There Are No Such Things as Introversion or Extroversion | Hacker News Reader

There Are No Such Things as Introversion or Extroversion

inc.com

30 pointsspodek14 comments

Title should be "common myths about introversion vs extroversion". There is nothing here, besides author's opinion, to support that the two things actually don't exist. Article caters more toward debunking a bunch of other false dichotomies.

I think people are much more complicated than the simple introverted / extroverted. I’ve personally come to the conclusion that very few people really fall exactly into either category and most people just seem to be a semi-random assortment of traits associated with one or the other. It’s really difficult to disprove things that don’t exist but I feel like the two categories aren’t an accurate descriptor for most people.

I think the problem here is the traits associated with one or the other, not the two categories themselves. Perhaps if you read different definitions of the two, you'd think differently as well. The traits addressed in the article specifically seem particularly fluff.

I believe that while any person can easily use introverted or extroverted capacities, all people have a baseline or more natural/habitual behavior.

I think that’s true. I’ve met a lot of girls who tell me they are introverted or extroverted but the only difference between them is whether they are anxious or not around people they don’t know well so I’ve come to think that the other traits people seem to associate them are just kinda arbitrarily clumped together but I could totally see how you could define them differently and have the categories actually make sense.

It seems to me that the false dichotomy here is equating (fit or problem solver) and (gregarious or reserved). Gregarious/reserved are opposites by definition.

"If you've believed the Or model of introversion and extroversion your whole life and resist the And model, try this challenge: try believing the And model for a week or a month."

I believed in the And model until I was ~23, it made me exhausted from all the pressure to be more extraverted. I've believed a soft Or model for 5 years now and I'm a hell of a lot happier having accepted my introverted lean.

Extraversion is one of the Big 5 personality traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits There is considerable evidence for its existence as a factor of personality.

There is a lot of scientific evidence that what has been labeled introversion should instead be called highly sensitive personality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivity

I've frequently thought about it in terms of whether people consider the "average" stimuli to be potentially harmful or harmless - something that would take seed early in someone's childhood (with potential genetic factors as well). An "introvert" or "extrovert" would just be a heuristic to define someone's general state of mind - I know many introverts who have extroverted personalities in certain situations, and many extroverts who act like introverts in other situations.

Not exactly. It has more to do with how deeply you process the stimuli, at least in a lot of situations. For instance, I enjoy parties, but then I think off and on for a few days about what happened, like what I learned I could make use of, what I would like to say to each person if I met them again, and so on.

If I have too much novel social stimuli, then I get a backlog and don't want to deal with people until I have time to process it. Extroverts, on the other hand, seem to get all done right in the encounter and are eager to go right on to the next one.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this, but the name of the phenomenon is arbitrary. It doesn't really make sense to say that it should be called something else.

> Science doesn't justify introversion v extroversion

> No studies cited

> Obvious logical fallacy comparing fitness v intelligence and liking talking a lot v not liking talking a lot

I thought it's been understood for a while that the question isn't what you desire or how you behave in groups/alone, but rather "How do you recharge your emotional batteries?"

When I'm in a social setting - with friends or strangers alike, I am gregarious and outgoing. People are shocked when I claim to be an introvert due to my social skills. But the reality is that while I love them and make the most of them, social situations exhaust me. Too many in a row and I dream of a weekend when I can do nothing but play video games, read, or watch TV/Movies.

On the other hand I know people with roughly the same intelligence and social skills as myself who are the opposite. They get antsy on their own, and crave socialization and are clearly the most relaxed in a crowd.

Would you post the article content here? It's behind a paywall.

Hmm, read fine for me -- perhaps its because of all the trackers and js I block?

I tried to paste the text but HN says the comment is too long. The TL;DR is: "As Einstein says, what you see is determined by your model. And most people have polar, either/or models that are worse than useless. Introvert/extrovert is a particularly bad one"

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