Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

It bothers me when people just say "you are introverted" or "you are extroverted". Labelling people like this (i.e. a binary one or the other choice) is not helpful. Don't 100% match the definition for X? Then you are Y!

I think in reality it is better to acknowledge that - like many things - introversion/extroversion is a broad scale with many shades of grey, and your personal position on the scale can and does change from situation to situation.

You will ebb and flow over time - don't let over people tell you how to think and behave! :)

View on HN

>It bothers me when people just say "you are introverted" or "you are extroverted". Labelling people like this [...] is not helpful [...] and does change from situation to situation.

I like to label myself as "introverted" because it matches my stable trait regardless of changing activities. Similar to labeling myself as "right-handed" because it's an underlying stable trait even though I press Ctrl+C on the keyboard with my left hand. Using my left hand in many circumstances that change from situation to situation still does not change my "right-handedness". Likewise, being at a social event still does not change my "introversion".

But since the word "introvert" bugs some people, I've previously asked what an alternative label could be to describe a stable preference but nobody suggested one yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27794741

If you're renting golf clubs, knowing you're right handed is useful. I struggle to find the equivalent use for introvert/extrovert label. Maybe you have a good example?

As someone who would call themselves introverted as well, the most useful function of that label is, that it gives people the chance to classify my reactions to them more easily.

Me not being in contact with you every day of the week means nothing about me liking or disliking you.

Of course "introvert" is a broad label and no single individual fits that definition squarely — however so are most ofher words we made up to describe the inner life of people.

While I would welcome a more differenciated vocabular to describe how we are inside, at some point you will have to over-generalize if you want to use it in daily communications.

Maybe I, not OP, can chime in with an example. Since labeling myself an introvert I was better able to know what attending bigger social come togethers (like team events, family reunions, conferences and the like meant to my "energy" level.

I liked how in another thread a commenter described this "energy" as maybe the energy necessary for our brains to keep the shields up.

Attending a social event to me means I know it will deplete me. It will require me to find a way of refueling afterwards. I now know better when and why to make this trade off. Because there are benefits to attending certain situations/events - I just need to balance them for my mind and body with taking care of myself.

It is like doing a grueling but necessary work. I know it needs to be done and I know how to take care for me afterwards.

And on the other hand it also helped me to understand, why certain situations (like being with a few select friends and talking all night) left me invigorated and provided said "energy".

So labeling myself that way provided a heuristic for managing my mental state and energy level better than before.

For me, it's very similar to your golf clubs example: knowing that I'm right handed allows me to make an informed decision about what clubs to purchase. Knowing that I'm introverted allows me to make an informed decision about how to plan my free time.

I agree with you, but the article explicitly covers this, and isn't making a binary argument for introversion vs extroversion.

It says as much in the friendly article:

Introversion and extroversion are also a spectrum rather than binary.

(They even bolded it.)

That's because it's a "team sorter" that internet discussion boards respond to like catnip. It is about as relevant as Meyers-Briggs or horoscopes.

> I think in reality it is better to acknowledge that - like many things - introversion/extroversion is a broad scale with many shades of grey, and your personal position on the scale can and does change from situation to situation.

"Everything is shades of grey" seems a lot less helpful than a nice binary option that actually renders a judgement.

It was however very useful for me when I learned the labels ~10 years ago. Before that, one was either outgoing or shy. I felt like neither.

Suddenly there was a new axis as well, explaining what I felt. And news articles started popping up, people talking about the concept etc. Made it much easier being an introvert.

You are obviously an NF temperament, most probably the ENFP personality type.

Extraversion/Introversion is the first distinction of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. I find it remarkable that exactly the people who get incensed at the MBTI "because everything is shades of gray and you can't sort people into neat 16 bins", are those who are at the very very end of at least two of the four scales.

> don't let over people tell you how to think and behave!

Ironic, isn't it?

INTJ last time I did it.

But then it varies depending on what mood I am in the day I do it.

That is my point - don't label people with "oh typical ENFP response!"/"You are ENFP - this is why you think what you think" It is unhelpful at best, and at worst a slippery-slope way of dismissing people's views and opinions - without extreme care and self-monitoring you risk (consciously or not) making the same snap judgements based on other aspects of people "Oh typical gender/race/religion/age response! This person is X so they alway do/think Y". Dangerous.

I will never understand the idea of "type". There are like billions people on earth and for some some reason all of them can be described as one of 16 types. Just that. There so many reasons that people do what they do and behave like they behave that you can't just simplify that to 16.

It might bother you, but extroversion and introversion are both ends of a rigorously documented personality trait, one of the Big Five.

Everyone, (literally) is in one camp or another. Particularly stable people will sit around the median boundary, but will ultimately conform, even if slightly, to one camp or another.

Yes, well documented in psychology, a field whose professionals even acknowledge as a psuedoscience, if a useful one.

>Particularly stable people will sit around the median boundary.

Ok, so you're saying it is more than just a boolean then?

It's scientifically observable and proven, far more rigourously so than the "feeling" of the original comment, (a heuristic we all use), so what are you getting at?

Are you suggesting that all of psychology, its documented research and phenomena is best dismissed because you decree it a pseudoscience? This is fallacious at best.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com