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in terms of play. People are super nutritious about their personality. Pretty much like all the leg introvert
works nightmarish and we're played out. Things like to meal the last five to eight years,
everybody in their mama is proclaiming it to be an introvert. A few weeks ago, we got a call from an listener named Deladelle. It just seems like the introvert thing is a new hot word that everyone is called on to and is clinging to, even if they don't demonstrate the qualities. And I'm just curious, is that just the personal observation or something other people are saying, and also just why.
Good question. I gave them a call back. Super crazy. I feel like we actually homies are already because of this, it's a huge so bad job.
Yeah. I got this call. I was like, yeah, yeah, let's go down that rabbit hole.
Adel is extremely outgoing. Honestly, same. And he does a good job of putting into words with being an extrovert feels like. Excessive solitude physically drains me. If we get snowed in in Virginia for four days, day three, I'm going somewhere. I'm going to, you know, whether it be just a grocery store. It's not even all about people all the time. This interesting personality types began the way a lot of interest to. He was dating someone who was super into it.
I was in a relationship with someone who was an introvert and they would be reading this book and really like going, oh my gosh. And so I'm like, what is this book? So I got the name of the book introverted manager and I didn't realize when I got it that it would teach me so much about myself.
“The relationship ended, but his commitment to the introverts in his life is still going strong.”
I may just suggest instead of hanging out for five hours, we hang out for an hour and a half. Or I may text one of them, an introverted friend under the table and be like, are you good? You mentioned that the way we talk about introverts is changing. What have you noticed? How has it changed? I feel like every now and again, on line, a word just takes off. Recently, it's been like diabolical, everything we don't like is diabolical, right? And I was starting to feel like
introversion was like that in that as a mask collective, we kind of learned a new word and it sounded cool and intriguing and interesting and like added, you know, a mystique to us. So people were just clinging to it without really knowing the characteristics of an introvert. I was seeing people who I know, who I wouldn't consider to be an introvert proclaiming that they were. And I'm like, you know, wow, like you're out every week in like swinging from chandeliers, like you're probably
not an introvert, like, but I'm not so arrogant that, you know, I feel like I can tell anyone with their temperament is. I respect everyone's take on it, of course. So if you could ask an expert, you know, any kinds of questions about this, what are some of the things you'd ask them? Do we shift towards the introverted side of the spectrum as we age? That sounds like it would be natural maybe, but I don't know. I definitely feel like the pandemic definitely amplified it
to the point why, even here people say crazy things like, I miss the pandemic and I'm like, you miss being locked in a house without the freedom to move around and do things like that sounds extreme. I feel like society is the whole is growing what disconnected and I kind of
“hate that for us. I truly believe life is a team sport. It's important to be self-aware in terms of,”
you know, your introversion, extroversion and how you handle people so that they're eager to stick
Around and sustain those relationships.
from Vox, we're gonna get LaDelle some answers. What does it actually mean to be an introvert?
“Are we more introverted than we used to be? And is it possible to change?”
Would you describe yourself as an introvert or an extrovert? Neither. Oh, can you do that? Is that angle? Yeah. This is Shannon's Hours of Alla. She's a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, and she researchers personality. It's a little bit of a misconception because we think that we can put ourselves into these like discreet categories, but most of the things that we use to describe people are on continue. So you can be more towards the introverted side
or more towards the extroverted side, but this is a continuum with different polls. People that are
more on the introverted side, they're gonna need less stimulation. They're gonna have less sort of energy, and they're gonna derive less energy from social situations, whereas people on the more extroverted side are going to be more excitable, have more positivity, and tend to derive a lot of energy from social situations. One of our listeners called in because he suddenly noticed so many more people identifying as introverts on social media, and he wondered if it might have
something to do with the pandemic. The pandemic is kind of a huge life event, right? That really changed a lot of our behavior. And you know, I would consider myself like pretty staunchly in the middle of the continuum, extroverted in some situations, introverted in others, and I remember going
out to dinner when we were first allowed to go out to dinner and being like, "Man, I got weird."
“Yeah. So I think like any skill when we are as practice, we get rusty. And so I think people may”
be kind of confusing discomfort and a little rustyness with like I'm introverted. But I do think that here in the last decade or so, there's been more recognition of introverts as having qualities of really desirable. You know what? No one talks about how freaking good introverts are at networking. It's a whole spiritual filtration system that refuses to let surface level conversations sit on the same couch as their souls. When it comes to creativity and
to leadership, we need introverts doing what they do best. They tend to be more thoughtful, more measured, better listeners, right? And so the world is really, I think, set up to reinforce extroversion, you know, being the loudest person in the room, shouting your ideas. And so I think there's been kind of this like, relishance for introverts. And now people are like,
“"Oh, it's okay to identify as an introvert. I'm a proud introvert." And I think that's what we're seeing.”
Do we get more introverted as we age? Like, I don't know, I'm an extrovert, but I do notice more and more. I'm like, I can stay in and read a book by myself today. Yeah. So this is actually a really complicated question to answer. So extroversion versus introversion rate, it can be divided up into what we think of as sub facets. So it's not just like one global quality, even though that's how we often talk about it. So what thing that does tend to change or increase on average as people age
is what's called social dominance? And this is a facetive extroversion that is the tendency to be assertive and confident. On the flip side, social vitality tends to decrease. And this is like enthusiasm and energy for social situations. Kind of like what you're describing. Like, I don't necessarily, I don't have the same fellow I used to have. I'm happy to read my book. But what I really want to highlight though is that these are on average. And nobody is really the average person.
This is like when we mathematically sum everybody's kind of change in extroversion. You know, I think we have this urge to put ourselves in these boxes. You know, like, I am an extrovert or I am an introvert. You research personality. Is that how you're your colleagues think about it? So most things about people are not categories. We're not this or that. It's more of a matter of degree. I think the way we define personality, the way we measure personality, it's really different from
how people are talking about their types. At a dinner party, it's really different from what you would think personality is if you took a common personality test on the internet or, you know,
Through HR office.
not really good at spreading the word on what personality actually is. Coming up, some personality
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personality. So I always like to answer this by by talking about what personality is not first. People
are super duper precious about their personality it is their essence their sense of humor their tastes their values and that's actually not how academic psychologists define personality. Oh some people think oh it's like the core of me but really we define personality as your characteristic or habitual way of acting and thinking and when you think about like that it's like mental habits and you know behavioral habits and those are things that we change all the time. I'm curious
how you measure personality from that scientific standpoint. Most of the commercial personality tests that people have heard of that they're taking in like HR offices they're very category-based right they put you into a type and you know that's that. What we use what we think sort of describes personality in a much more nuanced way is the big five or the five factor model of personality. These are sort of five overarching traits the first one is openness and this is the degree to which
you are interested in I knew ideas and aesthetics full loss of the art versus folks that are more
traditional and like this is how we always do it. Then you have conscientiousness which is
on a continuum with disinhibition and essentially conscientiousness is like how achievement striving you are how organized how reliable and disinhibition is more like you know I come
“act before I think it through. The next is extroversion versus introversion right and that's the”
tendency to be energetic and excitable. Then there's a grableness versus antagonism. A grableness is how oriented you are towards other people how empathic how caring how well you get along with others. The last one is neuroticism which is on a continuum with emotional stability and neuroticism is just your tendency to experience strong negative emotions do you tend to get more upset by you know
Stressors in the environment do you take longer to come back down that sort o...
I like to think about the big five you know if you could imagine like a like an audio switch board
“with all the little dials that you can kind of push up and down so you might be high in”
neuroticism and you might be kind of moderate and extroversion and you might be moderate in personality. Well they're one of the nice things about the big five is that we have tons of really
really good measures of this right so so if you Google personality test you know the first two
pages of hits are going to be like 16 personality in my respects but if you Google big five personality test there are free versions of this test where you can get this information and these are super well validated they actually predict outcomes like where you fall on these traits versus like these personality type tests are amount as good as predicting the career success in relationship satisfaction as your zodiac sign why why do you think we're so interested in knowing
our personality types like why why do we want to put ourselves in buckets so badly I mean it's fun
right it is right it is right it's fun I mean like my Myersburg type is I don't actually
know what the number is but like colloquially it's the protagonist which is like so fun right that's much more fun than being like I'm high in neuroticism and I'm moderate in an extroversion but knowing where you are on those different traits provides you with a lot more nuanced information and the work that I do in my lab so I have a research lab at the University of Kentucky it's a treatment outcome research lab so I develop interventions and you know for the past 10 years have
been developing interventions to nudge personality traits when you're like a type seven okay well what where do I start with change right but if I'm really high on neuroticism and I want to slide that down a little bit okay now I have a really clear goal or you know I'm kind of shy of the the midpoint for the interversion extroversion continuum and I really want to go for promotion where I have you know I have some leadership responsibilities and I need to be more up in front
of the group like how can I make those shifts to my personality so the other like big mistake that people think is that personality sentence so you're born with it and you should just like take the test put yourself in the box and then you should choose partners and careers based on
“whatever type you are when really I think it should be the opposite right that you should”
identify what's important to you what you value what important goals you have and then figure out what are the traits that will help get you there and intentionally cultivate them up next an introvert tries to reinvent herself as an extrovert support for today's show comes from van guard for the financial advisors listening van guard has a message for you so do I hello financial advisors there message finding real value in fixed
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hey it's jq we're back with explain it to me and it turns out our personality traits aren't
really either or it's more like a continuum and where you fall on that continuum isn't set in stone
but what if you're unhappy with where you're at can you actually change your personality i'm olga hazan and i'm a staff writer at the Atlantic and the author of me but better august been an entire year attempting to do just that so the year was twenty twenty two and you know the pandemic was sort of easing up people had started socializing again you know sometimes in masks sometimes not but i kind of had not i was still pretty much social distancing pretty hardcore and um a lot
of my social connections had kind of evaporated loosened since the pandemic had started and i kind
“of just found myself a little bit lonely um honestly and so i uh been interested in this topic”
of personality change just through some other research and writing i had been doing and i took this personality test that was designed by a psychologist and it told me that i was in the something like the twenty-third percentile uh when it came to uh introversion versus extroversion so i was an extreme introvert and especially when it came to being friendly or cheerful so i was very not friendly and not cheerful you mentioned you know that this was happening during the pandemic coming off of
the pandemic can you tell me a little bit more about how the pandemic and social distancing affected you and your introversion so i i think i really hardened my introversion i did pretty well at social distancing um and i kind of didn't realize how um severe the introversion was getting or how
much i was sort of like um i basically never need to talk to people ever again it was like February
in DC and it was uh raining it was like a freezing rain uh and like there were no leaves on the trees and i just like looked outside and i wrote in my journal i feel like nobody really knows me i was just like this is this is bad i feel like i'm in a gullag or something so that's when all good decided to take matters into our own hands she took all that research she read for her reporting and did her own experiment she gave herself a series of exercises she
hosted a dinner party she talked to strangers more and she kicked it all off by doing something only the bravest among us too i just wanted to rip the bandit off into the most extreme thing possible she signed up for an improv class i was terrified that was one thing is i'm not a natural performer and i'm also not silly um so that was a challenge for me but the great thing about improv is that not only does it make you more comfortable interacting with
people but also in doing so in a way that's not scripted at all so like you and i are both journalists like before each interview we write out our questions you know we go through the list and then the conversation is done and like goodbye um and i was really used to having those kinds of conversations but i wasn't used to someone saying something to me that was unexpected or asking me a question that was probing or vulnerable and uh or just having to like pivot in the moment through something
kind of chaotic i imagine if you are like extremely introverted doing improv is like oh this is a nightmare scenario because even i will say i've done it before and even as an extrovert it can be a little bit like oh what are whatever what are we getting ourselves into pretty much like all the like introvert worst nightmares uh we're played out every single time man so what were the final results of your experiment were you successful so an introversion in particular my score went
“way up i think it was like um it went up to like high or something or like medium high maybe”
i don't know um and so the the principle behind this personality changes that as you do these
Activities or whatever you know challenges whatever you want to call them you...
with it just like with anything else training for a marathon you know any other skill you want to
pick up so you become more comfortable with talking to people and with socializing and then you kind of start to see that as part of yourself um so a lot of the questions will be like
“sometimes like i enjoy talking to people or like i have fun at parties and i honestly had to answer”
like yes to a lot of those because i had been doing a lot of those things and i had been having fun would you say that you're an extrovert now i think i'm a lot more extroverted than i thought i think i maybe just wasn't this hard and introvert this 23% not friendly not your whole
i think i was sort of like taking that initial test based on how i feel when i'm
about to leave the house and like Netflix and the couch are calling um and not and there are days like that they don't think to exist but not like how i feel when i'm actually there or like afterward when i'm like oh that was so funny with that person said or like that was so cool or that person's job is so neat like you don't think about those positive things that come out of social interaction
“you just think about how hard it is to like go and find parking or whatever to me it really”
showed how like you're not necessarily stuck with what you were given or the story that you're
telling yourself about your personality traits that by kind of loosening what that your definition
of your personality is you can actually kind of explore more of the world and possibly find things that are more fulfilling on the other side even if it's not totally in line with your original version of your personality so we've talked a lot about going from introversion to extroversion but what do you think extroverts can learn from introverts there are strengths to being introverted and to being contemplative and having like quiet moments to yourself and being happy just
being by yourself and spending time alone because you are gonna have you know times in your life when you are a solo traveling or you know just doing something that requires like deep thought work Carl Yoon who's like one of the psychologists that i write about in the book what said that there's no such thing as a pure introvert or pure extrovert such a person would be in the insane asylum and you know that's extreme but that's like sort of true is that like
there's definitely elements to both sides of that trait that are worthwhile that's it for this week thanks again to La Del for calling in with your question speaking of which we're working on an upcoming episode about AI abundance it's the idea that AI can actually free us up to work less and live more we want to know if you suddenly had a lot of time on your hands what would you do with it call us at 1-800-618-8545 or email us
“at [email protected] if you like this show you should consider becoming a vox member”
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Miranda Kennedy's our executive producer I'm your host John Blunhill talk to you soon bye support for the show comes from KPMG in any organization disruption is inevitable but struggling through it doesn't have to be the KPMG adaptability index is your blueprint for building capabilities to handle what comes next it uses real data to look at how your culture, strategy and partnerships all work together to help your business thrive stop reacting and start adapting
visit kpmg.com/us/adaptability to explore the adaptability index and pulse surveys today support for the show comes from KPMG in any organization disruption is inevitable but struggling through it doesn't have to be the KPMG adaptability index is your blueprint for building capabilities to handle what comes next it uses real data to look at how your culture,
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