this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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me_irl
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I hate all this extrovert VS introvert stuff, one side seen as vapid, gibbering apes and the other seen as loner shut-ins. It's exhausting, especially since most people don't fall squarely into one camp or the other.
There's plenty of introverted people who love to talk and go out with people, they just need some time between outings to wind down and gear up and to know there's someone around that will share their interests. Likewise, there are shy extroverts who thrive more in online spaces where they can easily manage their interactions with others and have time to think about their responses. In either case, being an asshole is not part of it.
Yeah I’m a shy extrovert. It took me a long time to learn that because until my mid 20s I felt like I was intruding by existing in public spaces. I still have to remind myself that I’m completely allowed to go to things open to the public and that the organizers/proprietors actually prefer I do.
My wife is an introvert. I welcome her to attend most things I go to, but I understand she’s got the energy to go to maybe half of it. That’s ok, and she actually appreciates my extroversion.
It's also interesting to note that even though introversion and extroversion is often seen as "one gains energy by being alone, the other gains energy by socializing," it's actually more complicated than that. It's got more to do with how your brain processes pleasure and reward. I'm not gonna pretend to fully understand, I'm not a professional, only repeating what they've told me, but there's a lot of times extroverts are actually more drained by social interaction because they're more mentally present in it than introverts are. As a result of that misunderstanding, a lot of people who are actually extroverts think that they're introverts.
Personally, I consider myself an extrovert, but things like drama and people being rude are so draining on me that when it happens I often need to immediately remove myself from the situation to recharge, and then I usually don't end up coming back until at least the next day.
The only meaningful use of the introvert/extrovert dichotomy in my experience is just that extroverts charge their batteries in social situations, introverts drain their batteries and need time to recharge. Knowing this is useful, but says absolutely nothing about social or conversational skills, charm, interests, etc - even if it might be easier to develop social strategies if you are extroverted. But there's certainly a lot of charmless extroverts around as well.
It makes a bit more sense than of the original reinterpretation but in the original Jungian sense, the dichotomy is very simple and also precise: Whether a judgement function (some hardware in your mind) concerns itself with subjective (introverted) or objective (extraverted) data, whether it looks at inside or outside. And yes it's extra, not extro.
The actual difference between people with dominant introverted vs. extraverted function is experience-then-learn vs. learn-then-experience. To draw a caricature: You won't get an extravert to calculate a ball's velocity before they've kicked it, and you won't get an introvert to kick a ball before they've calculated what will happen. Likewise, plenty of extraverts out there all alone, climbing a mountain or something, and introverts at busy chess tournaments: It's not about sociability.
Other psychologists then took the terms and tacked them onto their own theories, which is where the popular drive-centric understanding is coming from. In particular from Eysenk I think.
I honestly don't even hear anyone complaining about introverts. All I hear is socially anxious people or misanthropes complaining about other people talking, and confusing that with introversion.