Freud, all you think about is sex.
I'm Antelope Duckworth.
I'm Mike Marn. And you're listening to no stupid questions.
Today on the show, why does society prefer extroverts?
And do we need introverts?
I don't think you have the same manic level of like bounce around like a bunny rabbit, or a g that I sometimes seem to have.
Angela, today we are talking about extroversion, which is the next trait in the big five personality series that we are doing right now.
And I'm super excited about this one.
E is for extroversion, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.
She said in a very extroverted way.
I did not know that we were reading a children's book, but I love it.
Well, Mike, I got a five out of five on extroversion when I took the big five personality inventory on our website.
I got a 4.67. It's pretty high.
I think that over time, my extroversion has constricted a little bit, but we'll get into that.
It's shrunk. Yes. Well, before we forget our listeners, I just looked and I think it's like over 10,000 listeners and counting have taken the big five inventory on our website.
So far, the mean score is 3.23.
The national average is about 3.21.
Just about the same as our listeners.
I'm super extroverted.
You are very, very, very extroverted.
Do you think more is better when it comes to extroversion?
Well, that, Angela Duckworth, is the question today.
This came from Amino Riley, who said, why is extroversion considered the normal or desired personality trait and introversion considered abnormal and nonconforming?
Is this an American cultural phenomenon?
I should say that Amino is based in Oregon, so he's asking from an American perspective.
Right. So let me ask you, first and foremost, have you always been, I mean, do you feel like you've always been a five?
Has your personality on extroversion changed over time at all?
Well, I want to remind you of the items from the inventory and then I can answer the question.
What was I like when I was 16 or 26 or 36 or even 46?
So there were a few items that were positively scored.
I am someone who is dominant, acts as a leader.
I am someone who's full of energy.
I'm someone who's outgoing, sociable.
But there were also these reverse scored items where the more you were like, yes, that's me.
Actually, you get a lower extroversion score.
So these were, I'm someone who tends to be quiet.
I'm someone who prefers to have others take charge.
And finally, I'm someone who is less active than other people.
But I think I have always been somebody who is relatively speaking full of energy, outgoing, sociable.
Like when your sixth grade teacher is like, well, we need somebody to walk this down to the library.
My hand would shoot up before she had finished the question.
I'm not very quiet. So, yeah, I feel like I have long been an extrovert.
Yeah. I think that I always defined myself really strongly as an extrovert.
I get my energy from being around people.
I love connecting. If I'm traveling to other parts of the country or the world, the site I am most interested in seeing is not some museum.
It's the people that I know there.
That's just kind of my MO in life.
You do have so many friends.
I remember walking around various places with you, often times, conferences and can't get anywhere because people keep stopping you and saying, Mike, but I don't think you have the same manic level of bounce around like a bunny rabbit energy that I sometimes seem to have.
But I will say this, this is what has sort of shocked me in the last few years.
So much of my life now is entertaining or going to all the, I'm just around people all the time.
Sports games. Yeah. Sports games.
I'm always hosting somebody who's in town or whether it's on the tech side or the sports side or the nonprofit side.
I'm just constantly around people.
And I don't think I consciously realize this, but one day it hit me.
I was at some event. And I, for maybe the second time in the space of just a couple hours, I just walked away from everybody and sat like I think I went outside by myself because I just needed 10 minutes, non-stimulus, non-conversation, quiet.
You needed a moment of introversion.
Yeah. And I thought to myself, wow, is something changing in me where I used to just thrive on this constantly and I can't do it to that level anymore?
Oh, is that why you said that maybe your extroversion has shrunk a little bit?
Yeah. I genuinely think so.
I crave protecting some alone time that I didn't use to in the same manner.
Okay. Well, I learned a lot about extroversion in these last few weeks as we were preparing for this personality series because I already studied big five conscientiousness and grit and I've done studies on agreeableness, but I had never studied as a scientist extroversion.
So when I was doing this background research, I learned something I didn't know before.
Have you ever heard of Carl Jung?
Yes. Maybe everyone's heard of Carl Jung.
I don't know. Maybe not.
No, I don't think his name is as ubiquitously known as a Freud or a Darwin or just a household name yet.
So Jung was actually a disciple of Sigmund Freud, but he and Freud had a break because though they were both founders, I guess, maybe Freud originally of the psychoanalytic tradition, you know, this idea that we're not consciously aware of our deepest desires and motives where they disagreed was that Jung was like, Freud, all you think about a sex.
And that cannot be the entire explanation for everything that we do.
And it's actually Jung and not Freud or anyone else to whom we should give thanks for the very word extroversion because what Jung thought was that there were these archetypes of personality, there were these dualities and extroversion versus introversion in his terms were about whether you were oriented to the outside world, extraversion versus whether you
were oriented to your internal world, you know, your memories, your thoughts and so forth.
And very much of the kind of thinking in psychology has changed since Freud and Jung, but this thing has proved the test of time.
If there is one trait that you could say that around the world, people understand that we vary on extroversion versus introversion is one of them.
And I do think it's about your orientation toward the world versus more of an orientation towards the will be inner world.
I found one of the most wonderful books ever written about this was Susan Cain's book, Quiet, the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking, which is a massive bestseller.
Yes. It was a number one New York Times bestseller.
When was that written? It was a while ago.
2012, I believe. But she talks about, and this is what I loved about it so much, she talks about the rise of the extrovert ideal and how it's permeated our culture in a way that in her words may be dramatically undervalues introverts and what introverts have to offer the world.
And she gave an incredible TED Talk on this.
She herself is a lawyer.
And this is one of the things I love that she said.
She said, I became a Wall Street lawyer of all things instead of the writer that I'd always long to be partly because I needed to prove to myself that I could be bold and assertive too.
I should say that I didn't know Susan when she wrote that book, but I know her now.
And she's not kidding when she says she's an introvert.
But the thing that I think my acquaintance with Susan has taught me is that introverts like Susan Cain are not relationship oriented.
It's just that when they relate to other people, they don't necessarily want to do it in quantities and at scales that extroverts are happy with.
So they also want best friends and to share intimacies, but they don't necessarily have this orientation towards what psychologists call sociability, which is just like many people, many conversations going out to the bar after the dinner.
And then maybe another bar after that.
So Susan Cain is a very relationship oriented person, but I think that's maybe one of the things that she wanted to correct as a misunderstanding.
It's not that introverts are misanthropes.
Right. In fact, she, this is one thing that I had not understood before.
She talked about the difference between being shy and being an introvert.
And she says that shyness is about fear of social judgment, but introversion is about how you respond to stimulation, including social stimulation.
At your point, it's not that introverts don't want social stimulation.
It's that they value relationships in a more maybe intimate way rather than this massive group setting, but it's not the same as being shy.
Let me ask this question of you.
I'm going to give you a hypothetical, but I'm going to try to be specific.
You're out to dinner with four people that you haven't met before, but you had a working meeting.
And one of them says at the end of dinner, well, this has been amazing.
Let's go find a place to continue the conversation and it's now 10 o'clock at night.
How would you feel in this hypothetical situation?
I would likely want to go home so much.
Okay. I had this colleague and I'm going to name him because if there were a six on the five-point scale, Donald Komenz would be a six out of five on extroversion.
That hypothetical situation happened to us for real zes many times.
So there was a time where Donald and I were co-leading the character lab, this nonprofit.
And we would have these long work days with out of town collaborators and we would be at a restaurant and Donald would be so excited to continue the conversation and keep hanging out and like, let's go to a bar.
And honestly, despite being a five out of five, I just wanted to go to bed and read a book.
And so I think this revealed to me what I imagine is at the heart of this family of personality traits called extroversion.
It's a family that of course includes sociability, but there's also something about energy in there and positive emotion, which we should get to.
But I think one of the telling signs that you're really extroverted is that the experience of being with people who are not your best best friends and not your family is energy giving, not energy sapping.
And I think when you're very introverted, that exact experience would be so draining you might want to go home even before dessert.
But there is this continuum and then off the continuum, is Donald comments?
I will say that I personally, maybe this is just selfishness or I just assume people are like me because that's how we often are in life.
Is that human nature? Yeah, but I will say this one of my brothers who is, this is Dave, he's just incredibly good with people.
I feel like I'm good with people and then I spend some time with Dave and I just sit there and awe.
I have seen very few people with his ability to just interact with anybody in any situation and navigate it perfectly and it's no surprise why he's been so successful.
We're talking as a family and Dave talks about how he's an introvert and I thought to myself what?
No. I'm just like, that doesn't make any sense.
And he said, no, I mean at work, of course I turned it on, I have to, I do all that.
But when I come home, he's like, I just want to read a book or I want to go watch a show with my wife.
But Dave is not out there socially with a ton of friends.
He was a great athlete, played sports in college.
But if you ask him to go watch a football game with you and go to a live sporting event, he's just like, doesn't want to be around people.
I had assumed my whole life watching him that he of course was an extrovert just like me.
And it wasn't until I asked the questions and realized and then everything started to make more sense.
My oldest brother Peter said when he read quiet Susan Cain's book, these are his exact words.
He said, it was the first time I understood myself.
Also, one of my dearest friends, John Hyde, who you've met, you, I think called him the most likable person you'd ever met.
John Hyde is the most likable person ever.
He's incredible. But I assumed because we do all these things together.
Of course, he's an extrovert too.
And he looked at me one time.
He's like, do you know me at all?
I'm a massive introvert.
You're just staying. Maybe my human nature, maybe everyone is just like Mikey or a little dumber than ever.
Ju-Hang out with all introverts.
I don't know. But I think it's really important that we understand this so we can also craft a world and a situation where everybody is comfortable.
Some of the most important research on extrovertion was done by this psychologist's name, Will Flesin.
And when I tell you what he discovered, I think it will make some of these stories about your brothers and your best friend, John, make a little more sense.
And I really think it's actually one of the most important things that's been discovered about personality.
What Will Flesin did, which was very unusual, is that he asked people about their personality traits.
Again and again and again, a lot over the course of a week or two.
So not just answering one personality questionnaire once about on average in general, like who are you?
But how are you right now?
So for example, I could read you the same exact questions that you and I answered, but you can think about like, how have you been in the last hour, right?
Are you being someone who is quiet?
Are you being somebody who is preferring to have others take charge?
Are you in contrast right now being dominant, acting like a leader full of energy?
Are you right now outgoing and sociable?
And what he found was this like stunning variability in people's peaks and valleys in extroversion and it turns out in other personality traits as well.
But what it says is that maybe you have a center of gravity where like you tend to be a certain way and that's why you can answer a personality inventory and you can ask yourself like in general, how am I?
But if you look at things the other way and you say, how am I different across situations, then you also discover that there is an extroverted mic and there's an introverted mic.
And even a five out of five like me can think of times where like at my house, I'm really quiet.
I really am. I don't do it intentionally but I am the least talkative person in my family of four but I think this variability that we have within ourselves is endlessly fascinating and possibly maybe even more useful than our overall score.
So if you want to be more extroverted, then you should ask the question, when am I, where am I extroverted and maybe you want to be a little more introverted and then you could ask the same question like when am I more introverted, where am I more introverted?
I will just say the other day I was traveling for work.
I was initially in this room with lots of windows and light.
I was being incredibly productive and then the hotel staff came in and said, hey, we're going to have your group move down to this other spot.
We moved down to this basement room and I just suddenly was like, I'm unproductive here.
Because a lack of light or because like, can you put a finger on what it was about the basement?
It was a smaller room, lack of light, it just felt, I don't know, off and I said to my coworker, I'm going to leave and I'm going to go find a coffee shop and work outside for a bit because I knew that just the situation would change my productivity so much.
And so I'm learning, I've failed many times when I'm learning to ask the question, not am I or am I not, but when am I and when am I not and what do I need to change in a situation to really highlight the best parts of me or the most productive or the most engaged?
Right. And that's why I love the reframing of the question, not am I an introvert or extrovert, but when am I acting in an introverted way?
When am I acting in an extroverted way?
And I would just add, I think we have to be very situationally aware because I will admit again, I made the mistake of assuming so many others were just like me.
And to those who are more extroverted and more dominant, it's about soliciting conversation, posting input and being more intentional about how we involve people and understand those around us.
Yes. So I know that Angela and I would love to hear your thoughts on introversion and extroversion.
So record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and email it to NSQ at Freakonomics.com and maybe we'll play it on a future episode of the show.
Also, if you want to learn more about your own personality, head to Freakonomics.com slash big five.
You can take the big five inventory, you'll get an immediate personality profile and your results will remain completely anonymous.
And if you like the show and want to support it, the best thing you can do is tell a friend about it.
You can also spread the word on social media or leave a review in your podcast app.
Still to come on no stupid questions.
How does extroversion affect life outcomes?
Well, I like your theory, but it's not really a butt, but it's wrong.
Now back to Mike and Angela's conversation about extroversion.
Angela, you and I recently talked about conscientiousness, which was also one of these big five personality traits and people who rank high in conscientiousness tend to be more successful in a whole lot of different areas.
I'd love to get a sense. What is the research show us and what is positively correlated with extroversion versus introversion?
Well, the funny thing is that I do agree with Amon's intuition and Susan's book about how there does seem to be a bias toward extroverts.
It seems like extroversion is good.
So more is more when it comes to extroversion.
But when you look at the scientific research on personality, you do not find consistently better outcomes in life for people who are extroverts and you don't find consistently negative outcomes in life for people who are introverts except for one thing.
And that is happiness. I will say there was this experiment that was done reasonably recently by Sonia Lubramerski at UC Riverside and Seth Margolis.
And what they did was they randomly assigned people to basically pretend to be more extroverted or more introverted for a week, the instructions read as well.
During the next week, we would like you to try to change your behavior.
Specifically for the next seven days, try to act as talkative, assertive, and spontaneous as you can.
And what they found is that if you were randomly assigned to act like an extrovert, you actually would have to do that.
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What if we do it this way, whereas maybe if you are introverted and less willing to speak up or take charge in a situation, you're more willing to be acted upon and you don't voice why you need something different.
Well, I like your theory, but and it's not really a but.
But it's wrong. No, no, no, it's not a but.
It's a semicolon. So there is an aspect of extroversion, quite obviously, which is about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social ability, right?
And it's about social vitality over the lifespan, especially from the end of puberty to the end of life.
You find that throughout adulthood, there's a very gentle decline actually in social vitality.
You know, Donald commends notwithstanding, but many of us get a little bit more into the good friendships that we already have less, you know, excited about going out to large parties.
Right. Like, but social dominance is the opposite.
Like decade over decade, there is an increase for much of adulthood anyway in social dominance.
So it's complicated and I don't know.
This is why psychology is so interesting because we don't have answers to those questions.
This is why we're all exploring them together.
Angela, I want it. Go, if you will, into the workplace for just a moment.
And talk about introversion and extroversion there.
I was reading an article about something that your dear friend, Adam Grant did at the University of Pennsylvania that you will know far better than I have.
He talks about this term, the ambivert advantage.
Ambivert being kind of the midpoint.
Or yeah. Yeah, maybe not exactly in the middle, but neither an extreme introvert nor an extreme extrovert.
The ambivert. Like ambidextrous.
Yes. So he talked about this study of 340 call center employees.
And found that the workers who made the most sales revenue were people who were neither extroverts nor introverts on either end, but were more in the middle of the extroversion scale.
And in fact said that there was a bit of a bell curve.
The worst performers were workers who were either extreme introverts or extreme extroverts.
And so proposed this idea of the ambivert advantage that there's this natural middle where you can be engaging with people that you're selling to, but you're not so maybe I'm making this part up now.
So extroverted that you're just talking to people all day and can't focus on your work or something like that.
Adam has been a big fan of this Aristotelian golden mean idea for many years.
And Adam and I have talked about this for many years because I think Aristotle is often, well of course, Aristotle, he's often right.
Which is why we still talk about him.
And in particular this idea that anything to excess can be detrimental is I think, you know, there's some truth to it.
But why is there some truth to it?
Well often, not always by the way, but often there are trade-offs.
And the trade-off is just optimal at the middle point or somewhere between the extremes as opposed to at either pole and that maybe the best personality strategy would be to understand what the pros and cons are of your tendency toward introversion or extroversion.
But like the name of the game and the winning strategy is some amount of flexibility which is why these ambivotes maybe are able to be an introvert when it's appropriate, able to be an extrovert when it's appropriate.
So Adam and I like to disagree because it's more fun.
So we try to disagree with each other all the time and then debate each other and then see where we get.
But here I think he's exactly right.
And I think it's not necessarily better to be an extrovert even though it's correlated with happiness.
And it's not necessarily better to be an introvert either but to understand it.
I think maybe if we understood it and then we could be more self-aware and flexible, that to me is the prescription.
Right. So Mike, look, we are having an intimate conversation with each other that lots and lots and lots and lots of people and we don't know are going to listen to.
Are we having an extroverted moment right now or is this an introverted moment?
What do you think about that?
Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you asked this.
I had a moment a few weeks ago.
I was at a tennis tournament down in Palm Springs and I was in the center court and there were 10,000 people there.
And I looked around and I don't know why, but suddenly I thought about NSQ in this podcast.
And to me, this feels like a very kind of introverted moment.
You're one of my dearest friends.
I get to show up each week and have these amazing conversations with you.
It feels intimate, it feels introverted.
But when I sat there in that tennis tournament and looked around at 10,000 people and then thought about the many multiples of that who listened to the podcast, I sort of freaked out because I thought to myself, that's kind of scary.
This works for me because it feels so intimate but it's almost my introverted time.
And then I remember that there's a lot more to it.
Well, maybe this is why I'm a five.
I think that having thousands and thousands of people listen to us is amazing.
So maybe I will not remind you that there's any way to remind you that there's anybody else in this conversation other than us.
And I do want to also say this on behalf of Carl Jung.
I think Jung believed that there were these two types, you know, introverts and extroverts as two orientations to living a life.
But I think he saw that they were both essential because he said the one, and I think he was saying here, introversion takes care of reflection and the other sees two initiative.
So, you know, the world is a big place.
And there's plenty of room for extroverts, introverts, ambivots.
And even the soul is a big place.
And maybe there is a place for our own introverted Angela, extroverted Angela, and ambivore Angela, and the same for Mike Mon.
Amen. And now here's a fact check of today's conversation.
In the first half of the show, Angela says that Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung considered introversion and extroversion to be psychological archetypes.
She mispokir and likely meant to say psychological types.
Jung did believe that part of the collective unconscious included archetypes, images and themes with universal meaning.
But he also had a theory of psychological types, including introversion versus extroversion, sensation versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perceiving.
Listeners might be familiar with these dualities as the basis for the Myers-Briggs type indicator.
A personality test which most academics do not consider to be psychologically valid.
Finally, Angela notes that social science research has been criticized for focusing on weird countries, or countries that are Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic.
And she's not sure whether non-weird countries are better for introverts.
Pat, who is a pro-democratic, or better for introverts.
Past work on the geographic distribution of Big Five personality traits has concluded that extroversion levels are much lower in East Asia than in other parts of the world.
However, recent research published in the journal Scientific Advances found that commonly used personality questions generally fail to measure the intended personality traits in many non-weird countries.
So Big Five survey data in these places is often misinterpreted.
That's it for the fact check.
Before we wrap today's show, let's hear some thoughts about last week's episode on conscientiousness.
Hi, Mike and Angela. My name is Jessica, and I live in Denver, Colorado.
I scored fairly low on conscientiousness when I did the Big Five, and it's not that I don't want to be more organized or that I don't value being considered dependable.
But about three years ago, I was diagnosed with ADHD, which, if you know anything about ADHD, affects executive functions, and the description of and questions about conscientiousness really center around these particular functions.
And for me, even with medication building and maintaining habits, takes a lot of extra effort.
However, I'm also someone who can get hyper focused on things I love.
I will try harder than anyone else to achieve something if it affects someone else.
And I tend to be a fairly empathetic person.
I feel perhaps I'm not alone, and I wanted to share this perspective because while I did not score high on the survey, I do believe I am conscientious in my own chaotic way.
Hi, Mike and Angela. It's Kylie here, Angela Solcester.
I will say I submitted that question about grit and conscientiousness about two years ago.
So I think it speaks very highly of your conscientiousness to keep that and then respond at the perfect time.
I appreciate your discussion of how grit and conscientiousness can be both similar yet different.
And one more point of intersection between myself and Angela.
Both of our husbands are named Jason and both of them sorted their like-o's by color as children.
Thanks for your response.
That was, respectively, Jessica Strattinger and Kylie King.
Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their stories with us.
And remember, we'd love to hear your thoughts on Introversion vs.
Extroversion. Send a voice memo to NSQ at Freakonomics.com and you might hear your voice on the show.
Coming up next week on No Stupid Questions.
Can you be too agreeable?
No. Nice guys really do finish last.
That's next week on No Stupid Questions.
No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, people I mostly admire, and the economics of everyday things.
All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Brenbud Radio.
The senior producer of the show is Neigh, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Learck Boutich is our production associate.
This episode was mixed by Greg Ripon.
We had research assistants from Daniel Moritz-Rapson.
Our theme song was composed by Luis Gara.
You can follow us on Twitter at NSQ underscore show and on Facebook at NSQ Show.
If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ at Freakonomics.com.
To learn more or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com-slash-nsq.
Thanks for listening. I don't think Aristotle has been cancelled either.
Anyway, let's keep talking about Aristotle until Aristotle's cancelled.
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