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Beyond introvert vs. extrovert

vipshek.com

161–170 of 192 posts

Re: Beyond introvert vs. extrovert

#161
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you fear Jung's ideas? If they are incoherent garbage with no merit, shouldn't they just collapse under their own weight?

History doesn't support this. Bad ideas can be remarkably persistent. Yes I fear Jung's ideas if they give rise to beliefs that are harmful to me, or to society. An example would be biased stereotypes surrounding the introvert / extravert dichotomy. Disclosure: I'd probably test as an extravert, but would advise against identifying as an introvert in a business setting due to the bias against introverts.

Interesting, I would have considered the idea of pretending to be someone I'm not for extended periods of time to be far more harmful than any potential disadvantages I might experience in a busieness setting for being an introvert.

I don't think any undue stereotypes around the introversion / extraversion dimension come from Jung, but have simply been attached to the concept by ill-informed society. It's hard to fault Jung for this. Introversion / Extraversion is also part of the Big 5 and has more substantial scientific backing than the foundations laid by Jung.

Re: Beyond introvert vs. extrovert

#162
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something about this interaction is funny to me. It's like an alien asking: but after you drink all that water, won't you die? And the human replies: no, I actually do that to stay alive.

camping is a pretty tiring activity though on its own

Personally I think camping is very relaxing. Usually I am camping on a walking holiday, and it's the walking that is physically tiring. Going back to the tent and sleeping is extremely relaxing.

Re: Beyond introvert vs. extrovert

#163
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're heavily conflating anxiety and introversion. My wife is an extrovert with anxiety - once she gets comfortable she's energized by people. She comes home bouncing off the walls. I'm an introvert - regardless of comfort level I come home and want to go to bed immediately.

Im pretty sure everybody gets energized once they've gotten fully comfortable with someone. That process of getting comfortable is the relevant context though - not a virtual dial in their brain that goes from "introvert" to "extrovert".

> Im pretty sure everybody gets energized once they've gotten fully comfortable with someone.

They don't though. You just sound like an extrovert that can't fathom that introverts exist.

Even if my family visit me and I am comfortable with them, I will still be extremely tired when they leave. I won't feel "energised"

Re: Beyond introvert vs. extrovert

#164
post #4

To be fair to Jung, he did not believe that anyone was a pure introvert or extrovert but he needed to use caricatures to illustrate the concepts. He also explicitly warns in Psychological Types not to use his ideas to create a personality classification system.

To be fair to Jung, most of what he wrote is barely coherent garbage with zero experimental backing and an attitude towards intellectual honesty and scientific integrity which I would politely qualify as problematic. Sorry, I think it had to be said.

People said the same about Freud at the time, but now look at how his work is regarded. It now has experimental backing, is effective, supported by many health agencies, etc.

Re: Beyond introvert vs. extrovert

#165
post #2

I wonder if it's even worth trying to define a person's personality? I've been following this research for a while now. Almost all the studies I've seen have substantial flaws in their scientific methodology, such as small sample sizes and selection bias, among other issues. Don't even get me started on the replication crisis in this field. Regarding theories like Jung's introversion and extraversion or the subsequen…

I got a sigh of relief when I finally discovered that Myers-Briggs is partly broken. It's designed to not offend anyone by avoiding measuring neuroticism so it's "work-safe". I had been struggling to understand how people were able to understand personality defects of out of the Myers-Briggs system and then eventually it became clear that it doesn't do this, it avoids measuring neuroticism, and worse than that it's o…

A big problem with Myers-Briggs is also that it expresses everything in terms of binary categories. That makes it easy to communicate your type, but also comes with less precision.

Big Five avoids this, but it's also difficult to communicate your Big Five results concisely.

Re: Beyond introvert vs. extrovert

#166
post #9

Introvert and extrovert is the most widely misunderstood thing I have seen at work and in personal life. This article also doesn’t do justice to the nuance that introverts find interactions with other “draining” … but it’s not necessary that they suck at it. I feel this way: having led teams of hundreds of people, I know I can have deep, meaningful and long conversations… but I don’t find them a source of joy. I enco…

Perhaps more nuanced words than the already-cheapened "joy" might be helpful? I don't find "joy" in dealing with people, I don't discover them a fountain of ecstasy, I just "like it" rather a lot. Perhaps you are expecting too much.

Re: Beyond introvert vs. extrovert

#168
Introverted... introverted what? Are you introverted thinking, introverted feeling, introverted sensing?

Likewise extroverted what? Extroverted thinking means thinking out loud in the crowd. My wife does this even at home. I have to be careful as an introverted thinker, I can't hear myself think when she's thinking out loud, so I defer deep thoughts for work time and stay present. That can be draining after a while and so I take it out on the cryptic crossword.

To me introvert/extrovert is dimensionless unless you use it in conjunction with some faculty. On their own these terms are quite meaningless.

Re: Beyond introvert vs. extrovert

#169
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did briefly discuss this idea of interactions "draining energy" in the post here: https://www.vipshek.com/blog/interaction#balance-not-batteri... . I understand that the idea of draining vs. charging works for some people, but I always found this concept even more baffling. For me, when I've been in solitude for a while, I feel a restless desire to go out and interact with people. When I'm in that lonely state, I f…

As an anecdote, I am always drained by social interaction and always recharged by solitude. I can be home alone all week and still dread going out to a party if I’m not in the mood. I’m a very social person, but it is still draining. I have never felt so alone that I need social interaction, but I have frequently felt a strong need to be alone. But I’m also like the parent in that I’ve lead large teams, had greater i…

I think it's more than a one-dimensional thing. Like the idea of the "political compass". Just as a person's political views cannot be compressed to a single "left - right axis", their social preferences cannot be reduced to a single "introvert - extrovert axis".

How is a person with existing relationships vs. new people? Similar people vs. different people?

My theory is that a lot of people labelled "introvert" are just more selective then average in who they want to deal with.

Re: Beyond introvert vs. extrovert

#170
> the easy way out of this critique is to present the model as a spectrum—there's a continuous line from introverts on one end to extroverts on the other, and people can belong anywhere along this spectrum

Yes, this applies to most things

Yes, taking MTBI to be binomial into every dimension and every person fitting neatly into any of the X boxes is stupid, thinking about a 4 variable measure which is centered at zero (that is, resting in the middle between each letter) is a more realistic outtake

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