Dear colleagues,
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Extroverts love interaction and gain energy from it. Introverts can be outgoing at times, but usually find it emotionally exhausting.
In the US, more than anywhere else, extroversion is a cultural ideal. Children are encouraged to be outgoing, and those who are shy are sometimes treated as having something wrong with them. To get ahead in business, a bold, confident personality is expected. Nerds need not apply to Harvard Business School.
But is extroversion really all preferable? Writer Susan Cain challenges the extrovert ideal in her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking (Penguin, 2012).
Cain attended events such as Anthony Robbins' motivation events and interviewed leading researchers as well as a variety of individuals. In Quiet, she provides a journey through the research and US culture interspersed with personal observations and stories from US history. The upshot is a vivid impression of the values of introversion and the need to understand and cater for different personality types.
Did you know that group brainstorming is actually less productive than individual brainstorming? Or that when computer programmers are interrupted more, they are usually less productive? There are many messages here for work and home life.
Though Cain does not address academic life directly, Quiet offers many lessons for academics. In tutorials, for example, there is often an emphasis on class participation: being outgoing is a great advantage, whereas shy students may be marked down as not contributing. However, being quiet in class does not necessarily correlate with learning. So perhaps there is value is creating more spaces for small group or one-on-one interaction, or individual thinking during class, to cater for the quieter students.
Doing research, especially the sort of individual research common in the humanities and social sciences, calls for the capacity to spend many hours alone, reading, writing and thinking. For this, being an introvert can be an advantage. So is having your own office, to ward off interruptions. It should not be surprising that many prefer to work at home, if that is where they can make best use of their traits.
Giving lectures seems to call for extrovert skills of confidence and being stimulated by interaction. Those who are shy are often terrified by public speaking, preferring instead to listen or to meet with just a few individuals. The good news is that people can learn new skills. Introverts can become good lecturers and even learn to become the life of the party. But it comes at a cost, and the engaging conversationalist you meet may need to recuperate afterwards. On the other hand, extroverts can lose energy and enthusiasm without sufficient stimulation.
Cain's most important message is that it's okay to be an introvert, and there may actually be advantages, including greater creativity, sensitivity and self-awareness. Introverts should not be cowed by the extrovert ideal, but look to their own strengths, value them and nurture them. Supervisors should be aware of the predilections of those they manage - research students or subordinates - and do what they can to facilitate working conditions and set expectations accordingly.
I was about to say that introverts should trumpet their strengths to the world - but that wouldn't be in their style. But this is just what Cain, a self-declared introvert, has done.
Regards,
Brian
15 November 2012
Thanks to Nicola Marks, Nga Pham, Melissa Raven and Brendan Riddick for useful feedback.
Melissa offered the following links: a Brain Pickings webpage about the book, with a video of Cain doing a TED talk plus an animated illustrated RSA short (http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/23/susan-cain-molly-crabapple-rsa/); an RSA conversation between Cain and Jon Ronson (http://www.thersa.org/events/video/vision-videos/quiet).
Your sweet spot is the place where you're optimally stimulated. You probably seek it out already without being aware that you're doing so. Imagine that you're lying contentedly in a hammock reading a great novel. This is a sweet spot. But after half an hour you realize that you've read the same sentence five times; now you're understimulated. So you call a friend and go out for brunch - in other words, you ratchet up your stimulation level - and as you laugh and gossip over blueberry pancakes, you're back, thank goodness, inside your sweet spot. But this agreeable state lasts only until your friend - an extrovert who needs much more stimulation than you do - persuades you to accompany her to a block party, where you're now confronted by loud music and a sea of strangers. Your friend's neighbors seem affable enough, but you feel pressured to make small talk above the din of music. Now - bang, just like that - you've fallen out of your sweet spot, except this time you're over stimulated. And you'll probably feel that way until you pair off with someone on the periphery of the party for an in-depth conversation, or bow out altogether and return to your novel. (p. 125)
When people are skilled at adopting free traits, it can be hard to believe that they're acting out of character. Professor Little's students are usually incredulous when he claims to be an introvert. But Little is far from unique; many people, especially those in leadership roles, engage in a certain level of pretend-extroversion. Consider, for example, my friend Alex, the socially adept head of a financial services company, who agreed to give a candid interview on the condition of sealed-in-blood anonymity. Alex told me that pretend-extroversion was something he taught himself in the seventh grade, when he decided that other kids were taking advantage of him. (p. 210)
Some years ago, a research psychologist named Richard Lippa ... called a group of introverts to his lab and asked them to act like extroverts while pretending to teach a math class. Then he and his team, video cameras in hand, measured the length of their strides, the amount of eye contact they made with their "students," the percentage of time they spent talking, the pace and volume of their speech, and the total length of each teaching session. They also rated how generally extroverted the subjects appeared, based on their recorded voices and body language. Then Lippa did the same thing with actual extroverts and compared the results. He found that although the latter group came across as more extroverted, some of the pseudo-extroverts were surprisingly convincing. It seems that most of us know how to fake it to some extent. ... It turned out that the introverts who were especially good at acting like extroverts tended to score high for a trait that psychologists call "self-monitoring." Self-monitors are highly skilled at modifying their behavior to the social demands of a situation. They look for cues to tell them how to act. (p. 212)