Science Friday - SciFri Extra: The Origin Of The Word 'Introvert'

Episode Date: March 20, 2021

Science Diction from Science Friday is back! Their latest episode is all about a recent buzzword: "Introvert."  In 2013, introverts staged their comeback. For decades, they’d been told to get out of their shells and *smile*, while those  showy, gregarious extroverts were held up as the American ideal. But when one author published a kind of introvert’s manifesto, she sparked an introvert pride movement. Since then, the war of the ‘verts has only escalated, with self-identified introverts accusing extroverts of being shallow and incessantly chatty party monsters, and extroverts declaring introverts self-absorbed shut-ins who are just jealous because extroverts are actually happy. (A contention that studies support.) It all feels like a very 21st Century, internet-era drama. But the history of the dubious and divisive introvert-extrovert binary began 100 years ago, when Carl Jung fell out with Sigmund Freud, and tried to make sense of where they’d gone wrong. In the process, Jung coined a couple of new terms, and unleashed an enduring cultural obsession with cramming ourselves into personality boxes. For more stories like these, subscribe to Science Diction wherever you get your podcasts. GUESTS: Dan McAdams is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University.  Wiebke Bleidorn is a professor of psychology at the University of California Davis. Kelly Egusa is producer Chris Egusa’s sister, and a proud introvert. FOOTNOTES & FURTHER READING:  For an introvert’s manifesto, check out Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.Looking for a personality test backed by science? This one comes closest. Curious about the 18,000 words in “Trait Names: A Psycho-lexical Study”? Read them here. Read the 2019 study that suggests that introverted people feel happier when they force themselves to act extroverted. (And you can also check out a different study from the same year that adds a wrinkle to this finding.) Take a look at a study that analyzes the Big Five personality dimensions as they relate to career success. CREDITS:  This episode was produced by Chris Egusa, Johanna Mayer, and Elah Feder. Elah is our Editor and Senior Producer. Daniel Peterschmidt is our Composer and did sound design for this episode. They wrote all the music, except for the Timbo March by Tim Garland from the Audio Network. Robin Palmer fact checked this episode. Nadja Oertelt is our Chief Content Officer. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hey there. Are you an introvert? Well, I guess if you were, you'd never admit it to all the folks listening, right? But here's a secret. We've got quite a few introverts on the staff here at Science Friday. You know, people who generally prefer one-on-one interaction over things like parties, who feel energized after some alone time. One of those self-proclaimed introverts is Johanna Mayer, host and producer of Science Diction, our podcast about words and the science stories behind them. Well, the Science Diction team made an episode all about the word introvert, and we thought we'd play it for you. If you like it, you can subscribe to Science Diction wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the episode. When my sister Kelly was around 15 or 16, she got invited to her

very first high school party. Producer Chris Agusa back this week. It was at Ali's house, the most popular girl in her class. There were over 50 people coming, a live band. It was a classic coming-of-age moment. I, you know, picked out an outfit, wanted it to look cool, but not like I was trying too hard. This was her chance to break into the popular group. Shake up the social ladder a little bit. I was expecting to just do what they do in the movies.

You know, you make friends, you see people you know, you hang out, you have a good, time. But as she settled in, I was just like, wow, I don't want to be here and like hated every moment of it. She wasn't super close with anyone there and she ended up doing that thing where you shuffle around the outside of conversations unsure of how to jump in. And I was like waiting all night to go home. As she counted down the excruciating minutes until she could leave, she developed a little party hack, one that she still uses to this day. Find the snack. table. And you can make small talk around food, which is super awesome. You just feel like, oh, this dip is amazing. And I just like hung out by the snack table and ate checks for like two

hours. See, the thing about Kelly is she's an introvert and not just slightly introverted. When she took an introversion test back in high school, she got the highest score possible. As a refresher, here's the popular definition of an introvert. Someone who is quiet, that generally prefers one-on-one interaction to things like parties and who enjoys solitary activities. Its opposite is an extrovert, someone who just can't get enough of people. And I should say, Kelly has a ton of friends, but growing up, she definitely had a hard time with some social situations, even ordering at restaurants with draining. For Kelly, self-serve is basically a dream come true.

Oh my gosh, yes, the phase. No human interaction is like the ideal Classic introvert story. But how much do labels like introvert or extrovert really matter? And why do we find it so very satisfying to slot ourselves into these personality buckets? We're not just people who enjoy self-serve or house parties. We're capital I introverts and capital E extroverts. We take personality quizzes online during our downtime. We put it in our Twitter bios. And take into its extremes, it can all feel like a very 21st century internet-era phenomenon. But it's actually a story that goes back 100 years, to a time when a famous psychiatrist fell out with this friend

and just tried to make sense of where they went wrong. From Science Friday, this is science diction. I'm Johanna Mayer. And I'm Chris Agusa. Today we're talking about the word introvert. In February of 1907, two men met in a richly decorated apartment in Vienna, both giants of the psychology world. Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. At that point, Freud was

well known as the founder of psychoanalysis. Intensely ambitious and often controversial, he introduced the world to ideas like repressed trauma and the ego, but he had yet to find a contemporary who he felt was at his level. Enter Carl Young. Nearly 20 years younger than Freud, Young was obsessed with dreams and spirituality. When they met that first time in Vienna, they talked for 13 straight hours about theory and practice and the extramarital affair that Young was having. This cemented an intense relationship,

which often walked the line between friendship and rivalry. The two toured conferences together, wrote each other letters. And after only a month of knowing each other, Freud was ready to appoint Young as the heir apparent to the psychoanalytic movement. And at one point, Young wrote to Freud to confess that he had what he called a religious crush on him. Yeah, I am not entirely sure what that means. But nevertheless, Freud had found a younger protege to take under his wing, whose ideas and intellectual curiosity rivaled his own. And Young had found a mentor, colleague.

And as time went on, even a father figure. But it wasn't perfect. I like him very much. This is young much later in life, talking about his impressions of Freud. But I soon discovered that when he had thought something, then it was settled. While I was doubting all along the line. So from the very beginning, there was a discrepancy. And that discrepancy slowly opened a rift between the two.

Professionally, their critiques of each other's work intensified, and often got personal. Young felt that Freud placed far too much importance on feelings of sexual repression, while Freud looked at many of Young's ideas as pure mysticism. Finally, the two had a blowout fight. In 1913, only six years after their first meeting, Freud wrote a letter to Young, in which he suggested that they, abandon our personal relations entirely. I shall lose nothing by it, for my only emotional tie with you

has been a long, thin thread, the lingering effect of past disappointments. And that was the end. They never saw each other again. It was devastating for Young, and in the midst of the fallout, this one question kept bothering him. How could two people look at the same set of facts and come up with completely different conclusions? The more he thought about this, the more he decided that there must be something innate within people that makes us who we are. something that makes us fundamentally different from each other, different types of people who approach the world in radically different ways. He put his ideas down on paper and in 1921 published a book called Psychological Types.

In it, he lays out several distinct personality types, and it was in this book that young popularized the words introvert and extrovert. Intro is taken from Latin. Intro means inward, or to the inside, and Vertere means to turn. So together they mean to turn inward. An extrovert means to turn outward. For Young, it was a matter of energy, where it's directed and where it comes from.

Introverts are attuned to the internal world of thoughts, ideas, and feelings. This internal world is also the source of their psychic energy, as Young called it. And extroverts, of course, are just the opposite. Their energy comes from the world around them. He also thought both sides had a tendency to misunderstand each other. The extroverts could see introverts as aloof, dull, maybe self-centered, while the introverts often see extroverts as superficial and insincere. For the record, Young thought of himself as an introvert and Freud as an extrovert.

Ultimately, Freud's ideas about psychoanalysis propelled him to greater fame. maybe because he was, well, more outward-facing. But also, a lot of Young's ideas were pretty out there. He had an ongoing fascination with the occult, and he would frequently attend seances. He believed that all people share a collective unconscious that we inherit from our ancestors. And in his later years, he wrote an entire book about the psychological implications of UFO sightings. But UFOs and seances aside, many came to see his theories about the unconscious, as ahead of their time, and his ideas about introverted and extroverted types really caught on.

And a hundred years later, we're still calling ourselves introverts and extroverts. And we cling to these identities. I remember taking one of those personality tests in elementary school and trying to fudge my answers so I'd be classified as an extrovert, because the extroverts were the popular funny kids. What do you think Ferris is going to do? Remember that scene in Ferris Bueller? He jumps on a float in a parade and lip sinks to twist and shout. Walker buys break into choreographed routines.

A baby waves excitedly. A businessman in an office overlooking the parade busts some moves. Ferris is charming, loved. And he is definitely an extrovert. And while he's dancing up on that float, his best friend Cameron Fry, depressed, a hypochondriac, Cameron just watches on. He didn't even want to leave the house until Ferris made him. Life's hard for Cameron.

I mean, it's Ferris Bueller's day off. Not Cameron Fries. For a long time, it really was an extroverts world out there, at least in America. In her book, Quiet, author Susan Cain lays out a theory about the extrovert. of American society. Before the 20th century, most people tended to live in smaller towns, more rural areas. Everyone knew everyone. So people valued good character, above all. Trades like trustworthiness and loyalty. But at the turn of the 20th century, urbanization would change all of that. As people began migrating to big cities and corporations employed more and more people,

Kane argues that the rules for success changed. It wasn't about good character anymore. Now, traits that allowed you to make good first impressions and connect with new people quickly were at a premium. Things like charisma. Books were published with titles like How to Win Friends and Influence People. And the prevailing attitude became, to make it in this world, you need to be a go-getter. Kane calls this the rise of the extrovert ideal. Its legacy can be seen in all parts of our society, from the multi-billion-dollar self-help industry

to our total obsession with personal branding. It can be seen in our schools and workplaces, classrooms prioritize class discussion and group work. Companies emphasize collaboration. And not so long ago, most of us office types worked in open floor plans where we could freely exchange ideas and viruses. There just isn't the same emphasis on solitary thinking time. Quiet reflection. It's not a world set up for introverts.

Quiet was published in 2012, and it was a smash success, selling over 2 million copies. Kane's TED Talk has been viewed over 27 million times. So I wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly. Thank you very much. This was our moment. Introverts were taking back the silence. I distinctly remember this shift. By my early 20s, we introverts were proud.

A little smug even. My group of friends mostly identified as introverts. We would humor the occasional extrovert interloper, but only if guaranteed a recovery period afterwards. We'd enthusiastically leave events early, declaring ourselves ready to head home to nurture our delicate, introspective souls. But in the background of all the popular curiosity surrounding these personality types, science was chugging along on an entirely different track. The big question was,

what makes people behave the way they do? And it turns out that's a really hard question to answer, because in science, you need something to test. And the problem with personality traits is that while they may seem pretty self-evident to us, they aren't directly measurable. There's no machine that measures how determined someone is, or how kind. You have to rely on how people describe themselves. In 1936, about 15 years after Young published his book on psychological types, a psychologist named Gordon Alpert had an idea about how to solve this conundrum. It had to do with something called The Lexical Hypothesis.

The lexical hypothesis has been around since the late 1800s, and it basically says that if a certain personality trait is important enough, it will eventually become embedded in the very language people use. That is, we'll create a word for it, just like tree, fire, or the color blue. If something is worth communicating, it will eventually get turned into a word. And so Alpert figured, the best place to start looking for the key ingredients that make up a personality would be the dictionary. He and a colleague read through Websters, all 400,000 words of it, and picked out every word they could find that could be used to describe personality or behavior. They published a paper called trait names, a psycholexical study, and reading

through it is pretty remarkable. The first few dozen pages are standard stuff, introduction, methods, analysis, and then it's just page after page, top to bottom, words. It goes on for 130 pages, about 18,000 words altogether, terms like baffled, deliberative, and mordacious. Of those, they identified a few thousand as being prime candidates for further study. In the next decades, this list got condensed further and further, and confirmed across several languages and cultures, until a group of researchers in the 1980s found that all these words could be captured in just five basic factors. They called them the big five. The five ingredients that make up a person are conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness, neuroticism, and extroversion.

Their goal was not to oversimplify the nuances of human personality, but to make it scientifically manageable. One researcher noted that these broad domains incorporate hundreds, if not thousands of traits. And today, scientists don't use the terms introversion and extroversion the way Young did, or the way most people do for that matter. Personality doesn't come in types. It's a romantic idea. This is Dan McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. He studies personality. A lot of people find it very compelling to think of themselves as being. of a certain type. But it's really not like that. It's more about traits rather than types. And traits are linear continuum. By that, he means that these traits are on a spectrum. And you can

fall anywhere between the two extremes. So let's think of height as a trait. Some people are taller than others. But types basically are like saying, okay, we got two kinds of people out there. Tall people and short people. And that's it. Calling some people introverts and the rest extroverts is oversimplifying. You lose all kinds of precision if you say, well, everybody from 50th percentile over to the left is an introvert and everybody from 50th percentile over to the right is an extrovert, especially since most people find themselves somewhere in the middle of this distribution. McCadams cautions against even using the words introvert and extrovert, because they reinforce this idea of types.

Probably more accurate to say, person lower on the introversion-extroversion spectrum. But we won't subject you to that in this episode. So if people don't really fall into these strict categories, why have these labels of introvert and extrovert become so core to some people's identities? People love to be categorized. We just love labels.

Need for closure, I guess. We kind of want to have it all figured out. And so like, oh, wow, now I get it. I'm an introvert. Done, right? I'm labeled. I'm contained. Labels are validating.

Like the fact that I'd rather chill at home and cook dinner than go out for happy hour. There's nothing wrong with me. That's just the type of person I am. I think it also has to do with finding your tribe. If there's a whole group of people out there who would rather cook at home than go to happy hour, then having that shared experience can be comforting. Dan says the second issue with the public. popular idea of introversion is that people think being introverted comes with certain special

abilities. Kind of like Jung suggested, they might be more in touch with their inner desires and needs. They might be more introspective. Well, there's just no evidence for that. Sure, there are some people who are very introverted, who have that kind of introspective quality and are very creative, but there are just as many people on the extroverted end of the continuum who are also introspective and creative and so on. If at this point you're like me, and you're wondering what this whole introversion to extroversion thing even is, like what is actually happening in our brains?

McAdam says that the latest research shows it really comes down to one thing. It turns out to be mainly that extroversion is about reward-seeking, and it's about gregariousness and enthusiasm and positive emotion. And some people just have a lot of that going. And when McAdams talks about rewards, social rewards are at the top of the list. Things like warmth, affection, praise, status. On the other end of the continuum, people who don't have that are if they're more towards the introverted end. So they're more reticent.

They are likely to be somewhat less seeking of rewards. So it's likely that sociability is actually a byproduct. of how sensitive we are to rewards in our environment. And what's behind this is a neurotransmitter in the brain, dopamine. The activity of dopamine in the brain seems to go into overdrive for extroverts when they are pursuing something that they really want. Dopamine's often called the chemical of pleasure, but that's not really accurate. It would be better described as the chemical of desire.

Dopamine motivates us to pursue things like money. sex, social status, or food. And when we anticipate these rewards, dopamine floods the brain, which causes us to become more alert and motivated to take risks. This is true for both introverts and extroverts, but especially for extroverts. And these neurochemical differences show up in real-life outcomes, too. One study found that people who scored high on extroversion were also likely to have higher salaries, be promoted quicker and have more job satisfaction.

At the same time, people high in extroversion are also more likely to engage in risky behavior and suffer substance abuse issues and gambling addiction. On the opposite end, highly introverted people are more likely to suffer from mood disorders like depression, but they're also less likely to take big risks, which obviously has its benefits. But there is one interesting finding that came to the forefront recently. Extroverted people tend to be happier. It's not that introverted people have more negative emotions. It's just that their positive feelings are more muted.

So where an extroverted person might feel happy or elated, an introverted person might just feel satisfied. And what's more, a 2019 study found that when introverted people forced themselves to act more extroverted, they reported feeling happier as well. And this caught a lot of people's attention because it goes completely against Susan Kane's message that people should embrace their inner introvert. It also goes against something my sister told me, which I've heard echoed in countless other stories. The more she tried being something she wasn't, the worst she felt. And in fact, what that study likely didn't capture is the potential cost of acting in a way that's contrary to your nature, like feeling tired or inauthentic.

A similar study found that when introverts force themselves to act extroverted, those negatives outweighed any positive feelings they gained. Makes you think that maybe long-term, pretending to be something you're just not, could lead to feeling burnt out. And all of this brought up another question for me. Can you change your fundamental personality? Can a person switch from being introverted to extroverted or vice versa? Yeah, hello.

My name is Deepke Blydon. I am a professor. of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and I study personality traits and personality change across the lifespan. Vipka says that while some traits can change considerably, extraversion is really stable, remarkably stable. It's basically hardwired in. In fact, it's so innate, we pick up on it incredibly quickly when meeting another person. Research shows that it doesn't take much for people to judge others extroversion or introversion.

I was curious how she would assess me after only speaking for five minutes. Oh, you're more introverted. And here I thought I was doing my best extrovert impression. Some research even shows that we can detect whether someone is introverted or extroverted just from a photo.

So looking at someone's Facebook or Tinder profiles might already give you a good idea of there introversion. It comes down to how much information is encoded in just a snapshot of a person. Like, extroverts tend to smile more. People who smile more also have different faces. So you can see that people who are very smiley, have different wrinkles, for example,

have a different configuration of facial features. The clues come from a person's environment, too. Well, I see your room in the background, and I see you don't have many pictures hanging of other people. People who are extroverted tend to have plenty of. of pictures of other people, often including themselves, big face, selfie. From an evolutionary standpoint, Vibka says it makes sense for people to exist on both sides of this spectrum. Diversity helps a population adapt to different environments, and in some

environments, being more extroverted is helpful. In other environments, it's better to be introverted. And the way I see it, both sides of the spectrum need each other. Without the caution of the more introverted among us, extroverted people might constantly be off doing risky things. And without the drive of extroverts, introverts might never leave their comfy rooms and good books. My sister says she now uses her extrovert friends to her advantage. You know, they just bring a lot of energy to a social situation. I can feed off of that a little bit. And just because labels like introvert or extrovert can be overly broad doesn't mean they don't have value.

When a friend gave her a book about introverts... And basically told me, I'm okay. This is normal. and how supposed to be, that basically changed the game for me. Now, when she gets a party invite, she has more than just the snack table trick up her sleeve. She makes sure that she's had some time to herself recently and doesn't force herself to stay longer than she wants. If I'm like ready to go home, then I'll go home.

But the biggest change is just accepting who she is. I do enjoy going to parties now, but I know that I enjoy being at home or being with just like close friends even more. And she's fine with her. that she no longer feels like she has anything to prove to the extroverts of the world. When Carl Jung coined the words introvert and extrovert, he was doing what many of us do, attempting to make sense of his behavior and feelings and the relationships in his life. For Young, this journey led him to create one of the most enduring ideas about personality.

And in doing so, he created a tool for future generations to have a little bit more insight into their own minds. Because one thing research has shown us is that regardless of introversion or extroversion, one of the most important predictors of well-being is accurate self-knowledge, which is to say, knowing who you are. And so it would seem that there was some truth to his words when Young said, who looks outside dreams, who looks inside, awakes. This episode of Science Diction was written and produced by Chris Agusa, along with Ella Fetter and me, Johanna Mayer. Ella is our editor and senior producer. Daniel Petersmith's sound design this episode and composed all our music except the timbo March, which is by Tim Garland from the audio network.

We had fact-checking from Robin Palmer. Nadia Ortelt is our chief content officer, and she recently told me my interviews just needed a little spicing up, a little special sauce. So she had some advice. find the snack table. And you can make small talk around food, which is super awesome. You just like, oh, this dip is amazing. This is our last episode of the season. But we will be back in just a couple weeks. In the meantime, I have a really fun newsletter recommendation for you. It's chalkful of science history from Science Friday. It's got stories and audio bites from our archives. The most recent issue is about how NASA's Mars rover program began. I,

I am obsessed with it. And if you like Science Diction, I'm willing to bet you'll like this newsletter, too. Find it at ScienceFriday.com slash rewind.