I feel this way: having led teams of hundreds of people, I know I can have deep, meaningful and long conversations… but I don’t find them a source of joy.
I encourage reading this recent opinion post in Washington Post that delves into this nuance with a unique perspective: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/12/rebecca-m...
I understand that the idea of draining vs. charging works for some people, but I always found this concept even more baffling. For me, when I've been in solitude for a while, I feel a restless desire to go out and interact with people. When I'm in that lonely state, I find social interaction "charging" and further solitude "draining."
But when I go interact with people for a long time—especially in a large group where I don't know people well—I feel an urge to retreat to solitude.
So am I charged by solitude and drained by interaction, or the other way around? It feels like the answer is "both"... so what am I supposed to do with all this?
One way you could think about my model is that you have four "batteries", each of which has an optimal "charge level." If you're under that level, you'll feel a desire to be in that state for a while. If you're over it, you'll feel an aversion to being in that state. And it's possible that if you're quite introverted, your optimal level of large-group interaction is close to zero.
If you're somewhere in the middle like me, though, the simple idea that you're "drained" by one thing or the other feels off.
- how much one ‘masks’ one’s feelings
- how much attention/energy one spends deeply engaging with the other thoughtfully
Eg two very different examples of draining conversations:
1. you’re at a party hosted by someone you care about and being a fun guest, but more for the host’s sake because you care about them and want to show up for them and help assuage their worries their party might not be a success. you can keep your energy expenditure lowish but likely find yourself on social autopilot. passive engagement + commitment to fixing oneself to the event = energy cost
2. you run into a total stranger whose interests align exactly like yours and who is just as excited to talk to you as you are to them. But at the end of such conversations you have explored so much and learned so much from them, it takes a bit of a breather to disengage. Fun and active engagement but really high energy expenditure
I can be home alone all week and still dread going out to a party if I’m not in the mood. I’m a very social person, but it is still draining. I have never felt so alone that I need social interaction, but I have frequently felt a strong need to be alone.
But I’m also like the parent in that I’ve lead large teams, had greater interpersonal relationships, and have been hoisted to leadership positions regardless of if I was trying to get there or not.
Finally, I imagine the reality of extrovert vs introvert is similar to the modern understanding of gender as a spectrum. I would guess there are not many people that are wholly introverted or extroverted.
To use a crude analogy, you can be both thirsty and busting to go to the toilet the same time.
For a battery, getting "drained" is an expected change, perhaps "discharge" would be a more neutral way to put it, but IMO it just comes down to personal imagery.
Sorry to add to the flames, but many (most?) introverts generally do find joy in deep, meaningful long conversations. It's the small talk they tend to dislike.
The problem is trying to shoehorn everything into introvert vs extrovert. The reality is it's a vector. Small talk vs meaningful conversations is an axis different from enjoying crowds vs alone time.
Both, however, do drain me.
The nuance on the flip side that I see discussed even less is that extroverts are not necessarily actually good at interacting with people, especially in more structured settings, they just maybe enjoy doing it more. Presumably there is at least some correlation between extroversion and good social skills, since if nothing else the extrovert might get more practice. But my anecdotal experience is that they're definitely clearly distinct personality aspects that fairly often do not go together.
Do you consider yourself an introvert or extrovert? I am deeply introverted, but deep conversations are what I yearn for, but I find most people are not willing to engage in such, especially extroverts.
It was my understanding that most introverts actually feel deeply, which is precisely why social interactions that are not intellectually stimulating are draining. Though even the intellectually stimulating ones are still tiring, just not draining.
The primary difference between myself and my extreme extrovert wife is that at the end of the day I am emotionally drained and need some quiet time to recharge, while she’s still itching to talk.
Enjoy socialising but after a party you're glad to put your feet up and read a book? Get slight anxiety making small talk with strangers, to the point where you feel bad if you do it for more than six hours? Don't want to hang out with your boss at the mandatory company event on the weekend when you could be with your husband and kids? Congratulations, you're A) perfectly normal and B) an introvert, sort of, if you squint!
The problem is not that I don't get what it's like to feel drained, it's that I'm pretty sure everyone I hang out with except for literally one single person feels drained by social interaction at some point.
It may mean having to go to bed very early because you're all used up. The effects varies alot though.
It's not a preference.
You aren't "an" introvert or an extrovert, rather you have cognitive functions that are themselves introverted or extroverted and they are ordered in your personality between strongest and weakest.
Everyone has both introverted and extroverted functions, and the opposite is always the second strongest. This is why people make up the word "ambivert." People are also confused depending on whether that function is perceptual (intuition / sensory) or judgmental (thinking / feeling), with the perceptual ones, from the meme level understanding appearing introverted.
I'm pretty sure this is bullshit.
Level of drain = lack of trust in that person X overall level of anxiety
If you're highly anxious and socializing with people you dont trust (strangers, acquaintances) then the experience will be stressful and draining.
Ive met many self declared introverts who have no problem socializing for long periods in small groups with people they trust absolutely.
Ditto self declared extroverts who are "socially performing" in a critical sitation where they will be judged can't help but find that experience draining.
> I'm pretty sure this is bullshit.
As an introvert, it's spot on. I have no problems socializing with people, whether I trust them or not. I spend long periods (e.g., days camping) with groups that I trust. I enjoy all of it in the moment. I don't have anxiety. It's all still draining, and I need to spend days alone to recharge after days of socializing, enjoyable or otherwise.
> Ive met many self declared introverts who have no problem socializing for long periods in small groups with people they trust absolutely.
How do you know they had no problem socializing for long periods? Did you ask them, or did they just not complain about it to you? Part of the issue for many introverts is the social expectation is often set by a more extroverted culture, and they just try to fit in. That doesn't mean they prefer chatting with you for four hours rather than, say, two hours.
As an anecdotal personal example. I love my wife and kids dearly. I trust them, and feel no anxiety being around them. Yet it’s draining. Now they’re gone for a few days, and I feel very good being finally alone for a few days.
Likewise I enjoy getting together with friends and family. I’ve also learned to be sociable. But it’s draining. After a day of having to interact with people I really, really, really cherish being alone for a few hours with my own thoughts, and preferably silence.
We’re different like that, people in general, I mean.
> I'm pretty sure this is bullshit.
Both me and my SO are more introvert than not.
We've come to the conclusion that one of the core reasons it's so draining for us is that we puts a lot of thought into interactions and conversations, even superficial small talk ones.
At least in our experience, those who appear more extrovert seem to do less of that. They don't seem to reflect over all our actions, or everything we say. Some of it, or at certain times, sure. But seemingly not to the same degree.
If that is the case, then it is more draining, because we exert more mental effort.
> Level of drain = lack of trust in that person X overall level of anxiety
Speaking for myself at least, anxiety has nothing to do with it, nor lack of trust. I don't feel any anxiety striking a random conversation with someone in a bar or with a family member at home. And when I have a random conversation with someone in a bar, it doesn't matter if I trust them or not, because the topics are almost never intimate. With my family members I know I can trust them, so that's moot as well.
But both conversations can be quite draining, and at least for me, I suspect it has more to do with what I described above.
Don't know what that makes me but I don't worry about the labels
For the record, I don't think this has anything to do with the U.S., false dichotomies are a more or less equally common human shorthand anywhere and anywhen that I've visited, or studied at all.
I've assumed it's because people don't have time or energy to consider all the nuances of everything all the time, or the space to list them out. The brain is in many ways a device for ignoring anything that doesn't help you get food and not get eaten by a lion.
There really seems to be some dteong cultural tendency to do this.
I try to have conversation about complex issues all the time and those conversations never advance past basic talking points that any person who spent time actually looking into any topic would not reduce down to a binary answer.
Half the people I talk with think I'm super liberal and the other half think Im super conservative and it stems usually from the first interaction Ive had with people where Ive tried to advance a topic to beyond repeating the same lame talking points, but it really never gets past first base.
That said for topics I do have some more in-depth understanding (and opinions on), I've started to find discussions around them to be... draining. People seem to want to argue or 'discuss' things heatedly, but that's it. It never leads anywhere or to any meaningful change in behaviours. Not that I'm trying to influence anyone, but it just feels like arguing for the sake of arguing. I'd rather just keep to myself at that point.
So you might as well talk about more trivial but lighter things.
I know that I really love to deep dive into things and pick things apart. But my girlfriend hates it when I get like that, so I learned to understand her point as well.
You are aware that you are creating a dichotomy right here, no?
You might find this interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_opposition
One way to think about is that given a set of items, you want to understand them by finding both commonality and distinction between them. Partitioning into two sets is the simplest form that accomplishes some of both.
If you lump them all into a single set, you may have a sense of commonality, but you've learned nothing about distinguishing them.
If you put each element into its own set, you have distinguished all of them, but learned nothing about what they have in common.
You could form the elements into pairs, but the it's not clear what to do with the odd one out if there is one.
Given multiple items, you can always split them into two sets and how you choose to do that reflects both what the elements in each set have in common, while also showing how the two sets differ.
I suspect that binary opposition is in some ways fundamental to cognition. It certainly shows up profoundly throughout all cultures across all history: sun and moon, night and day, yin and yang, god and devil, woman and man, earth and sky, etc.
If there are 3 teams, and one team starts to gain an advantage, the other two are highly incentivized to join forces to defeat the larger one.
Unless you design systems to allow smaller teams/parties/groups to flourish, most competitions will devolve into two sides. In voting this would be things like ranked choice or approval voting, rather than single vote "first past the post".
No thinking required. Your side is the "correct" one and so you have moral superiority.
Fundamentally, this is a typical strategy for the human mind and even organisms in general, to understand the world by categorizing it into opposing pairs: light/dark, hot/cold, life/death, up/down, left/right. This is often discussed in Buddhism, for example, there is a whole school of tradition called "Not Two" that focuses on going beyond this illusion of duality.
About how polar opposition seems to be stronger in the U.S., in my opinion that's due to the weaponization of culture in the country, how the media is used to manipulate the public into outrage and conflict. It's a form of social control that's pretty much everywhere, but it seems to have especially reached a boiling point in the U.S. in recent years.
It's a primitive, simplistic and reductive way of looking at the world, ignoring the spectrum in between the opposing sides, which are arbitrary anyway.
Maybe there are introverts, extroverts, various mixtures between, and even hyperverts or transverts who prefer one side or the other depending on their mood or life stages.
I agree that it can be dangerous if you create a false dichotomy, because that can lead to a misunderstanding of how something works.
Many normal people are social when they feel good, and less so when they are not.
But extraverts have learned to use social interactions to "fix" their emotional state. Or maybe they are born with it. However they deal with social aspects completely different.
I think most of us are in the middle. Where some of us lean to less social, but I think part of that is emotional issues that haven't been dealt with. Whereas extraverts are just different.
Categories are good for introduction, nothing more.
I've come to find that it's down to the person's experience with and resulting preference for crowds and individuals. It's nurture, not nature.
I used to be very introverted until I started living on my own as an adult and had shit to do and wanted things in life. I've also seen extroverts that mellowed out with age.
There's no mystery. Raise your kids and yourself accordingly.
Being in crowds of people I'm expected to interact with on a personal level drains my energy. Baseball games, concerts, and the like? No problem! Crowds of strangers don't bother me a bit. But if there's a hell, my corner of it looks like a cocktail party where I'm expected to mingle with everyone and never get a moment to myself.
Being an introvert is nothing I was raised to be. My mom's one. My dad was a natural salesman: put him in a room with 50 strangers, and 10 minutes later he was on a first name basis with them all and had plans to vacation together. They both raised me, and they both stressed the importance of good social graces. The difference is that after my dad's social butterfly antics, he was happy and fully of energy, while my mom was ready to go home and recharge for a while. I'm definitely my mom's kid on that one.
I have stuff to do. There are things I want in life. I'm doing all that successfully. But when I'm done doing them, I just want a little time to myself to exhale and relax, OK?
Like, alone, one on one and small groups of 4-6 people are great. I have very enjoyable memories of lounging around with bands after a show, just hanging out, drinking something, shooting some shit about music and life. Our boardgame round is similar, 3-4 people, we have similar interests, we know each other. I very much value these rounds. You can focus on people, you can listen to them, speaking rights are respected. Sometimes there is also nothing to say and that's fine.
Crowds are also no issue. Find or form your bubble, or just be part of the faceless crowd. Or just drift around, bump into people, be part of a pit or another. It's wonderful.
But being forced to get to know 50 people over the next 20 minutes just a little bit? That's terrifying and I know I will shut down and flee from the situation. And if I don't, I won't remember anyone. And hell, in a more compatible environment, I remember people from concerts at a festival 2 years ago by face alone because we had fun and had a good time and talk without even knowing their name (and as I learned now, it's Pet, haha).
No offense intended. Parents often tell, sometimes show, but rarely teach their kids much. Teaching isn't easy.
My original point was that so much of this is also in the hands of the person, not your parents or society. Nurture isn't all external. I had a similar relationship with my parents.
> But if there's a hell, my corner of it looks like a cocktail party where I'm expected to mingle with everyone and never get a moment to myself.
That sounds to me like a lack of motivation, not introversion. I feel like you just don't see what's in it for you. If you were in sales, you would see that as an opportunity. Turning on charisma and charm is a skilled and conscious effort to delight people in subtle ways. Internally it's all about you, but externally it's all about them. Learning that dynamic requires experience. The only part that comes natural is the curiosity to develop a skill. Anyone can find joy in what essentially becomes a game when they understand it.
> The difference is that after my dad's social butterfly antics, he was happy and fully of energy
Yeah because he was satisfied with his performance. It's an interesting high. You should try it. It's worth pointing out I'm saying this as a software engineer from a small and not so well off family and only having a few friends growing up.
My MBTI would reliably give me INTJ from ages 16-37
Now I reliably test as ENFP
What changed was my relationship with myself, and society, after coming to some hard realizations about my childhood and decades of trauma.
I’ve seen similar changes in others, and I watch as (mostly) extroverted boys have their social extroversion absolutely crushed by weight of social and gender expectations. I watch it happen with my son and his friends and it hurts. Luckily gen z is savvy and a lot of them are countering this.
This seems to drive people to choose being alone over the risk and complexity of dealing with social stuff, to the point where people find or create habits that just reinforce alienation.
If I had to guess, a good percentage of people who are “introverts” have had a lot of early trauma and so avoid engaging with people out of anxiety.
Anyway, if true, then you just 'learn to be more comfortable in your secondary function' as you age.
Anyway, I am most certainly an introvert. If anything, I've become more of an introvert as I just don't even tolerate small/bs talk around me. Real conversations or GTFO. I'm a right ole' grumpy old man.
Regarding theories like Jung's introversion and extraversion or the subsequent personality models like the MBTI and the Big Five, while they have been widely used and studied, there's ongoing debate about their reliability and validity. There's substantial evidence for the general reliability of the Big Five, but it, too, has faced criticism.
Big Five avoids this, but it's also difficult to communicate your Big Five results concisely.
Can it be beneficial? A list of categories that seems authoritative and scientific but is open to interpretation can give some people a sense of comfort that they belong in their "place" within the organization, that there are other people facing similar experiences, or that they are not personally at fault. It can give a beginning manager the confidence to interact with colleagues and subordinates by means of a formula.
Can it be harmful? Sure, it opens people to manipulation and bias, or persuades them to give up their agency.
Put me in a large group of people I have little in common with or with whom I have no interest in -- but am forced to socialize with -- and I'm used up in minutes. But with people I can somewhat identify with, and in a situation which offers something for me, and I can go for hours and leave with equal or higher energy than I started.
There's also the matter of the depth of communication. In larger groups, it's difficult to reach any depth since many people may be involved in the discussion (and many people may behave differently or maintain more defensive walls); but 1:1 or in very small groups it's easier to develop trust quickly and have some very meaningful conversations.
I find many larger group interactions incredibly shallow and boring... just an endless stream of small talk with some attention-seeking, posturing, or peacocking here and there.
I wouldn't call deep conversations a form of socializing, like being alone, this is a bubble, except this time, there are several people in the bubble. Extroverts don't like bubbles, and I am sure deep conversations are draining to them (I am not one, so it is just a guess), and they may want to break free of them, for example, by bringing in other people. On the contrary, in social situations, introverts will want to form the bubble as soon as they can, keeping the small talk and all that to a minimum.
A lot of conversations that I've heard described as "deep" are superficial discussions of philosophy/politics (see most of HN) or jargon-filled discussions of specific nerddoms that people are interested in.
What you're discussing is only partially described by extroversion. Highly agreeable extroverts may not enjoy large group discussions because of the inherent conflict present when multiple people express opinions. Highly conscientious and low opennness introverts may not even like 1:1 discussions because they're so very sure that their existing opinions are the correct ones.
Humans are really bad at multi-axis categorization. We like things to be good/evil, black/white, etc. But anything worth categorizing almost certainly needs to be categorized across multiple indices.
It's absolutely crazy that this exists across cultures and implies that the disposition is biological in nature. The term has its flaws, and its pop-psychology understanding is limiting. I do think the concept is pointing towards something universal about human psychology.
Meanwhile, people talk about it as if there were two different species. But, very few are on the extremes.
Pick any aspect of personality, and you'll be able to map it to two extremes.
I think you can _feel_ "introverted" or "extroverted" sometimes.
Not a topic that overly bother me, I personally find it hilarious watching people describe themselves with so much confidence. As if they know how the human mind works, and are so capable at it they can perform some meta-analysis looking from outside in.
(If you haven't figured I also think Meyers, Big Five etc etc is all garbage too, "I'm cynical" </joke>)
Introverts charge their battery in solitude and discharge it socialising. Extroverts the opposite.
The battery analogy was a good way for me to understand my own experience and seemed like progress from the traditional definitions of introvert and extrovert.
1. “Balance not batteries” https://www.vipshek.com/blog/interaction#balance-not-batteri...
I am an introvert--but now trained my mind to be a normal person and not fear people around me. I forced it earlier. If you meet me, you'll not find me an introvert, anymore. 10 years ago, people would politely ask me to talk or share.
It has been years of journey achieving that change.
I don't feel the introvert/extrovert quagmire anymore. However, if I'm in public meetings--presenting, chatting for more than a few hours--then I need to come back and take a hot shower--and fade away the people and conversations.
My wife calls that shower: "Removing the theater from the head."
Here's the simplest explanation that I have found: social interactions cost introverts energy. Extroverts gain energy from social interactions. When I heard this, it was liike a light bulb going off. It's not that I, as an introvert, didn't like people or exclusively preferred being alone. It's that too much social interaction is, quite literally, exhausting. That doesn't mean it's avoided at all cost or that social interaction can't be or isn't enjoyed.
If you've met a true extrovert you'll know this. For such people, social interaction really can resemble a high. It can be something they crave and they can crash from.
Larger groups are just more social interaction. It can be easier with known people (eg family gatherings) because the processing cost of the social interactions is less and there are fewer unknowns.
The power of ideas is amazing. Hardly anyone knows Jung, but everyone knows introvert vs extravert.
The same goes for Freud, more have heard of him but still mostly under educated people, but everyone knows what is meant by subconscious, which was a concept he came up with.
Even though they both had many weird, good and bad ideas. Their reputation as great thinkers iOS valid just by these 2 contributions they made to human thoughts.
Ages from now kids will speak of their subconscious and being an introvert while Jung & Freuds names will only be known to a few niche historians.
Don't like big crowds? Learn how to like big crowds. Don't know how to be with your own thoughts for a long time? Learn to do it. Don't say it can't be done, I've done it, and I've been told I have a learning disability. No one should lock themselves, or others, into a "personality" box, and all this nonsense should be entirely disregarded.
WHat i do really care, is, how much i understand myself. What do i really need ? How do i say no ? How do i stay motivated ?....
Those are real matters.
Now this would probably be detrimental if you couldn’t trust yourself to be honest and risk rationalization taking over. Building up trust in yourself is an entirely different topic so won’t go there but anyway I’ve found these sort of exercises imperative to keeping myself in check and on the path of improving as a person, not stagnating or regressing
If you are some flavor of neuro-divergent with any awareness of yourself then you realize that you need to moderate some of your own annoying behaviors to fit in better with those you are currently in the presence of. Doing this is draining when you are around "normies", even if you like these peoples company. It's also likely that you only moderate certain behaviors around certain people and again, the degree with which you have to moderate yourself can affect how drained you are over time changing the duration you can withstand others company.
When you detect that you are around similar neuro-divergents a person can relax and just be themselves. The lack of drain on a person in this condition can swing an introvert into a full-on extrovert. Anyone who spends time at a makerspace or hackerspace probably understands this. It can be fun watching new people show up who usually are introverts and then they slowly shift their personality since they can safely be themselves and come out of their shells.
Again, it's the underlying reasons driving a persons introversion or extroversion. When those reasons shift then the personality shifts as well. This is not directly correlated to crowd size, but it's a given that the larger the crowd the less safe it is for someone to be themselves if they are neuro-divergent in any dimension. Only people who are "naturally normal" can safely be themselves 100% of the time in large crowds and not be worn down by the experience.
I think many introverts become more introverted as they label themself in that way. Often they feel uncomfortable in large and small groups, but with the label they have an excuse to avoid those situations as much as possible. Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I consider myself an ambivert, swinging between introvert and extrovert all the time. The thing is: you are going to have to attend social events often against your will if you're introvert-leaning (weddings, funerals, christenings, bar mitzvahs, etc).
What I've learned over the years is the more you know how the world works, the less you want to be engaged in it (Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Military, Big Anything). It's all so tiresome.
One of the things all mature adults need to learn ASAP is how to retain good friendships over time. It's a whole art-form. Anyone that can give me a 'belly laugh' and I can retain friendship over more than five years is worth keeping.
* How close or long-term the relationship with the others is. Do you like meeting new people or prefer the company of old friends and family? Do you want to be able to let down your guard and be your true self without worry, or do the higher stakes of the long term consequences stress you out?
* How balanced the power is and where you are on it. Do you like rousing a team of minions, give and take with peers, or being inspired to follow a visionary?
* How cooperative versus adversarial the relationship is. Do you want to make sacrifices for the greater good so that we all win, or do you want to defeat your opponent? Do you want to give people the benefit of the doubt and show compassion, or protect others from dangerous bad actors?
Also, not limited to social interaction, I think many people often fail to distinguish:
1. I don't like this thing.
2. I feel anxiety about this thing.
If social interaction stresses you out but you're always glad after you did it, you're not an introvert, you have social anxiety. If you don't want to go to a social function, but you go anyway and it goes perfectly fine, but then afterwards you still wish you hadn't gone, that's more likely to be actual introversion.
I strongly suspect that most self-described introverts (including myself for many years) are actually people with a normal or even high level of extroversion but high social anxiety.
The point is that we shouldn't be particularly concerned about that group, and it's the people in the extremes that might need special accomondations.
Breaking it down too much can muddle the distinctions, as opposed to illuminating them.
Likewise extroverted what? Extroverted thinking means thinking out loud in the crowd. My wife does this even at home. I have to be careful as an introverted thinker, I can't hear myself think when she's thinking out loud, so I defer deep thoughts for work time and stay present. That can be draining after a while and so I take it out on the cryptic crossword.
To me introvert/extrovert is dimensionless unless you use it in conjunction with some faculty. On their own these terms are quite meaningless.
Yes, this applies to most things
Yes, taking MTBI to be binomial into every dimension and every person fitting neatly into any of the X boxes is stupid, thinking about a 4 variable measure which is centered at zero (that is, resting in the middle between each letter) is a more realistic outtake
extrovert - dominant outside introvert - dominant inside ambivert - switches outside and inside inextrovert - dominant introvert and in certain situations extrovert exintrovert - dominant extrovert and in certain situations introvert
Anyone aware of any other categories we can put people into?
1) They don't like politics as a mean to reach one's goals. Maybe for moral reasons or because they consider it cheating or because they deem it 'not close enough to the action'.
2) Social time spent with other people is like any other activity, maybe introverts need or want more time to feel satisfied, much like some people are satisfied riding a jetski while others need to be able to do tricks and acrobatics in order to be happy about the whole experience. Maybe introverts hold out in order to reach a higher level of experience?
