"Revenge of the Introvert"

Post Reply New Topic

Revenge of the Introvert

I don't like the title, but I found this quite interesting, I think it's AS relevant (most of us are introverts), not too short, not too long.

Juicy quotes

I didn't know that. Interesting. What do y'all think?







Oh that's far too much quoting. I think there's a few useful insights for us here.

I saw the article but didn't read it. My impression was "revenge of" implied that introverts are coming into a position of having some type of advantage in society, but personally I just got a sense of exploitation.

There is this concept floating around out there that all of these young, nerdy, successful dot com entrepreneurs have AS, and so people with AS and the like must have some sort of life advantage that will lead to success in today's society.

This is just not true at all. While many of us with AS might indeed have profitable ideas, we frequently lack the social skills and networking needed to promote and implicate them. I've met some of these young, nerdy dot com guys face to face and I can tell you they do not have AS. They are quite socially adept, more so than the average person, and that was a huge factor in their success.

I've learned that when companies say they want someone "out of the box" that is really a bunch of BS. They really just want someone in the box who can come up with or swipe someone else's out of the box ideas.

It's really a shame because people with AS CAN be an extremely valuable asset to a company if they would only have the patience to provide us with the right environments to thrive.

Coincidentally I read that article last week, it is very interesting and well worth reading in full in my opinion.

The thing that stuck most in my mind was that marketers and image makers try to push that quiet and introverted = bad and outgoing and chatty = good. Thus making it more difficult for introverts to contribute positively in the workplace, where the reality is that introverts usually have the skills and answers that extroverts don't.

It certainly makes sense that trying to fake extroversion when you are introverted will be a great mental drain. Everybody here certainly says that.

However I find that "50% of the U.S. population is introverted" seems implausibly high. I find it a lot more plausible that a certain score on a Myers-Briggs test does not therefore mean you are an introvert, even if the testers think it does. Or that the two test populations were not as randomized as the testers thought they were. Since the testers would have to use test results from people who volunteered for the tests, the results are already skewed towards the sort of person who would volunteer to take a Myers-Briggs Personality Test. It may simply be that this is an activity that appeals more to introverts (because musing about your own personality requires a little introversion) and that many, many extroverts simply had no interest in volunteering to take such a test- preferring to spend the time hanging with friends. That would un-randomize the test population in a hurry.

They can control for age, income,race, education level and other such demographics. But they can't control for who volunteers to take the test versus who doesn't.

This is like the story about the surprise and shock that President Dwight Eisenhower had when he learned that 50% of americans have intelligence below the average.

Most human qualities - introversion/extroversion, IQ, height, weight, etc. - have a normal (gaussian) distribution, with roughly 50% of the people above the average and roughly 50% below.

Then, makes sense that 50% of the population being "introvert", in the sense of being "more introvert that the average person".

I agree.

I think the reason 50% might seem high, is that the extroverts are simply more visible by nature. When I go to pick up my son from school, there are always a whole lot of moms standing around chatting with each other. I have to walk around them, and I hear parts of their conversations. I could easily look at them and think, "everyone else likes to stand around and chat, except me." Well, the introverts, like myself, just pick up their kids and go home, so I'm not seeing them so much.

Introverts basically suck in my opinion, they are on the bottom of the social totum poll, above the homeless and junkies, rapists. just above the Felons.

Troll, you're not amusing anymore.

<---- is what I'd be like if your opinion on my social temperament meant anything.

Whether 50% of the population really should be introverted according to the MBTI depends on whether the score thresholds for the MBTI are fixed according to population averages or not. If not, then being an introvert on the MBTI may simply mean having less than 50% of the maximum score on extroversion.

Also, Eisenhower had reason to be surprised - he might have regarded "average intelligence" as an interval rather than a point. I'm not familiar with this historical incident, though.

why dont you just go away?

Last edited by Surfman on 16 Sep 2010, 7:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's just stupid.

I find the reaction time bit confusing. All I know is my reaction times used to be .160-.180 I believe. However these days I'm almost always a day behind on sleep. so my reaction times are usually a wee bit slow (I would guess .240-).

Please, go.

I imagine introverts appear less common because they feel compelled to 'act it up' and appear extroverted.

Introverts are being systemetically held down, by conditioning vehicles within media.

Are we feared for our ability to think?