According to the famous Myers-Briggs personality type test, I am an extrovert, but only very slightly. My full Myers-Briggs personality code is ENFP - a type of person described in various online sources as "visionary", "inspiring", "charming", "ingenious" and "risk-taking". In the decades since it was invented in the 40s, serious scientists have queued up to demonstrate the ways in which Myers-Briggs may be so flawed as to be hopelessly inaccurate. Since receiving my results, however, I have come to the considered conclusion that the critics are wrong. And jealous, probably. Some people, huh?
Anyway, I mention this not to brag (we ENFPs aren't boastful) but to establish that I'm not - according to Myers-Briggs, anyway - an introvert. Yet lately I've been half-wishing I were. Because, for a while now, psychologists have been re-evaluating this most maligned of personality types. Their conclusion, in short: being an introvert may be under-rated.
Introverts are not what the rest of us, the three-quarters of the population who are extroverts, think they are. If you're cripplingly shy and desperate to make more friends, you're probably an extrovert; if you spend time alone because you're depressed, you could be either. True introverts are, on balance, drained by social interaction and energised by time alone; for extroverts, the opposite applies. So you may have spent much of your life at noisy parties and not even realised you're really what Marti Laney, in her book The Introvert Advantage, annoyingly refers to as "an innie". Famous "innies", she says, include Gwyneth Paltrow, Meryl Streep, Einstein and Al Gore, although also - just in case any introverts are tempted to start feeling superior - Enya. As a culture, Laney writes, "we value action, speed, competition and drive. It's no wonder people are defensive about introversion."
Introverts find social interaction tiring, some studies suggest, because they can't help but engage and empathise to a degree that extroverts habitually don't - an approach that would exhaust anybody if they did it all the time. There's a positive flipside to this: introverts tend to be better at sustaining long-term friendships, and to demonstrate a higher degree of sensitivity in emotional interactions. In organisations, it has been argued, introverts can't bring themselves to butter up people insincerely - so a boss who wants to avoid taking on yes-men and women ought to consider hiring some introverts.
The problem is, extroverts usually can't get their minds around the idea of introversion, so they wrongly believe they're being helpful by trying to convert introverts to high-octane socialising - the "You should get out more!" syndrome. Laney, by contrast, tells introverts they must respect their own personality type, for example by spending time alone in nature every day, rather than trying to force a fundamental character shift. Even as an extrovert, I like to think I can understand this point. But that's me: charming and ingenious, as usual.
oliver.burkeman@ theguardian.com
