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Myths About Introverts

jerrybrito.org

151–160 of 194 posts

Re: Myths About Introverts

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so I upvoted you, but maaan do you have it wrong. I am the definition of introversion (to myself, avoid crowds, do not need to chat with everyone at the party, content with silence that others think is awkward, definitely do not want to ever be the center of attention, like to be alone with my thoughts ...) "What, you don't want to go to the Nicki Minaj concert?" "Let me explain. You see, I'm an introvert...." I…

If you can approach girls at a club by yourself, you're not shy. That doesn't make sense. I run marathons, but I'm not athletic. See the contradiction?

shyness is not introversion. Not wanting to be in a group of people when talking to a girl one on one might be a sign of introversion.

It's more like - I run (and win at) marathons, but I can't do relay races because it throws my game off.

Re: Myths About Introverts

#152
post #97

I feel compelled to share my current process of understanding and dealing with my own introversion. Maybe this will resonate with others, maybe not. Where I am right now, it's more important for me to be able to share this than anything else. I ended a relationship recently, partly because we had huge communication issues. Her thoughts were always close to the surface, I tended to think about things for hours before…

"Where was I getting all this energy? I realized that what was draining me wasn't being social, it was being uncomfortable. It was the awkward situations, not social situations in general, that were sapping my energy." Prior to that quote, you mention studying social skills. You also mention cutting old friends out of your life. Which path had a more drastic affect on you? Was it learning new social skills that made…

The social skills were key. Without them I wouldn't have recognized the negativity of my old friends or the positivity of my new friends. Before that I couldn't even recognize the bad state my friends were putting me in. Also, they enabled me to conciously make a good impression on my new friends.

I read How to Win Friends and Influence People, I read Introvert Advantage, both of which were informative. But mostly I watched a lot of videos by Lance Mason. He has a background as an engineer, so he was able to express social concepts in a way that made a lot of sense to me.

Re: Myths About Introverts

#153
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not ignorant of what you think introversion is. I learned it reading your first comment. Like I said elsewhere, the argument here is about what the word actually means. Jung says introverts experience emotional drain when they're around other people, so by his definition, if you are comfortable being around large groups of people for any length of time, then you are not an introvert. Instead of just insisting tha…

It isn't my definition. There's a fairly coherent consensus view of the salient points of the intro/extra dichotomy. You're distorting it. For example, the first half of your sentence beginning "Jung" is correct, but the second half is gross exaggeration. Other people aren't Kryptonite. That's what's wrong with your top post as well - it's full of exaggeration which misrepresents introversion. There's been plenty wri…

There's a fairly coherent consensus view of the salient points of the intro/extra dichotomy

Not at all. First of all, introversion was a concept long before psychologists started to get technical with it. Second, its appeal as a psychological concept is mostly to laymen like us, and it certainly isn't used in any technical sense when people write blog posts about how great introverts are. So even without citing any disagreements among psychologists, there's a question of whether we should go with a some psychologist's technical meaning or the meaning in popular usage. In popular usage, you can see disagreement here on this page.

One way to see how a word is used is Google:

http://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/jung.html: "Weakness of the introverted attitude includes ... (1) a lack confidence in relation to people and things and (2) a tendency to be unsociable, shy, and hesitant." Don't worry, his list of weaknesses for extraversion is bigger ;-)

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/genpsytraits.html: "The more obvious aspects of introversion are shyness, a distaste for social functions, and a love of privacy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion: "Introversion does not describe social discomfort but rather social preference: an introvert may not be shy but may merely prefer less social activities." Good ol' Wikipedia, the voice of the people ;-)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/introvert: "1. a shy person. 2. Psychology . a person characterized by concern primarily with his or her own thoughts and feelings ( opposed to extrovert)." Funny how dictionaries list multiple definitions for words. Clearly they're all wrong except one!

Here's a nice quote from Jung himself about the "extreme" introvert (gathered from this page: http://www.infj.com/INFJ_Introversion.htm): "In a large gathering he feels lonely and lost. The more crowded it is, the greater becomes his resistance. He is not in the least 'with it,' and has no love of enthusiastic get-togethers. He is not a good mixer. What he does, he does in his own way, barricading himself against influences from outside. . . . Under normal conditions he is pessimistic and worried, because the world and human beings are not in the least good but crush him. . . ."

Wow, that's a downer. You'll find more ammunition for yourself than for me on that page, though, as apparently psychologists have tried to empirically distinguish shyness, introversion, neuroticism, embarrassability, public shyness, private shyness, and sociability. Naturally in order to fit all those in as distinct concepts they've had to define them quite narrowly as aspects of personality instead of sticking to the broader idea of introversion as a "type."

However, on that page the immediate followup to the Jung quote I quoted (not by Jung, and possibly not referring to his views) is this: "In less extreme cases, introverts are simply more conservative than not, preferring the familiar surroundings of home and intimate times with a few close friends; they husband their energy and would rather stay put than go from place to place."

I think that characterization would be contested as well. So no, there is no coherent consensus. You can see all over this page as well that many of the arguments made here take the same form: accept my definition of "introvert", and my conclusions follow naturally. So the real argument is about the meaning of the word.

There's been plenty written on the topic, including the linked article, which you seem to reject.

I may be missing a better link elsewhere on the page, but the only "article" I see is one person's biased top-ten list inspired by a self-help book. You'll see a big difference between the Google results for introversion and the results for extro- or extraversion. There's a whole lot of boosterism and self-help content for introversion, but not for extroversion. I like some of it, but honestly, I think most of it can be ignored. We should know when we're being pandered to.

Re: Myths About Introverts

#154
Judging from responses, the topic resonates well here. Therefore a more interesting question to ask is ― why so many hackers are introverts/shy/anti-social etc? Or more precisely, which one causes the other? Is it spending too much time in front of your computer which makes you introvert? Or is it that introverts are more inclined to take up solitude activities like programming?

Re: Myths About Introverts

#155
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't my definition. There's a fairly coherent consensus view of the salient points of the intro/extra dichotomy. You're distorting it. For example, the first half of your sentence beginning "Jung" is correct, but the second half is gross exaggeration. Other people aren't Kryptonite. That's what's wrong with your top post as well - it's full of exaggeration which misrepresents introversion. There's been plenty wri…

There's a fairly coherent consensus view of the salient points of the intro/extra dichotomy Not at all. First of all, introversion was a concept long before psychologists started to get technical with it. Second, its appeal as a psychological concept is mostly to laymen like us, and it certainly isn't used in any technical sense when people write blog posts about how great introverts are. So even without citing any d…

Ah, how wonderful that I'm downvoted when I go to the trouble of locating quotes and providing links to prove something as obvious as the fact that people disagree about what introversion is.

Re: Myths About Introverts

#156
#5 is the only one that doesn't apply to me. I quite enjoy observing crowd activities and can do this for long periods of time. I don't know how to 'let go' and join in with the crowd but it is precisely that release I find so fascinating to watch.

Re: Myths About Introverts

#157
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead of asking a 5 second question and letting him get back to work, you turn it into a 5 minute demonstration of your superiority by forcing him to pay attention to you instead of what he was doing.

More like a one-minute interaction which communicates a lot more stuff in subtext than a five-second interaction could hope to... including the fact that I'm not scary and that he should feel free to ask me for help if he needs it.

I know one of the responses jokingly referenced Office Space, but it honestly seems like a few people have suffered that kind of work environment and it's affected their perception of things like this.

In that situation, I too would prefer the introvert's preferences. But it's far from an ideal situation.

Re: Myths About Introverts

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can approach girls at a club by yourself, you're not shy. That doesn't make sense. I run marathons, but I'm not athletic. See the contradiction?

No, it's more like "I cannot swim, but if I want to eat I have to get to the other side of the lake".

And yet he's presumably able to pull these girls, in a wild extroverted setting like a club, where a girl is rarely alone, and competition is fierce.

So he can't swim, but when he needs to get to the other side of the lake, he beats Michael Phelps.

Re: Myths About Introverts

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can approach girls at a club by yourself, you're not shy. That doesn't make sense. I run marathons, but I'm not athletic. See the contradiction?

shyness is not introversion. Not wanting to be in a group of people when talking to a girl one on one might be a sign of introversion. It's more like - I run (and win at) marathons, but I can't do relay races because it throws my game off.

I never claimed it was. I'd believe an introvert can approach girls at a club, but I feel like being able to do that basically means you're not shy. Otherwise, what does shy mean? You had a small bit of anxiety doing so? Doesn't everyone? Even my most outgoing friends have things like the "3 second rule" to get over approach anxiety.

Re: Myths About Introverts

#160
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand how not going directly to the point can be better, for any mechanism.

I'm sorry, in which world do all these introverts live where any topic is perfectly OK to talk about at any time? Small talk and social niceties aren't merely hot air, they are tools you can use to assess a person's mood, what they are interested in or comfortable discussing, or even whether it is productive to discuss something at all. Consider it the metadata of conversation. Also consider that conversation is two-…

whoah there - 'small talk' and 'social niceties' are two separate things. Not staring at your conversational partner as if you were a homicidal maniac is a 'social nicety'. Not walking off halfway through a sentence is a 'social nicety'. Showing some indication you're listening to what they're saying is a 'social nicety'.

Getting into a time-filling general conversation about the weather is 'small talk'.

The two are pretty distinct, and the dislike of small talk does not mean that the social nicety grease is discarded.

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