Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

The preliminaries

• Our personalities shape our lives profoundly, and the most important aspect of personality is where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum.
  • This influences our choice of friends and partners, and how we converse, resolve differences, and show love.
• We’re told that to be great is to be bold, and to be happy is to be sociable. We think we’re a nation of extroverts, but ⅓ to ½ of the nation are introverts.
  • We cherish the Extrovert Ideal–the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious and comfortable in the spotlight.
• Introverts and extroverts generally
  • They differ in the level of outside stimulation they need to function well. Introverts feel just right with less stimulation while extroverts enjoy the extra bang that comes from activities like meeting new people. 
  • Extroverts tend to tackle things quickly and make fast decisions; introverts work more slowly and deliberately.
  • Extroverts are more assertive, dominant, and in great need of company; they like thinking out loud and on their feet, prefer talking to listening. Introverts may have strong social skills and enjoy parties, but after a while wish they were at home. 
  • Introverts are not necessarily shy (shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation; introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating).

The Extrovert Ideal

• The Extrovert Ideal is in our DNA.
  • Personality traits are genetically transmitted, and each wave of immigrants to a new country would give rise to a population of more engaged individuals than reside in the emigrants’ continent of origin.
• The myth of charismatic leadership – does it make sense to always equate leadership with hyper-extroversion?
  • Cain visited Harvard Business School, whose graduates likely have influenced your life in ways you’re not aware of.
    • They decide who should go to war and when, they resolved the fate of Detroit’s auto industry, and they play leading roles in almost every crisis to shake Wall Street and the White House.
      • So, it’s worth examining who enrolls there and what they value.
    • The essence of HBS is that leaders have to act confidently and make decisions in the face of incomplete information. Do you wait to act until you’ve collected more information? By hesitating, do you risk losing trust and momentum? HBS picks action.
    • It also tries hard to turn quiet students into talkers. They have their own learning teams, where they egg each other on with techniques to draw out reticent students. Socializing is like an extreme sport.
    • Think of a time when the opinion of the most talkative person prevailed to the detriment of all. The HBS method presumes that leaders should be vocal.
      • But if we assume that quiet and loud people have roughly the same number of good and bad ideas, this means that a lot of bad ideas prevail while good ones get squashed. 
      • So, we should be worried that people are put in positions of authority only because they’re good talkers.
  • In one study, a researcher analyzed what the highest-performing companies had in common – each was led by an unassuming person who was generally introverted (quiet, humble, reserved, gracious).
    • Otherwise put, we don’t need giant personalities, but instead leaders who build not their egos but the institutions they serve.
• What do introverted leaders do differently?
  • Adam Grant, a management professor, found that introverts are uniquely good at leading initiative-takers because they’re inclined to listen to others and are not interested in dominating socially; they are more likely to hear and implement suggestions.
  • Extroverts can be so intent on making a name for themselves that they may lose others’ good ideas along the way, but with their ability to inspire, extroverted leaders are better at getting results from more passive workers.

When collaboration kills creativity

• Some Berkeley researchers sought to identify the most spectacularly creative people and figure out what made them different.
  • They found that successful creative people tended to be socially poised introverts; they preferred to work independently, as solitude can inspire innovation. 
• And while we want to teach our kids to work independently and give employees autonomy, we do the opposite.
  • New Groupthink, which elevates teamwork above all else, stifles productivity at work and deprives children of the skills they need to achieve excellence in an increasingly competitive world.
  • Many corporations embrace New Groupthink, which increasingly organizes workforces into teams.  In many elementary schools, the previous rows of seats have been replaced with pods of desks to facilitate group learning.
    • This style tends to reflect the business community, where respect for others is based on their verbal abilities, not insight.
  • Because there were successful cooperative products, like Wikipedia or MoveOn.org, we began to revere the hive mind, but instead of distinguishing between online and in-person interaction, we used one to inform our thinking about the other.
• Solitude is enormously beneficial – serious study alone is the strongest predictor of skill for expert chess players, and college students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups.
  • Only during solitude can you engage in Deliberate Practice, which is crucial for exceptional achievement.
    • With Deliberate Practice, you can identify the things that are just out of your reach, upgrade your performance, etc.
    • That is, you get to work on the task that’s most challenging to you personally, which rarely happens in a group.
  • Top performers overwhelmingly worked for companies that gave their workers the most privacy, space, and control over their environments.
  • Open-plan offices reduce productivity and impair memory, and are associated with high staff turnover.
    • Specifically, they usually involve loud and uncontrollable noise, which raises heart rates and releases cortisol, which makes people aggressive.
• The way forward is not to stop collaborating face-to-face, but to change the way we do it.
  • We should seek out symbiotic introvert-extrovert relationships, where tasks are divided according to natural strengths and temperaments. 

Is temperament destiny?

• Temperament refers to biologically based behavioral and emotional patterns (observable in infancy and early childhood); personality is the complexity that emerges after personal experience. 
• In one long-running study, professor and psychologist Jerome Kagan exposed four-month-olds to a carefully chosen set of new experiences, like balloons popping, strong smells, and bright images.
  • About 20% cried and pumped their arms and legs – “high-reactive,” and about 40% stayed relatively still – “low-reactive.”
    • The rest fell somewhere in between. 
    • Kagan hypothesized that high-reactives would feel vigilant when meeting new people, reacting strongly to new sights, sounds, and smells, while quiet infants had a nervous system unmoved by novelty.
  • Kagan followed them throughout their lives, and found that the high-reactives were more likely to have serious, careful personalities, while the low-reactive infants were more likely to be relaxed and confident.
    • He also measured their heart rates, blood pressure, and other nervous system properties, as they are believed to be controlled by the amygdala (an organ in the brain).
    • It’s the brain’s emotional switchboard, receiving information from the senses and instructing the rest of the brain how to respond. 
  • Extroverts are sometimes considered pro-social–caring more about people than introverts do. But the infants’ reactions had nothing to do with people, but their environments.
  • High-reactive children pay more attention to people and things, seeing and feeling things more.
    • A high-reactive child’s ideal parent is someone who can read cues and respect individuality; is warm and firm in placing demands without being harsh; and promotes curiosity, delayed gratification, and self-control.
• Other studies support the premise that extroversion and introversion are physiologically, even genetically, based.
  • The theory of gene-environment interaction: people who inherit certain traits tend to seek out life experiences that reinforce those traits.
    • Low-reactive kids court danger from the time they’re toddlers, so by the time they grow up they aren’t disturbed by larger risks.
    • High-reactive kids are more likely to develop into artists, writers, and scientists because they want to spend time in the familiar–their minds.

The role of free will

• Carl Schwartz, Kagan’s protege, researches the amygdala and its role in shaping personalities.
  • Specifically, would temperament’s footprint be detectable in the adult brains of the high- and low-reactive infants, or would it have been erased?
  • He found that the same temperament remained, though some high-reactives grew into socially fluid teenagers.
    • So, we can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Free will can take us far, but not infinitely beyond our genetic limits. (The “rubber band” theory of personality.)
  • High-reactives tend to feel the guiltiest about transgressions, as they are unusually sensitive to all experiences–they feel both the sorrow of others and their own anxiety if they caused the sorrow.
  • High-reactives also sweat more. Low-reactive extroverts sweat less–their skin is more impervious to stimuli, and cooler to the touch.
  • Also, as mammals became more complex, the brain’s neocortex developed around the limbic system (where the amygdala resides). One of the neocortex’s functions is to soothe unwarranted fears.
    • If you were a high-reactive baby, then your amygdala may fritz when you introduce yourself to a stranger, but if you are skilled at this, it’s because your neocortex is calming you down.
• Introverts and extroverts differ in their preference for stimulation (the amount of input coming in from the outside world, from noise to social life to lights).
  • One reason for this difference is in a brain structure called the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS), which connects the neocortex to other parts of the brain.
  • Introverts have wide ARAS channels, which means they’re easily flooded with stimulation (the sense that you can’t think straight); extroverts have tighter channels.
  • With this, people can consciously situate themselves in environments favorable to their own personalities.
    • For instance, overarousal interferes with attention and short-term memory (key components of the ability to speak improvisationally).
• High-reactives might observe before acting, thus avoiding danger and wasted energy, which would require a nervous system designed to observe and detect differences.
  • More than 100 species have a “watch and wait” crowd versus a “just do it” crowd.
  • Animal groups depend on sensitive members for survival.
    • Suppose a herd of antelope has a few members who always stop grazing to watch for predators–they would survive better, and thus continue to breed, and continue to have some sensitive individuals in that group.

Reward-sensitivity

• Reward-sensitivity is the tendency to be highly motivated to seek rewards, from a promotion to status to money.
• Financial history is full of people with high reward-sensitivity.
  • Behavior economists have noted that executives buying companies can get so excited about beating out competitors that they ignore red flags.
• Introverted financial actors are more likely to pay attention to warning signals and better at regulating their excitement.
  • The limbic system, which is emotional and instinctive, tells us to get more of everything. With the neocortex, the two work together, but not always efficiently. 
  • When they conflict, decisions are a result of which one sends stronger signals.
  • Extroverts seem to be more susceptible than introverts to reward-sensitivity.
• With the financial crash of 2008, too much power was concentrated in the hands of aggressive risk-takers–people with certain personality types (who were reward-sensitive) controlled too much capital and too many institutions.
  • Those who did understand the risks were consistently ignored, in part because they had the wrong personality style.

How to love, how to work

• The person-situation debate: Do fixed personality traits exist, or do they shift with the situation?
  • Professor Brian Little believes that personality traits are based on physiological mechanisms and are relatively stable throughout a person’s life.
  • Situationists posit that we have various selves depending on Situations X, Y and Z.
• Free Trait Theory: We are born with certain personality traits, but we can act out of character in the service of core personal projects.
  • So, introverts can act like extroverts for the sake of work they value highly.
  • And introverts who are especially good at acting like extroverts are good at self-monitoring–changing their behavior to a situation’s social demands, looking for cues to tell them how to act.
    • When acting out of character, it’s also crucial to create “restorative niches”–the place you go when you want to return to your true self, like a physical walk or a quiet break.
  • A Free Trait Agreement acknowledges that we’ll each act out of character some of the time, in exchange for being ourselves the rest of the time.
    • (Like attending your extroverted best friend’s wedding shower and bachelorette party, but skipping the three days of group activities before the wedding.)

The communication gap between introverts and extroverts

• One big misunderstanding is that introverts are antisocial and extroverts are pro-social.
  • Actually, introverts and extroverts are differently social. Your degree of extroversion influences how many friends you have, but not how good a friend you are. 
• Extroverts have a hard time understanding how much introverts need to recharge at the end of a day–social overstimulation can be exhausting. Similarly, introverts have a hard time understanding how hurtful their silence can be to extroverts.

Cultivating quiet kids in a world that can’t hear them

• One of the best ways to help an introverted child is to work on an introverted child’s reaction to novelty.
  • Introverts react not only to new people, but also to new places and events.
    • So don’t mistake caution in new situations for an inability to relate to others–the child is recoiling from novelty or overstimulation, not human contact.
  • The key is to expose your child gradually to new situations and people, taking care to respect their limits. This produces more confident kids than either overprotection or pushing too hard.
• If you’re consistent in helping them learn to regulate their emotions and behaviors in supportive ways, in time, your child will learn to silently reassure themselves.
  • That is, they’re learning to self-regulate fearfulness via self-coaxing skills.
• Don’t refer to introverted children as “shy”–they’ll believe the label and think it’s a fixed trait rather than a controllable emotion.
• Encourage your child to look confident even if they’re not feeling it (for example, smile, stand up straight, and make eye contact).
• Introverts need different kinds of instruction from extroverts. For instance, with the “person-environment fit,” people flourish when they’re engaged in roles that are concordant with their personalities.
  • The inverse is also true: Kids stop learning when they feel emotionally threatened.
  • When encouraging introverted children to speak, it helps to make the topic so compelling that they forget their inhibitions.
• The younger a child is, the more likely they are to open up about how they feel about their environment, so start the process as early as possible.
  • They may open up only during cozy, relaxed moments, like bathtime or bedtime.

• How extroversion became the cultural ideal: from the Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality
• Dale Carnegie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mohandas Gandhi, and other personality studies of famous introverts and extroverts
• The importance of finding “flow,” the optimal state in which you feel totally engaged in an activity, neither bored nor anxious, and you don’t question your own adequacy
• Why Asian countries top the TIMSS exam (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) through quiet persistence
• Why people are so nervous about public speaking and what they can do about it