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I suspect that the whole Introvert/Extrovert thing basically doesn't exist. It seems to me that pretty much everyone wants to be social and around other people sometimes and quiet and alone at other times. There's some variation on exactly how much of each and at what intensity any person wants, but virtually nobody is at the extremes suggested by the Introvert/Extrovert framing.
There does seem to be more variation in desire to plan and organize events. Relatively few people seem to have the desire or inclination to create a plan, even a really simple and vague one like, let's all meet at a bar at roughly some particular time, and invite a bunch of people to it. But at least those relative few seem to be really into it, so it's good to have them around. Many others seem to be happy to show up to an event that somebody else organized, but have little interest in organizing things themselves.
Since it's one of the Big 5 personality factors, extroversion has been studied a moderate amount. One version I was looking at a while back broke it down into assertiveness (what you're mostly talking about) and enthusiasm (I was looking into it because I attended an Evangelical youth group, where enthusiasm was heavily valued, and I just couldn't muster it). So I suppose not exactly the same as the way some people use it, but still mappable to something like social energy.
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Am I correct in recalling that it varies along a bell curve? (Not bimodally?)
That’s what I remember. I think all the OCEAN traits are bell curve, they give results by percentile.
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Opposite experience for me. Seems obvious who are extroverts and introverts around me. People who sit in the middle seem more rare than the ones that exist at the extremes of the spectrum.
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I model the Introvert-Extrovert distinction as those who like to form relatively few connections, but the connections they do form are strong and last a long time, vs. those who like to form many loose and 'weak' connections, and is constantly severing some and forming new ones based on various criteria.
And thus, where do they put their efforts? Introverts put effort into trying to maintain their existing friendships, extroverts put efforts into forming more, more, more and, almost by definition, can only devote small amounts of efforts to any given relationship (although they may have some they focus on more!).
So the result is that once the introvert has formed a decent number of strong connections, the thought of spending MORE effort on finding more relationships just doesn't make sense, to the extent it will take effort away from their existing relationships. And to the extrovert, being stuck with the same handful of people and unable to find new connections might seem unbearable.
Maybe its about novelty-seeking vs. preference for the familiar.
And thus, the thought of going to a party with tons of strangers might make the introvert miserable, while it would excite the extrovert.
Maybe, but have you ever met any actual people who would meet those definitions?
I don't think I've ever met or known anyone who I know to be extroverted by that definition. Though to be fair, maybe it would be hard to know because by definition such a person would be very difficult to get to know well enough to know that they're actually doing that. But then who are the people who actually know for sure that someone they know is behaving like that?
I like theory-crafting as much as the next possibly vaguely autistic Mottizan, but I've also gotten somewhat self-conscious about the tendency to build imaginary castles that aren't demonstrated to correspond to actual people or real-world situations.
I knew a guy who would talk to someone in a foreign country for perhaps five minutes and subsequently say that they "made a friend". On the other hand, I could count my friends on one hand.
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I mean, me, I'm an introvert. I have like a dozen or so 'close' friends that I keep in consistent contact with. I can expend extra effort to connect with new people but rarely see the need.
Meanwhile, I know some people who can enter any social situation and instantly ingratiate themselves to most other guests, even if they've never met. But they only ever spend like one hour at a given party because they've got other obligations, other people to meet, dontcha know.
So you rarely ever 'get to know' those sorts because they're only there as long as they're there, they don't put much effort into followup.
My model is more like, most people have a modest number of close friends (who may or may not be family). Everyone has widely varying levels of skill and inclination when it comes to starting and maintaining conversations with people and moving brief connections towards actual friendships.
Myself, I maintain maybe like a dozen or so pretty close friendships and another few dozen somewhat more distant friends who I know and see semi-regularly but don't actually get together with that often for various reasons. I am usually pretty good at going to a bar or party where I know nobody or only a couple of people and talking to a bunch of people. Most of the time, I forget about whoever I was talking to not too long after. Moving those brief conversations towards actual friendships is considerably harder, at least to me. Maybe some people are better at that part, I don't know. People I consider actual friends tend to come from situations where you tend to be around the same few people regularly without either side explicitly planning to get together with those specific people, like by being regulars at a bar or working together or being members of some kind of club or other regular group activity.
Perhaps that behavior looks to other people at that sort of event like what you've described as an extrovert. But they don't know that I actually only maintain those few dozen closer friendships with people I've known for years. I'm inclined to believe that most people we see acting like that are doing the same thing. So am I Introverted or Extroverted? I don't know, so I don't find the distinction very meaningful. Maybe those other people you see who appear to be doing that are just having a little fun their way and actually do have their own dozen or so really close friends.
So in my book, you're not actually Introverted, just normal.
You are typical-minding if you think this describes everyone. This is basically a nightmare scenario for me, and I am actually overall reasonably well adjusted (no, seriously, guys).
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You sound like most extroverts I encounter. One of the most common aspects of extroverts is that they tend to not believe or accept that introverts exist.
Every introvert knows what they are and how they are different than extroverts. It takes them only the barest amount of observational skill.
There is a manifestation of physical discomfort in social situations. The closest comparison I can think of: imagine knowing that you stink from BO or poop, or your teeth are gross. Then further imagine you are stuck in close proximity to a person you are attracted to but barely know. I think most people's desire in this situation is an intense desire to leave and be unseen. You might even fear that other people are noticing or discussing your grossness. Nearby laughter can spike paranoia rather than joy.
That is what it can feel like when an introvert has overextended and stayed in a social situation past their leave time.
And when that is how nights tend to end even if you have fun for the first few hours it's not really something you look forward to. And eventually you either discover the magic of alcohol which I believe can switch people from introverts to extroverts, or you stop going to social events.
I know that that particular behavior (willingness to start conversations with very weakly connected people or total strangers) is very abnormal and most would consider it extroversion. However, most other people I know seem to be much further towards "extroversion" in other ways than I am, yet seem to me to be strangely unwilling to do that.
For example, most other people I know tend to have what I call more words than me. They seem to have much greater capability to extend conversations indefinitely, to just keep on talking and talking and talking. I was never very good at this. Usually any conversations I start tend to peter out fairly quickly unless the other person is actively interested in maintaining it and puts in effort towards that.
I also desire to spend substantial amounts of time basically quiet and alone, doing something like reading or watching movies and videos on the internet. Some other people I know seem to be much more active, constantly up and about doing things.
So then am I introverted or extroverted? How about all those other people I know with different combinations of traits? Beats me. That's why I find the whole thing not very useful, to the point of saying it basically doesn't exist, and might even be actively harmful in some cases. I think that what people normally think of as those traits are actually a cluster of dozens of personality characteristics that aren't necessarily related to each other at all, and several of them are closer to being skills that can be learned or moods and emotions that someone may feel more of or less of at any particular time for any number of reasons than fundamental traits that cannot be changed.
I cannot really know or claim to speak for what any particular person thinks and feels. But I do think that quite a few people who are self-proclaimed Introverts are actually just psyching themselves out. Perhaps when they were young, they did not yet know how to conduct themselves in social settings or had false beliefs about what other people were thinking of them. Perhaps they were convinced of an ideology that they were Introverts, that this was not a temporary feeling or mood or lack of a skill that can be learned, but instead made it part of their identity and chose to revel in it. What if it's not actually a fundamental unalterable trait? What if such a person decided to believe instead that they could learn how to socialize and how to at least sometimes get themselves into a mood to take pleasure from it? I say this not to condescend to you or any other particular person, but because it's exactly what I did myself.
Driving a car was initially pretty scary. But I learned to do it and got comfortable with it eventually. I certainly wasn't always any good at any sort of socialization. I'm far from perfect or any kind of expert at it even now, but I have managed to get somewhat better and more comfortable with it, at least sometimes.
You are extroverted, some people you know are more extroverted than you.
Those people you talk to that suck at maintaining conversations ... probably introverts.
I think your argument proves too much. It sounds like it could be used to disprove any internal assessments.
It certainly could! But Sharp Knives and all that.
I think it's trivially obvious that many people believe false things about themselves, some of which are helpful and some harmful. If I think a belief I have about myself may be preventing me from doing things that would be good for my life, I think it's worth spending some effort to test if that belief is really true or not. If it does turn out to be true, then I've suffered some minor discomfort or something for the sake of proving to myself that it actually is true. If it turns out not to be true, then it's like I've unlocked a new power or something.
The same with ideologies to follow and things to identify as. One of the things I like about the Rationalist sphere of thinking is it provides the tools and thought patterns to recognize when what I'm thinking about following is an ideology rather than a fact. Ideologies were mostly created to make whoever created them famous or to connect a group of people together, not for my objective benefit. I am perfectly free to decide that an ideology is not to my benefit and reject it.
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I mean, what makes me say I'm introverted is my strong, strong preference to just hang out with people I know. It took me a lot of work to get to the point where I could just go out and socialize with people I don't have a pre-existing connection with. There's no level on which it comes 'natural' to me and thus it feels very effortful. In the past this might have been attributable to social anxiety but nowadays even in social settings where I feel comfortable I don't feel much urge to engage with strangers much.
Indeed, it often feels like I have to just view it all as a 'networking opportunity' where I might offchance meet somebody who has a useful skill or career who I can loop in with some other person I happen to know in hopes of leading to some mutual gain or maybe some business being returned down the road.
In short, I know that being TOO introverted is an impediment to one's career advancement and social standing, so I can force myself to do it, but I do not enjoy it for its own sake.
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Seems a pretty bold claim to state to a self-described introvert that introverts don't exist.
The fact that a trait exists on a spectrum doesn't mean that the words we use to describe the ends of the spectrum 'don't exist'. Someone who feels social nine times out of ten is different in a meaningful way from someone who feels social one time out of ten. Why shouldn't we have words to describe them?
I'm not sure what framing you have in your head, but I know people personally who, if I were to not describe them as extroverted would require a deliberate lie on my part.
I think it's accurate in that the words are generally used in a sense of declaring people to be at the extreme ends of the spectrum, when probably under 1% of the population is really that far in either direction. Words like "shy" and "gregarious" are in my opinion more useful as the way they are used seems to describe a moderate tendency more than an absolute or extreme case.
Maybe OP doesn't agree, but they described themselves as an Introvert and then described enjoying an activity that a person meeting the strict definition of an Introvert would not enjoy.
Interesting, I would say that gregarious and shy are both much stronger words than introverted or extroverted.
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