For a long time,this thought has been lingering in my mind
“Why Extroverts are widely accepted and Introverts are seen inferior in most of
the situations”. Being an Introverted Kid, who prefer to be alone with books
lying around, prefer more on ideation than going out and executing, wanted to
be in quiet place, spend meaningful time with people rather than partying hard.
I came across this
book Quiet: Power of Introverts in a
World that Can’t Stop Talking written by Susan Cain, a lawyer, Psychologist
and an introvert by herself.
In this book, she explores how the Socio-Economic changes
have influenced the change from Culture of Character to Culture of Personality
– She says globalization and liberalization has turned the focus on how people
are perceived rather than what actually we are, on the way sacrificing
something meaningful we had.
She quotes couple of examples on the Communication Skills
workshop, how Harvard is place for Extroverts and even the Churches in US are
not accommodating the Introverts, a prime requisite for Inquisitiveness. She
brings out how Extroverts are gregarious, sociable and act with less
information rather than getting deep into the topic, on the other side
Introverts are less sociable and get deeper into topic, Insightful. Introverts
prefer Ideation and Extroverts prefer Execution. (All the thoughts has been
substantiated with experiences, research data)
She also quotes how collaboration was brought about in the
wake of internet based work systems with virtual teams, where people were not
physically interacting instead were mostly anonymous and in case of today’s context
collaboration in organization where people are physically working together,
having their own predispositions about the other might give rise to
organizational politics, social loafing behavior and might kill creativity.
She explores the anatomy of the human brain where one of research
findings found children who were highly
reactive during their childhood days turned out to be Introvert and vice versa.
It’s because of the their amygdala referred to as emotional brain being sensitive
towards novelty compared to the extroverts. However, she says that the neo-cortex
that carries the experiences, impressions can help introverts to act as pseudo
extroverts if situations demand and how people might be pulled back as
introverts after a certain threshold getting back to their amygdala.
In line with this she also explains how the Ascending
Reticular Activating System (ARAS ) a part of the brain , a pipe like structure
which is responsible for arousal is wider in case of the extroverts demanding
more sensory outside stimulus for their arousal and on the other hand its
narrower in case of Introverts making them self-aroused without any external
stimulus.
She also talks about creating Restorative niches and sweat
spots where introverts though involved in pseudo extrovert activities can rejuvenate
themselves on regular intervals and form agreements with their closed one’s for
spending times on things they love to do !
Extroverts are reward oriented and Introverts are threat
oriented. She puts into perspective how corporates are responsive to short
terms rewards and therefore value extroverts over Introverts. Also provides
data on how Introverts investments sustained the Wall Street Crash compared to
the investments made by Extroverts.
She talks about the Rubber band theory, which says every
human being has his / her own Free Will to certain extent to modify his / her
traits and this would happen mostly when people work projects that are close to
their heart given by Free Trait Theory !
She also brings out how Asians Culture propounded Introvert
ideal and the American Culture propounded the Extrovert ideal, how we are
changing nowadays. She also has discussed about how to deal with Introverted
kids rather than try turning them into extroverts.
Altogether a Brilliant work ! Must read for an Introvert and people dealing with introverts to understand their potential & possibility. It's much more than what we really think of an Introvert !
Here is the link for one of her TED talk on this book : http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html
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