The personality traits of introverted and extroverted are commonly misused and misunderstood by a large number of people on a daily basis. With the existence of trendy personality tests and other ways that people go about trying to define themselves, there is a greater awareness but there is also still room for improvement.
So, what do they mean? According to PsychologyToday, the term introversion was coined by famous psychologist Carl Jung and suggests a tendency to gain energy from reflection rather than external sources such as from others and social gatherings. On the other hand, extroversion consists of drawing energy from social interaction, having high energy and expressing emotions easily.
Last year when I took the personality course as a part of my psychology minor, we all took a poll where we submitted key terms that we associated with introversion and extroversion. As expected, there were many submissions for introversion of “shy” and “quiet” and “outgoing” and “talkative” for extroversion. It was interesting to see the different ways the students in my class perceived these concepts and the significant number of misconceptions.
While browsing the web, I came across a provoking article on The Cut on types of introversion. Despite getting half and half for introvertedness and extrovertedness on my MBTI Personality Test, I identify more as an introvert and thought it would be interesting to see the more narrow classifications for it. Psychology professor at Wellesley College Jonathan Cheek came up with the STAR model which was developed from surveying about 500 adults ranging from 18 to 70 years old and asking questions about things like their preference for solitude or how inclined they are to daydream.
This model was designed to dig more deeply into the complexity of introversion which is found to be more commonly misunderstood than extroversion. The four styles of introversion and their descriptions are below which was taken from the article on The Cut:
- Social: Social introversion is the typical definition of introversion, in that a preference for socializing with small groups instead of large ones. Or sometimes, it’s a preference for no group at all — solitude is often preferable for those who score high in social introversion. “They prefer to stay home with a book or a computer, or to stick to small gatherings with close friends, as opposed to attending large parties with many strangers,” Cheek said. But it’s different from shyness, in that there’s no anxiety driving the preference for solitude or small groups.
- Thinking: This one is a newer concept. People with high levels of thinking introversion don’t share the aversion to social events people usually associate with introversion. Instead, this style of introversion just means a person who tends to be introspective, thoughtful, and self-reflective. “You’re capable of getting lost in an internal fantasy world,” Cheek said. “But it’s not in a neurotic way, it’s in an imaginative and creative way.” Sounds nice.
- Anxious: Unlike social introverts, anxious introverts may seek out solitude because they feel awkward or self-conscious around other people, because they’re not very confident in their own social skills. But, often, their anxiety doesn’t fade when they’re all alone. This kind of introversion is defined by a tendency to ruminate, to turn over and over in their minds the things that might or could or already have gone terribly wrong.
- Restrained: You could also just call this reserved. Restrained introverts prefer to think before they speak or act. They also might take a while to get going — they can’t, for instance, wake up and immediately spring into action.
(taken from https://www.thecut.com/article/apparently-there-are-four-kinds-of-introversion.html)
Reading this article and the styles above was very intriguing and almost left me in agreeance arising from my own metawareness. I could see myself identifying with a few of these and some more than others. This leads to believe that there really is an interconnection between all the classifications of personality and no one-size-fits-all.
In debunking the meaning of these terms, we can more easily understand and even analyze the people around us, resulting in healthier relationships and greater self-awareness.
