Extraverted People Talk More Abstractly, Introverts Are More Concrete (2012)
bps.org.uk
bps.org.uk
If I wasn't certain, I wouldn't be talking about it in the first place.
Regarding introversion and fear of social consequences, I am definitely introverted but have been told that I speak my opinion too much sometimes, so I cannot agree that introversion is related to fear of making statements other may object to. In my case at least.
You can be right about the big picture/abstraction and wrong about a specific. Just because you argued or proved part of an argument wrong doesn't make the whole thing wrong.
Basically you're trying to force them into positions where they reveal they don't know what they're talking about.
They'll then commonly start trying to squirm out of it by talking around the topic or using dishonest techniques. Each time you do, you just make sure to softly bring attention to the fact, in your very next response, that they haven't addressed your previous point, and the importance of it. You never let them sidestep or squirm away for a split second.
Their game is to go vague and talk shit, yours is to keep asking for details and pointing out why they're needed, revealing to others that they're a "fake it til you make it" idiot, until they either back off or others do something about them.
Doesn't work though if they're in a clear position of power over you, as this behavior is indicative either of stupidity or narcissism, and in which case you nod your head, and save your energy for breaking out.
Is it possible that in some cases they're talking in good faith, but using an approach to communicate or collaboration that you misunderstand?
1. Re-iterate your points, counter points, data, etc. 2. Acknowledge their point, assume it to be true and ask questions to clarify their point by digging further into the details
In my exp, method 1 generally does not lead to much. Method 2 will either give YOU a new perspective on things OR the other person will back off once they hit rock bottom and think twice before bringing up nonsensical points with you.
It is MUCH MUCH harder going down path 2 as it requires you to put YOUR point/perspective aside for a while and empathize with their view. But being able to cross-question people like this is an incredibly useful skill worth developing.
As an introvert, you are inherently more curious. Use that to your advantage.
Granted this can become exhausting with people who socialize without any care for those around them; but this is basic soft skills 101 lesson... 3.
Like you say, sometimes that can be exhausting if you're dealing with a particularly bad communicator. You don't want to be the one doing all the work, all the time. On the other hand, if communication needs to happen, then you need to figure out a way to get that communication to happen otherwise you're going to really struggle.
There is a reason Socratic method is used primarily in a class room setting
I think this frequently happens because people aren't making the same assumptions. Ask about assumptions so you find out why two people who are both probably reasonable apparently have such a hard point of disagreement. It's very possible you agree on more than you think.
I have some techniques that I utilize when dealing with people who are vague and hand wavy usually pointing out some barely relevant counter example that supposedly debases your point and proves them right. These conversations typically come up in scientific or health related fields.
1. Remind them that the world is not black and white. Just because an argument has a counter example or isn't 100% for certain a known fact doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to make our models of the world more consistent and move towards being less wrong.
2. Just because one person says something doesn't make it so. There is a spectrum of authority. In a particular field, yes laypeople like youtubers can be right sometimes and people in high authority can be wrong sometimes, that doesn't mean that a layperson's opinion is equally valid to a professional in all circumstances in that field
While this article uses the term "concrete" for introverts and abstract for extraverts, in my experience extraverts are looking for much more "binary" views of the world that they can quickly memorize, express, impress and move on. Introverts are a bit more "rational" and lean towards consistency between arguments as they speak less and thus the views they express are a bit more constructed as opposed to regurgitated.
Introverts are more afraid of social consequences when they say something that somebody else might criticize (loudly) as wrong, hence
- they speak less
- they are more precise when speaking
- they are more tired after social situations
- they are less interesting to small talk with because they leave little room to engage (which could be done by expressing, e.g., preferences, ideas, hypotheses, jokes, ...)
Another hypothesis:
Extroverts made the experience in their life that at a certain point more confidence begets less criticism begets more confidence.
Anyone has thoughts on this?
But I agree with socially confident introverts.
I guess you can have more reasons to behave a given way, and it's really hard to isolate traits or narrow them down towards a definition.
My point is that they are seprate traits (albeit with sone correlations).
Socially anxious people don't gain energy by "behaving" like extroverts. Being an extrovert is not a behaviour.
People would probably recognize me as extraverted, but it requires something like mental/emotional gatecrashing (or some disinhibiting agent).
This is why I don't think that being introvert is caused by fear, nor that courage cause extraverted behaviour. For most people, whether a social situation is providing or draining energy very often depends on more than just you.
Yes, there are exceptions. But don't underestimate yourself -- in either direction. The vast majority of people need both to thrive.
This isn't really a hypothesis so much as a restatement of the definition of each term. The person to which you are replying is giving a hypothetical explanation of _why_ the two conditions are the way they are.
- Bullied people are afraid of talking and must prove their hypotheses all the time,
- Bullying people aren’t afraid of extrapolations, because even when they are wrong, they can use various forces to remain on top.
i think not!
first of all, bullying is usually a chain. people who are bullies are themselves being bullied elsewhere (by their parents for example, or their bosses)
that alone makes this distinction difficult.
second (and i admit that i don't research this, it's just a guess), i believe most bullies are introverts because they don't know how to properly interact with others, and bullying is their way to get attention. extroverts can get attention more easily, so i suspect that extroverts are less likely to be bullies. but again, that's just a guess. i could be completely wrong here.
Social anxiety is a thing, introversion is a thing, and sometimes they overlap. But not universally.
The way I would put it, which may explain the phenomenon discussed in the linked article, is that introverts talk for a purpose, whereas for extraverts, talking is the purpose.
It's not about fear at all. In fact, because of what I say, it is often the opposite of fear.
If I'm in a work environment, or somewhere action-oriented, or discussing something practical or intelligent, I am the biggest extrovert on the planet -- especially if the culture includes straightforward and honest communication.
But if I'm in a culture of passive-aggression/double-talk/"nice" or I'm discussing philosophical or otherwise non-practical matters (e.g. "oh. My. Gawsh. Look at how cuuuuute that puppy is") or the people I'm conversing with have zero dimension or breadth to the topics they choose to engage with: I don't fucking care, and my interest in engaging is zero.
The confounding factor is that most introverts like to talk about specific subjects that are uncommon interests while extroverts like to talk about specific subjects which are common interests.
I think you're getting close to an accurate general statement, but your points are wrong. I can bring introverts out of their "shells" by engaging with them on topics that interest them (at which point they will likely overpower me) and I can put extroverts into their shells by forcing a topic that they have nothing to say on.
The thread that connects all of this is interest. Introverts have a set of interests that is not conducive to general, everyday conversation, while extroverts do.
From there you can have knock-on effects like confidence, social outlook and initiative, and other things that cascade throughout the years that make the divide between the two more apparent and may generate specific differences (e.g. fearful of criticism or not, etc.).
This is spot on. I love listening to people talk about their interests because their enthusiasm for whatever they're interested in is usually contagious (at least to me). In my experience, the folks that lean more towards introversion tend to have more niche interests, and I feel like I always learn something new by talking to them.
However, I'm seeing a lot of comments here talking about being "right" or "wrong" in conversations. I definitely lean more towards the introvert end of the spectrum, but I've spent a long time trying to get better at holding conversations. I don't know if it's a consequence of getting older, but I don't have a lot of patience for being corrected on trivial matters. I would never argue with someone about something they have expertise in that I don't, but I once got called out for mispronouncing "tesla" (apparently its "tez-la", not "tess-la"?). The only outcome of that conversation was a strong desire to not talk to that person again and to deliberately avoid saying anything that could have an ambiguous pronunciation.
To be clear, this is entirely context-dependent. Obviously, correctness is important in technical discussions. I'm talking about chit-chatting over a few drinks. If you see conversation as a zero-sum game, everybody loses.
I would rephrase this as "introverts are generally uninterested in pointless small talk".
This, I want to talk about something, not rehash the same comments about the weather. I don't even mind when people talk about their vacations or their kids, but I want to know interesting specific details, not nonsense generalities just for the sake of talking. I love talking to people about their careers, but I want to learn the weird minutiae that isn't common knowledge.
Introspective people are abstract, extrospective people are concrete.
Introversion/extroversion has nothing to do with abstraction. In fact, all the best known abstract geniuses throughout history are all introspective introverts. (Yeah, I'll pitch that your extrospective extrovert society would never have crawled out of the bronze age without INTJs!)
It's not. The article is about language, not thinking. See some examples here: https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/introverts-use-more-c...
The second and the fourth parameters of the kiersey system addresses these "perception" and "enactment" qualities. (How we internalize and express.)
This is the tricky thing with studying the human mind and behavior! We're so dynamic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
And of course I always follow up on the follow-up comment to point out that none of Big Five, MBTI, or even the latest peer-reviewed attempts at temperament classification based on various dimensionality reduction techniques (e.g., ICA) perform very well. Not one. Sure, they're all more predictive than random chance, but it's not like MBTI is a horoscope and the SOTA matches the accuracy of particle physics.
It would be as though someone switched from using logistic regression to a random forest, but the nature of the data is such that there's only a very minor bump in precision/recall, and both were already low to begin with. I would ask what purpose is the model being used for in this case? It's not like quant trading where even slight improvements can lead to outsized returns.
If a personality model is being used to predict human behavior for any purpose other than entertainment, then I'd argue that this practice is misguided and should be discontinued in all professional settings. Whereas if the purpose is simply to have fun, then I'd argue MBTI achieves that goal much better than the other models. So what is the point of Big Five then?
Haven't you noticed there are plenty of instances even the most intelligent and experienced persons cannot communicate with each other?
I find for instance that N/J's cannot communicate with S/P's in a more than superfluous way for instance (speaking the same language and everything.) x/J to N/x; or x/P to S/x are great. They "get" each other. The x/J to S/x just cannot.
I correlate this as due to N/J using abstractions and S/P are pragmatists requiring concrete specificity.
So a rough cut, sure, definitely "pseudo", however somehow practical as a guide explaining why some intelligent people do not pair well.
(I say this because I've seen a lot of people who know "MBTI is bullshit" and have misunderstood that to mean that introversion and extraversion are also bullshit, because they don't know them outside of that context.)
Diving into concrete details is bad because. - Explaining details takes time and can lead to monologues. You want to be sure that people want the details before you do this - Understanding the details can take a lot of effort so it’s tiring for the other person, and you risk making them feel stupid if they don’t understand.
I think that this experiment is showing that extroverts have better social skills.
I think in work settings, many extraverted managers are like that. Just so much time in meetings spent on this yapping.
Ultimately I think they just do it because it gives them feeling of control, authority and visibility. Because people will see someone with a lot to say as higher status.
But overall for team productivity, it hurts since more time in meetings, more energy and time wasted, less time spent on development.
As an introvert I would find those meetings very draining, but coding is stimulating and energizing.
In other words, the abstraction isn't an intentional one that is designed to an end, it's creative and knowingly potentially inaccurate. Meanwhile the concrete details aren't a sort of out-of-touch technical rant that's out of reach for the audience, it's that introverts tend to interpret the question literally and actually describe the contents of the photos.
One of the researchers' conclusions actually runs directly counter to your introverts-exhibit-worse-social-skills narrative:
> "Thus an introvert's linguistic style would induce more situational attributions and a higher perception of trustworthiness than an extravert's style," the researchers said.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-an-introverted-extr...
Like horoscope signs, though, we all know ours and confirmation bias kicks in so the predicted behaviors start to seem more true. Just knowing the traits we're "supposed to have" can cause us to change our behavior to act that way.
I also think abstract/concrete is often more varied in real life. Personally, I use abstractions often, think ambiguity adds layers of meaning, and hate it when people start stacking hypotheticals on one another because then entire conversations happen about nonsense. So which camp does that put me in?
Their communication often consists of catchphrases which sound good and clever, superficially. But by prioritizing form over substance, they don't allow themselves to develop a nuanced, in-depth understanding of anything. They tend to fall back on socially accepted axioms as opposed to thinking from first principles.
Catchphrases and first-principles thinking don't mix. Catchphrases are more geared for triggering emotional responses. I find that, on average, extroverts don't have the same level of rational, critical thinking as introverts do because everything they say and hear passes through some kind of emotional layer.
For example, with many extroverts, what I've found is that if they tend to get defensive when you're trying to share ideas and they often don't seem to understand nuanced arguments. I believe this is because, to the extrovert, the primary purpose of communication is to exchange emotions, not information.
Also, when an introvert debates an extrovert, they're not playing the same game. The introvert tends to be laser-focused on crafting the most logical arguments possible. On the other hand, the extrovert is laser-focused on crafting the most palatable argument which they believe most people will agree with. The extrovert is laser-focused on triggering desired emotional responses.
Introverts tend to craft arguments as if trying to convince god himself. Extroverts know that this isn't how you win debates; they know who their audience is and what their emotional trigger points are. They know what narratives they need to invoke to activate blind-spots and neutralize opposing arguments.
IMO, the reason people are extroverted is mostly because they enjoy the emotional validation which social interactions provide (both inbound and outbound). Unfortunately, this tends to cloud their judgment.
That said, the zero percent interest rate economy has given extroverts a massive advantage since it has made it possible to profit from emotional thinking... People made a lot of money from companies like Facebook, Twitter, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Bored Apes NFTs, real estate in trendy inner-city suburbs... Most people got into these assets with an investment thesis of "My friends agree this is cool!"
In a proper, functioning economy that kind of investment thesis typically wouldn't pan out... Certainly not to such extent as we have witnessed.
I.e. Extraverted logical and introverted emotional.
Seems like the title should talk about vaguely vs abstractly though...
I think it’s more useful to parameterize situations than people: one can never step in the same river twice.
These days “extrovert” seems to be asymptotically approaching “amoral charismatic” in common usage. We have nomenclature for amoral people who lead cults of personality.
I appreciate the desire to re-brand this type of extravagantly self-serving storyteller, given that we put basically no one else in any position of influence, but on HN I think we can still call them assholes.
Yeah, I wonder if there's more to it than bullshit like the MBTI. It also doesn't seem to match what I observe of people. I don't think there really are extroverts in one side and introverts in another side, even accounting for different, finer levels. There are only if you expect to find such a split, at the cost of ending up with a wrong model for your observations.
I would be happy to be proven wrong, I'm curious about topics around personality, but the domain seems riddled with pseudoscience and beliefs. I don't know where to look. I'm not interested in theories that came out from someone's ass, I want proofs that come from rigorously applied scientific method.
You know, the mathematicians.
"Reificationists Of Unusual Solidity? I don't believe the concept exists."
*gets attacked*
It had to be subtracted from the contract. The exact impact isn't a known fact. They extracted it by Amtrak.
> describing things that were not directly visible in the pictures
I.e. making up shit about the picture, like an image-to-text AI.
I understood that Myers-Briggs and other pseudo-scientific categorizations that value direction over degree and therefore produce polarization rather than distribution ("You are 51% extrovert in most situations? Come over here with all the other extroverts") are rather discredited these days.
How do we distinguish accurate intuitive thinking, from hallucinating or BS-ing?
Is one way to evaluate the truth of the assertion? For example, if the subject says "Jack loves Sue"... are those their names (or is the subject using an idiom, or making a cultural reference), and (unless metaphor) does the male in the photo actually love the female in the photo?
The researchers might not know, a priori, that the man in the photo loves the woman in the photo, but if they could get an authoritative answer to that, then they might find that the subject is picking up on cues they didn't, or they might find that the subject is just talking out of their buttocks.
Would be interesting to know how accurate social intuition correlates with introversion and extraversion.
Think of the clickbait value -- gasp -- of a research finding that there's a sizable class of introverts who understand more of what's going on in social situations, than many extraverts just cruising on unwarranted/indifferent confidence.