticism" was the summary of a branding exercise on an organization I started. OK, I cheated, that's an external description, but one that I'm 101% comfortable with. Consonant with my own self-image.
So, I'm struggling here, folks. Am I just a statistical anomaly? Whose personality is well-described only on a five-and-a-half-factor model? Or is there more work to do to characterize and describe what the "Extraversion" axis of the five-factor model actually means, so that I can get comfortable with it?
HELP!!!!!
(And p.s.: a paean to introversion: http://www.livescience.com/18151-quiet-power-introverts.html)
(p.p.s.: Intro- seems to be the new bandwagon - http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/03/this-column-change-your-life-introverts?CMP=twt_gu)
