I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing, and cozy chats to group settings.
Susan Cain
All personality traits have their good side and their bad side. But for a long time, we've seen introversion only through its negative side and extroversion mostly through its positive side.
A widely held, but rarely articulated, belief in our society is that the ideal self is bold, alpha, gregarious. Introversion is viewed somewhere between disappointment and pathology.
We need to do teacher training to educate them about what temperament means. Shyness is painful and you want to help a child with shyness - but the underlying temperament of being a careful, sensitive person is to be honoured, valued and respected.
Shyness is about the fear of social judgments - at a job interview or a party you might be excessively worried about what people think of you. Whereas an introvert might not feel any of those things at all, they simply have the preference to be in a quieter setting.
I'm insatiably curious about human nature.
Shyness is inherently uncomfortable; introversion is not. The traits do overlap, though psychologists debate to what degree.
Opposites attract, and I think temperament is so fundamental that you end up craving someone of the opposite temperament to complete you.
I've never given a speech without being terrified first.
Some introverts are perfectly comfortable with public speaking; I'm not one of them.
Most people who have grown up introverted in this very extroverted culture of ours have had painful experiences of feeling like they are out of step with what's expected of them. Parenting can pose unique challenges for introverted parents, who fear that their own painful experiences will be repeated in their children's lives.
The bias against introversion leads to a colossal waste of talent, energy, and happiness.
I'm not saying abolish group work - I think there's a time and a place for people to come together and exchange ideas, but let's restore the respect we once had for solitude. And we need to be much more mindful of the way we come together.
Any time people come together in a meeting, we're not necessarily getting the best ideas; we're just getting the ideas of the best talkers.
In our society, the ideal self is bold, gregarious, and comfortable in the spotlight. We like to think that we value individuality, but mostly we admire the type of individual who's comfortable 'putting himself out there.'
Men are more likely to be introverted than women are, but it's really very slight. But the real difference I think is in how it plays out, how it relates to cultural stereotypes.
It's important for a parent to learn to take delight in a child whose behavior might seem mystifying. In the case of an extroverted parent with an introverted child, it can be learning to see the inner riches of your child that may not always be expressed on the surface - but are there.
As a parent, if give yourself what you need, your children will watch you doing that and will give themselves what they need.
Many people believe that introversion is about being antisocial, and that's really a misperception. Because actually it's just that introverts are differently social. So they would prefer to have a glass of wine with a close friend as opposed to going to a loud party full of strangers.
I get a lot of letters from introverts asking how they can meet people. The key is to make sure that you are doing things you enjoy.
Many introverts feel there's something wrong with them, and try to pass as extroverts. But whenever you try to pass as something you're not, you lose a part of yourself along the way. You especially lose a sense of how to spend your time.
You can't pick up a business magazine ever without seeing the word 'collaborate' splashed all over it. I think people are probably feeling assaulted by the need to always be on and always be interacting.
I use a lot of old-fashioned expressions.
Originally, technology was pretty clearly on the side of introversion. It allowed introverts to connect with people, to express their ideas in a less stimulating way: you're sitting alone behind a computer. But I'm starting to think that the pressure to self-present constantly online is becoming so extreme.
In a way, education by its nature favours the extrovert because you are taking kids and putting them into a big classroom, which is automatically going to be a high-stimulation environment. Probably the best way of teaching in general is one on one, but that's not something everyone can afford.
One thing I'm hearing a lot is from teachers who have felt that there's something wrong with the extreme group learning, but felt like they couldn't say that out loud. And apparently the discussion is now opening up. I think change is going to be a long time coming.
To some extent, we've always had an admiration for extroversion in our culture. But the extrovert ideal really came to play at the turn of the 20th century when we had the rise of big business.
What's interesting is relative levels of introversion tend to stay the same. If you went back to your reunion from school, you would probably find that if you ranked everyone in your class into terms of levels of introversion and extroversion you'd still be the same rank.
I'm continually amazed by how many people who appear to be extroverts are actually introverts.
Your tendency to be inward-directed or outward-directed is huge; it governs every part of the way you live and work and love.
I actually find extroversion to be a really appealing personality style.
Even when the attention focused on me is positive, I am uncomfortable being looked at by a lot of people - it's just not my natural state of being.
It's never a good idea to organize society in a way that depletes the energy of half the population. We discovered this with women decades ago, and now it's time to realize it with introverts.
I think the shyness one feels in childhood is often overcome with time. There are children who hide behind their parents' legs, but you don't see grown-ups hiding behind people. It just doesn't happen. I mean, not that often. People develop social skills over time.
I've wanted to be a writer since I was four years old!
I'm insatiably curious about human nature. I feel very lucky that as a writer I get to learn so much about it just to do my job right.
You will find this hard to believe, but I've never laughed as much as I did when I was a corporate lawyer. When you're working 16 hours a day for months at a time, you get punchy. Everything and everyone seems hilarious.
In most job interviews, people say they are looking for people skills and emotional intelligence. That's reasonable, but the question is, how do you define what that looks like?
