194. Is It Okay to Be an Introvert? | No Stupid Questions – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.Freud all you think about is sex I'm Angela Duckworth I'm Mike m 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 energy 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 on extra version 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 extra version 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 and so far the mean score is 3.23 and the national average is about 3.21 so just about the same as our listeners so 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 so this came from Amon O'Reilly who said why is extraversion considered the normal or desired personality trait and introversion considered abnormal and non-conforming is this an American cultural phenomenon and I should say that amen 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 M you know 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 to acts as a leader I am someone who's full of energy I someone who's outgoing sociable but there were also these reverse scor 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'm most interested in seeing is not some Museum it's the people that I know there that's just kind of my emmo in life you do have so many friends I remember walking around various places with you often times conferences and can't get anywhere CU 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 no 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 yes Sports Gam games I'm always hosting somebody who's in town 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 realized 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 had just walked away from everybody and sat like I I think I went outside by myself because I just needed 10 minutes of non stimul 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 I can't do it to that level anymore oh is that why you said that maybe your extraversion has shrunk a little bit yeah I I genuinely think so I crave protecting some alone time that I didn't used 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 study big five conscientiousness and grit and I've done studies on agreeableness but I had never studied as a scientist extraversion so when I was doing this background research I learned something I didn't know before have you ever heard of Carl Yung yeah yes maybe everyone once heard of car 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 Yung was actually a disciple of Sigman 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 young was like Freud all you think about is sex and that cannot be the entire explanation for everything that we do and it's actually young and not Freud or anyone else to whom we should give thanks for the very word extroversion because what Yung 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 extra version versus whether you 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 young 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 well the inner world I found one of the most wonderful books ever written about this was Susan kain's book quiet the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking which is a massive bestseller yes yes it was the 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 maybe 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 IID always longed 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 Kaine are not 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 Kane is a very relationship oriented person but I think that's maybe one of the things that she wanted to correct as a misunderstanding right it's not that introverts are misanthrops 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 and to 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 this same as being shy well 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 you know a place to continue the conversation and it's now 10:00 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 him because if there were a six on the fivepoint scale Donald commence would be a six out of five on extraversion that hypothetical situation happened to us for real zies 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 extraversion 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 continum Miss Donald commits I will say that I personally maybe this is just just selfishness or or I just assume people are like me cuz that's how we often are in life CU it's 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 in awe I've 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 wait no really interesting I just like that doesn't make any sense and he said no I mean at work of course I turn 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 yeah 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 Kane's book these are his exact words he said it was the first time I understood myself huh also one of my dearest friends John Hyde who you've met 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 interes maybe my human nature maybe everyone is just like Mike you're a little dumber than average you 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 in a situation where everybody is comfortable some of the most important research on extroversion was done by this psychologist named will fleen 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 I really think it's actually one of the most important things that's been discovered about personality what will fleen 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 extraversion 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 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 like I don't do it intentionally but I I am the least talkative person in my family of four but I think this variability that we have within ourselves is endlessly fascinating 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 you know 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 cuz the lack of light or cuz 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 but 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 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 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 soliciting 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 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 bigf 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 and it's not really a butt but it's [Music] wrong now back to Mike and Angela's conversation about extroversion [Music] 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 does the research show us and what is positively correlated with extroversion versus introversion well the funny thing is that I do agree with Aman's intuition and Susan's book about how there does seem to be a bias toward extra 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 reason ably recently by Sonia lurki at UC Riverside and Seth margalus 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 follows during the next week we would like you to try to change your behavior specifically for the next 7 Days try to act as talkative assertive and spontaneous as you can previous research has shown that performing these behaviors is beneficial for college students they were all undergraduate volunteers and the instructions for the introverts were exactly the same except it said during the next week we would like you to try to change your behavior specifically for the next 7even days try to act as deliberate quiet and reserved as you can yeah and what they found is that if you were randomly assigned to act like an extra rovert you actually were happier after that week if you were randomly assigned to act like an introvert you are lower in measures of well-being after that week so that's the scientific research now we can both speculate as to why that is my speculation would be on happiness that extroverts are happier because relationships make us happier and yet I'm going to caveat that by saying that I wonder if extroverts have more relationships but introverts maybe have deeper relationships so maybe that's not the reason for the difference in happiness I've worked myself into a loop on that one may I speculate in one other way you may since nobody knows what the hell's going on yes be my guest I wonder again just going back to what Susan Kane has written on introverts that if the world is so geared toward extroverts like in school I went to uh Northwestern to Kellogg for my MBA Kellogg is notorious for group work and doing things together in as our business schools yeah I think most right collaborative is like tattoo that on every MBA out there because that's what every school claims I wonder if part of it is the world has been structured in such a way to play toward an extrovert yeah it's like how there are very few left-handed scissors and that makes it hard if you're one of the left-handers you know yeah so maybe we are happier if we're extroverted because the world is built for extroverts but that didn't necessarily have to be the case I don't know whether also this is exactly the same in countries that aren't studied as much so this whole criticism of social science that it's all about Western educated industrial Rich Democratic countries the weird countries well there are lots of countries that are not quote unquote weird and I don't know whether they're as set up for extroverts but it's a good point I mean it seems like extroversion is an advantage in at least our Western culture I have another supposition I'm just G to keep yeah go I love this cuz Mike you may be the person who breaks the code well no here I'm not kidding here's another reason I'm thinking it is because there is something really valuable at making sure that your voice is heard and that your needs are met yeah there's probably something to be said for acting and not being acted upon right like being the one who goes out there and says hey what if we do it this way whereas maybe if you are introverted and less willing to speak up or you know 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 butt but it's wrong no no no it's not a butt it's a semicolon so there is an aspect of extroversion quite obviously which is about sociability right social Vitality getting energy from talking to strangers and being in large groups and so forth but there's also this other aspect of extraversion which I think you were talking about which is social dominance it's about being an alpha being a leader and I want to say to you because you asked whether your extravision might be shrinking as you are aging you know the data on extraversion over the lifespan is really interesting because if you look just at 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 commence 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 so that's what social Vitality looks 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 to 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 he talks about this term the ambt advantage ambt being kind of the mid point or yeah yeah maybe not exactly in the middle but neither an extreme introvert nor an extreme extrovert the Ambi like ambid dextrous 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 extraversion 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 propose this idea of the ambt 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 he's Aristotle he's often right which is why we still talk about him and in particular this idea that anything to exess 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 poll and that maybe the best personality strategy would be to 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 ambiverts maybe are able to be an introvert when it's appropriate able to be an extrovert when it's appropriate right so Adam and I like to disagree because this is 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 NE 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 who we don't know are going to listen to are we having an extra rted 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 listen 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 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 anybody else in this conversation other than us and I do want to also say this on behalf of Carl Young I think Young believe that there were these two types you know introverts and extroverts as two orientation ations 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 to initiative so you know the world is a big place and there's plenty of room for extroverts introverts ambiverts and even the soul is a big place and maybe there's a place for our own introverted Angela extroverted Angela and ambivert Angela and the same for Mike m 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 Young considered introversion and extroversion to be psychological archetypes she misspoke here and likely meant to say psychological types young did believe that part of the collective unconscious included archetypes images and themes with universal meaning but he also had a theory of Psy ological 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 Meers 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 countes that are Western educated industrial rich and Democratic and she's not sure whether non-weird countries are 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 3 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 hyperfocused on things I love I will try harder than anyone else to achieve something 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's soul sister 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 Legos by color as children thanks for your response that was respectively Jessica stradinger 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 versus extroversion send a voice memo to nsq freecomic and you might hear your voice on the [Music] [Applause] show coming up next week on no stupid questions can you be too agreeable oh no nice guys really do finish last that's next week on no stupid questions no stupid questions is part of the fre economics radio network which also includes fre economics radio people I mostly admire and the economics of everyday things all our shows are produced by Stitcher and RBD radio the senior producer of the show is me Rebecca Lee Douglas and L bouic is our production associate this episode was mixed by Greg rippen we had research assistance from Daniel Morris rapson our theme song was composed by Luis Gara you can follow us on Twitter at nsq show and on Facebook at nsq show if you have a question for a future episode please email it to nsq freecomic to learn more or to read episode transcripts visit freakonomics.com nsq thanks for listening I don't think Aristotle has been cancelled either anyway let's keep talking about Aristotle until Aristotle's canceled the Freakonomics radio network The Hidden Side of Everything Stitcher