|
5281625
|
Moses, for example, was not, according to some interpretations of his story, the brash, talkative type who would organize road trips and hold forth in a classroom at Harvard Business School. On the contrary, by today's standards he was dreadfully timid. He spoke with a stutter and considered himself inarticulate. The book of Numbers describes him as "very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth." When God first appeare..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
7a450fc
|
He believes, as most of us do, that venting anger lets off steam. 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 doe..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
5fb8166
|
Kagan has given us painstakingly documented evidence that high reactivity is one biological basis of introversion but his findings are powerful in part because they confirm what we've sensed all along. Some of Kagan's studies even venture into the realm of cultural myth. For example, he believes, based on his data, that high reactivity is associated with physical traits such as blue eyes, allergies, and hay fever, and that high-reactive men..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
aefe2e6
|
But it turned out that this "unlearning" was not as complete as the scientists first thought. When they severed the neural connections between the rats' cortex and amygdala, the rats became afraid of the sound again. This was because the fear conditioning had been suppressed by the activity of the cortex, but was still present in the amygdala. In humans with unwarranted fears, like batophobia, or fear of heights, the same thing happens. Rep..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
6658509
|
Agreeable people are warm, supportive, and loving; personality psychologists have found that if you sit them down in front of a computer screen of words, they focus longer than others do on words like caring, console, and help, and a shorter time on words like abduct, assault, and harass. Introverts and extroverts are equally likely to be agreeable; there is no correlation between extroversion and agreeableness. This explains why some extro..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
eb6c498
|
A very different study, in which robots interacted with stroke patients during physical rehabilitation exercises, yielded strikingly similar results. Introverted patients responded better and interacted longer with robots that were designed to speak in a soothing, gentle manner: "I know it is hard, but remember that it's for your own good," and, "Very nice, keep up the good work." Extroverts, on the other hand, worked harder for robots that..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
c4a3a72
|
Even multitasking, that prized feat of modern-day office warriors, turns out to be a myth. Scientists now know that the brain is incapable of paying attention to two things at the same time. What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent. Many introverts seem to know these things instinctively,
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
333486d
|
In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami--a man who has achieved self-mastery--convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of kee..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
a351c89
|
Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform. The
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
e2d4eaa
|
The evangelical culture ties together faithfulness with extroversion," McHugh explained. "The emphasis is on community, on participating in more and more programs and events, on meeting more and more people. It's a constant tension for many introverts that they're not living that out."
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
19241f6
|
Carnegie's metamorphosis from farmboy to salesman to public-speaking icon is also the story of the rise of the Extrovert Ideal. Carnegie's journey reflected a cultural evolution that reached a tipping point around the turn of the twentieth century, changing forever who we are and whom we admire, how we act at job interviews and what we look for in an employee, how we court our mates and raise our children.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
2b016c3
|
All of this would be fine if more talking were correlated with greater insight, but research suggests that there's no such link.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
73792a7
|
In Maya's group, the "executive branch," everyone is talking at once. Maya hangs back. Samantha, tall and plump in a purple T-shirt, takes charge. She pulls a sandwich bag from her knapsack and announces, "Whoever's holding the plastic bag gets to talk!" The students pass around the bag, each contributing a thought in turn. They remind me of the kids in The Lord of the Flies civic-mindedly passing around their conch shell, at least until al..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
015e2ff
|
Career counselor Shoya Zichy told me the story of one of her clients, an introverted financial analyst who worked in an environment where she was either presenting to clients or talking to colleagues who continually cycled in and out of her office. She was so burned out that she planned to quit her job--until Zichy suggested that she negotiate for downtime.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
549c72e
|
A local college counselor named Purvi Modi agrees. "Introversion is not looked down upon," she tells me. "It is accepted. In some cases it is even highly respected and admired. It is cool to be a Master Chess Champion and play in the band." There's an introvert-extrovert spectrum here, as everywhere, but it's as if the population is distributed a few extra degrees toward the introverted end of the scale."
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
6258fad
|
How is it that Asians and Westerners can look at the exact same classroom interactions, and one group will label it "class participation" and the other "talking nonsense"? The Journal of Research in Personality has published an answer to this question in the form of a map of the world drawn by research psychologist Robert McCrae."
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
903cbe7
|
We tend to forget that there's nothing sacrosanct about learning in large group classrooms, and that we organize students this way not because it's the best way to learn but because it's cost-efficient, and what else would we do with our children while the grown-ups are at work? If your child prefers to work autonomously and socialize one-on-one, there's nothing wrong with her; she just happens not to fit the prevailing model. The purpose o..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
7aefa43
|
By 1950, the slogan of he Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth was "A healthy personality for every child."
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
2cf5248
|
Talkative people are rated as smarter, better-looking, more interesting, and more desirable as friends. Velocity of speech counts as well as volume: we rank fast-talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones. The same dynamics ap-ply in groups, where research shows that the voluble are considered smarter than the reticent--even though there's zero correlation between the gift of gab and good ideas.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
7ac735e
|
But exceptional performance depends not only on the groundwork we lay through Deliberate Practice; it also requires the right working conditions. And in contemporary workplaces, these are surprisingly hard to come by.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
672ccdf
|
If we assume that quiet and loud people have roughly the same number of good (and bad) ideas, then we should worry if the louder and more forceful people always carry the day. This would mean that an awful lot of bad ideas prevail while good ones get squashed. Yet studies in group dynamics suggest that this is exactly what happens.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
9318cd4
|
We tend to forget that there's nothing sacrosanct about learning in large group classrooms, and that we organize students this way not because it's the best way to learn but because it's cost-efficient,
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
3b3c666
|
Americans found themselves working no longer with neighbors but with strangers. "Citizens" morphed into "employees," facing the question of how to make a good impression on people to whom they had no civic or family ties."
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
43047a2
|
am a horse for a single harness, not cut out for tandem or teamwork ... for well I know that in order to attain any definite goal, it is imperative that one person do the thinking and the commanding. --ALBERT EINSTEIN
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
fed8c06
|
Brainstorming had four rules: 1. Don't judge or criticize ideas. 2. Be freewheeling. The wilder the idea, the better. 3. Go for quantity. The more ideas you have, the better. 4. Build on the ideas of fellow group members.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
f3269cd
|
knowledge is useless until it's coupled with action.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
166484e
|
The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
276832f
|
she knew that she was just doing what you learn to do naturally as a quiet person in a loudmouth world.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
d90a042
|
We tend to write Moses' true personality out of the Exodus story. (Cecil B. DeMille's classic, The Ten Commandments, portrays him as a swashbuckling figure who does all the talking, with no help from Aaron.) We don't ask why God chose as his prophet a stutterer with a public speaking phobia. But we should. The book of Exodus is short on explication, but its stories suggest that introversion plays yin to the yang of extroversion; that the me..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
a4862b4
|
Nobody is going to care who won or lost any election when the earth is uninhabitable.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
da4e491
|
Some of the world's most talented people are introverts.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
9fd0605
|
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,
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
951c920
|
they wanted their son to pursue a career in religion or education, not sales. It seems unlikely that they would have approved of a self-improvement technique called "Truth or Lie." Or, for that matter, of Carnegie's best-selling advice on how to get people to admire you and do your bidding. How to Win Friends and Influence People is full of chapter titles like "Making People Glad to Do What You Want" and "How to Make People Like You Instant..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
9589111
|
Speak with conviction. Even if you believe something only fifty-five percent, say it as if you believe it a hundred percent.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
e589771
|
where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum. Our place on this continuum influences our choice of friends and mates, and how we make conversation, resolve differences, and show love. It affects the careers we choose and whether or not we succeed at them. It governs how likely we are to exercise, commit adultery, function well without sleep, learn from our mistakes, place big bets in the stock market, delay gratification, be a good lea..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
1dd297f
|
We tend to think of coolness as a pose that you strike with a pair of sunglasses, a nonchalant attitude, and drink in hand. But maybe we didn't choose these social accessories at random. Maybe we've adopted dark glasses, relaxed body language, and alcohol as signifiers precisely because they camouflage signs of a nervous system on overdrive.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
cda15cd
|
Would you be surprised if I told you that the vaudevillean professor and the recluse who prefers a life of the mind are one and
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
e85fb85
|
Some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
751fcd6
|
We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
51b16b2
|
in settled populations, people with this same gene form have poorer nutrition. The same traits that make a nomad fierce enough to hunt and to defend livestock against raiders may hinder more sedentary activities like farming, selling goods at the market, or focusing at school.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
00f20df
|
I don't really like being the guest at someone else's party, because then I have to be entertaining. But I'll host parties because it puts you at the center of things without actually being a social person.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
711725b
|
Velocity of speech counts as well as volume: we rank fast talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones.
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
f3f2e88
|
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. (This may be the single best argument yet for banning pornography from workplaces.)
|
|
|
Susan Cain |
|
6d2b80f
|
Introverts have wide-open information channels, causing them to be flooded with stimulation and over-aroused, while extroverts have tighter channels, making them prone to under-arousal. 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 ..
|
|
|
Susan Cain |