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259a6d3
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In fact, the very thing that many high-reactives hate most about blushing-- its uncontrollability-- is what makes it so socially useful. "Because it is impossible to control the blush intentionally," Dijk speculates, blushing is an authentic sign of embarrassment. And embarrassment, according to Keltner, is a moral emotion. It shows humility, modesty, and a desire to avoid aggression and make peace."
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Susan Cain |
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48dbc01
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And it suggests, says Jadzia Jagiellowicz, the lead scientist at Stony Brook, that sensitive types think in an unusually complex fashion. It may also help explain why they're so bored by small talk. "If you're thinking in more complicated ways," she told me, "then talking about the weather or where you went for the holidays is not quite as interesting as talking about values or morality."
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Susan Cain |
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0738713
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A mountain of recent data on open-plan offices from many different industries corroborates the results of the games. Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They're associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure. Open-plan workers are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and elevated stress levels and to get the flu; they argue more with their coll..
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Susan Cain |
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e2c3981
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The "catharsis hypothesis"--that aggression builds up inside us until it's healthily released--dates back to the Greeks, was revived by Freud, and gained steam during the "let it all hang out" 1960s of punching bags and primal screams. But the catharsis hypothesis is a myth--a plausible one, an elegant one, but a myth nonetheless. Scores of studies have shown that venting doesn't soothe anger; it fuels it."
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Susan Cain |
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62c18b9
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According to Free Trait Theory, we are born and culturally endowed with certain personality traits--introversion, for example--but we can and do act out of character in the service of "core personal projects."
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Susan Cain |
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33ef0d8
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To ask whether it's nature or nurture, says Kagan, is like asking whether a blizzard is caused by temperature or humidity. It's the intricate interaction between the two that makes us who we are.
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Susan Cain |
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06e2379
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I realize it's not true that I'm no longer shy; I've just learned to talk myself down from the ledge
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Susan Cain |
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2ef4328
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In most settings, people use small talk as a way of relaxing into a new relationship, and only once they're comfortable do they connect more seriously. Sensitive people seem to do the reverse. They "enjoy small talk only after they've gone deep," says Strickland. "When sensitive people are in environments that nurture their authenticity, they laugh and chitchat just as much as anyone else."
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Susan Cain |
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533d029
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Our schools should teach children the skills to work with others- cooperative learning can be effective when practiced well and in moderation- but also the time and training they need to deliberately practice on their own.
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Susan Cain |
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f75f934
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Most inventors and engineers I've met are like me--they're shy and they live in their heads. They're almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone where they can control an invention's design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don't believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by committee. If you're that rare engineer who's an invento..
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Susan Cain |
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79a0087
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One noteworthy study suggests that people who suppress negative emotions tend to leak those emotions later in unexpected ways. The psychologist Judith Grob asked people to hide their emotions as she showed them disgusting images. She even had them hold pens in their mouths to prevent them from frowning. She found that this group reported feeling less disgusted by the pictures than did those who'd been allowed to react naturally. Later, howe..
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Susan Cain |
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62f3c64
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Probably the most common--and damaging--misunderstanding about personality type is that introverts are antisocial and extroverts are pro-social. But as we've seen, neither formulation is correct; introverts and extroverts are differently social.
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susan cain |
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bf0ad8c
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Over-arousal doesn't produce anxiety so much as the sense that you can't think straight--that you've had enough and would like to go home now. Under-arousal is something like cabin fever. Not enough is happening: you feel itchy, restless, and sluggish, like you need to get out of the house already.
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Susan Cain |
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75e58ba
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One highly successful venture capitalist who is regularly pitched by young entrepreneurs told me how frustrated he is by his colleagues' failure to distinguish between good presentation skills and true leadership ability. "I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they're good talkers, but they don't have good ideas," he said. "It's so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent."
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Susan Cain |
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43ff474
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Psychologists often discuss the difference between "temperament" and "personality." Temperament refers to inborn, biologically based behavioral and emotional patterns that are observable in infancy and early childhood; personality is the complex brew that emerges after cultural influence and personal experience are thrown into the mix. Some say that temperament is the foundation, and personality is the building."
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Susan Cain |
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3a3ef03
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Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much," a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral."
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Susan Cain |
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7e80a44
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Some of the world's most talented people are introverts. Without them we wouldn't have the Apple computer, the theory of relativity or Van Gogh's sunflowers.
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Susan Cain |
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78ac4f5
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Proverbs from the East: The wind howls, but the mountain remains still. Even though I make no special attempt to observe the discipline of silence, living alone automatically makes me refrain from the sins of speech. Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know. Proverbs from the West Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong.
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Susan Cain |
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bafc6b6
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Moreover, they tell us that the Extrovert Ideal is not as sacrosanct as we may have thought. So if, deep down, you've been thinking that it's only natural for the bold and sociable to dominate the reserved and sensitive, and that the Extrovert Ideal is innate to humanity, Robert McCrae's personality map suggests a different truth: that each way of being--quiet and talkative, careful and audacious, inhibited and unrestrained--is characterist..
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Susan Cain |
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31a2ca1
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Studies show that the fear of public humiliation is a potent force. During the 1988-89 basketball season, for example, two NCAA basketball teams played eleven games without any spectators, owing to a measles outbreak that led their schools to quarantine all students. Both teams played much better (higher free-throw percentages, for example) without any fans, even adoring home-team fans, to unnerve them.
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Susan Cain |
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60e257e
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If you don't love Jesus out loud, then it must not be real love. It's not enough to forge your own spiritual connection to the Divine. It must be displayed publicly.
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personality
extroversion
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Susan Cain |
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82785fc
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It may also help explain why they're so bored by small talk. "If you're thinking in more complicated ways," she told me, "then talking about the weather or where you went for the holidays is not quite as interesting as talking about values or morality."
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Susan Cain |
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2c1dd87
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Introverts recharge their batteries by being alone;
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Susan Cain |
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ddb7eba
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The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings. Although flow does not depend on being an introvert or an extrovert, many of the flow experiences that Csikszentmihalyi writes about are solitary pursuits that have nothing to do with reward-seeking: reading, tending an orchard, solo ocean cruising. Flow often occurs, he writes, in conditions in which people "become independent of the social environmen..
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Susan Cain |
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33444c3
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I was the nicest person you'd ever want to know," Alex recalls, "but the world wasn't that way. The problem was that if you were just a nice person, you'd get crushed. I refused to live a life where people could do that stuff to me."
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world
life
person
nice
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Susan Cain |
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We're told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable.
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Susan Cain |
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f5e266f
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While extroverts tend to attain leadership in public domains, introverts tend to attain leadership in theoretical and aesthetic fields. Outstanding introverted leaders, such as Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Patrick White and Arthur Boyd, who have created either new fields of thought or rearranged existing knowledge, have spent long periods of their lives in solitude. Hence leadership does not only apply in social situations, but also occurs ..
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Susan Cain |
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c8c9830
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A few things introverts are not: The word introvert is not a synonym for hermit or misanthrope. Introverts can be these things, but most are perfectly friendly.
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Susan Cain |
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528d49d
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Contrary to the Harvard Business School model of vocal leadership, the ranks of effective CEOs turn out to be filled with introverts, including Charles Schwab; Bill Gates; Brenda Barnes, CEO of Sara Lee; and James Copeland, former CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.
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Susan Cain |
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8b7ec17
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If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.
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Susan Cain |
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7b67a5d
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introverts like people they meet in friendly contexts; extroverts prefer those they compete with.
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Susan Cain |
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bc80100
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Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing ("I was never the same again after my wife left me"), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise ("The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I'm so much happier with my new wife"). Those who live the most fully realized lives--giving back to their families, societies, and ultimately themselves--tend to find meani..
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Susan Cain |
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9dbd433
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Whoever you are, bear in mind that appearance is not reality.
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Susan Cain |
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b534995
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bear in mind that appearance is not reality. Some people act like extroverts, but the effort costs them in energy, authenticity, and even physical health.
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Susan Cain |
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ac472be
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We like to believe that we live in a grand age of creative individualism. We look back at the midcentury era in which the Berkeley researchers conducted their creativity studies, and feel superior. Unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s, we hang posters of Einstein on our walls, his tongue stuck out iconoclastically. We consume indie music and films, and generate our own online content. We "think different" (even if we got the..
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Susan Cain |
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809020e
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If you like to do things in a slow and steady way, don't let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don't force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi tasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way. It's up to you to use that independence to good effect.
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Susan Cain |
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9d4c4c7
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a 2010 University of Michigan study shows that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than they were thirty years ago, with much of the drop having occurred since 2000. (The study's authors speculate that the decline in empathy is related to the prevalence of social media, reality TV, and "hyper-competitiveness.")"
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Susan Cain |
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b2d61f8
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Kuhnen and Brian Knutson have found that men who are shown erotic pictures just before they gamble take more risks than those shown neutral images like desks and chairs. This is because anticipating rewards--any rewards, whether or not related to the subject at hand--excites our dopamine-driven reward networks and makes us act more rashly.
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Susan Cain |
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aeae5fb
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Conversely, high-reactive children may be more likely to develop into artists and writers and scientists and thinkers because their aversion to novelty causes them to spend time inside the familiar--and intellectually fertile--environment of their own heads.
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Susan Cain |
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a9632b8
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The New Groupthink is also practiced in our schools, via an increasingly popular method of instruction called "cooperative" or "small group" learning. In many elementary schools, the traditional rows of seats facing the teacher have been replaced with "pods" of four or more desks pushed together to facilitate countless group learning activities. Even subjects like math and creative writing, which would seem to depend on solo flights of thou..
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Susan Cain |
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8ea3fb0
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When people are skilled at adopting free traits, it can be hard to believe that they're acting out of character. Professor Little's students are usually incredulous when he claims to be an introvert. But Little is far from unique; many people, especially those in leadership roles, engage in a certain level of pretend-extroversion. Consider, for example, my friend Alex, the socially adept head of a financial services company, who agreed to g..
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Susan Cain |
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7fa2ea2
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But the catharsis hypothesis is a myth-- a plausible one, an elegant one, but a myth nonetheless. Scores of studies have shown that venting doesn't soothe anger; it fuels it.
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Susan Cain |
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7c4b703
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It makes sense, then, that Westerners value boldness and verbal skill, traits that promote individuality, while Asians prize quiet, humility, and sensitivity, which foster group cohesion. If you live in a collective, then things will go a lot more smoothly if you behave with restraint, even submission.
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Susan Cain |
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e0f70ba
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Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They're associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure. Open-plan workers are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and elevated stress levels and to get the flu; they argue more with their colleagues; they worry about coworkers eavesdropping on their phone calls and spying on their computer screens. They have..
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Susan Cain |