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Echoing an earlier Atlantic article, Mary Carpenter suggests we are biased against introverts:
As Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in a Time magazine column about personality tests, "Their chief function as far as I could tell . . . was to weed out the introverts. When asked whether you’d rather be the life of the party or curl up with a book, the correct answer is always, ‘Party!’ " … self-help books that include blatantly stupid questions … paints introverts as "over-critical," "pessimistic" and "anxious," and describes them as feeling "unaccepted, unacceptable or simply inferior." It’s enough to make an introvert mad. … My enormous, extended and extroverted family still poses a challenge, especially on the small island where we converge for a few weeks every summer. … But the family is making strides in recognizing its introverted minority.
With a little search I find that the shy and introverted both suffer in many ways:
Introversion is indeed more active than shyness in inhibiting religious disposition. … Very Conservative males reported the lowest rate of overall shyness. … Non-shy respondents reported the highest rate of starting their own business, … Non-shyness and extroversion reported the highest household income levels …Shyness has a greater impact on the reduction on eye contact than does introversion. … Those with the lowest rates of eye contact achieve the lowest ranks [at the workplace].
We might posit a grand conspiracy of extroverts to keep introverts down, but a more plausible explanation to me is that extroversion is just valued more by society and business.
I was a shy young nerd and thought I was an introvert, but eventually learned that I was reacting to the fact that other people didn’t like to be around me. Once I found people who liked to be around me, I loved to be around them too, and was often the last person to leave from a party. Of course it is possible that my personality changed.
Bias Against Introverts?
@miss anonymous
Can you elaborate on the stimulation sources for the introvert? You say that introverts can "entertain themselves without stimulation, as the stimulation is internal... " I am an introvert and I get what you saying for the most part. However, I have one more question for you. Does me reading information on the computer count as internal stimulation? I feel that some external stimulation is required, it is just significantly less than the amount an extrovert would need. Little amounts of information can be contemplated for larger periods of time by an introverted person, in my opinion.
I think the introvert-extrovert factor has actually been documented by brain scans. From what I remember reading, introverts have relatively dense brains, with lots of activity going on inside them, whereas extroverts generally have much less. As there is so much already going on inside an introvert's head, they (we) can entertain themselves for long periods without stimulation, as the stimulation is internal, whereas extroverts naturally seek external stimulation to start their brain working and can therefore tolerate very much more of it.Anne I can definitely understand your frustration! I think I'm going to put Nick's cartoon on my office door!!