I've always thought of myself as an introvert, and I've always felt bad about this. Yesterday in the Guardian Magazine "This Column Will Change Your Life", which I read because it's often interesting in an annoying sort of way, was about introverts. What was particularly interesting about this is that it defined introvert in a way which is a) not what I thought it was b) precisely like me and c) not something I need to feel particularly guilty about. I'd always thought that introversion was about being essentially self-centered, uninterested in other people, at heart selfish. Apparently it's really about energy; introverts feel drained by social interaction and recharged by being alone, while extroverts are the opposite, and it's even possible that introverts are that way not because they are uncaring but because they can't help empathising in an excessively-sensitive way which makes time spent with other people terribly exhausting. Which is exactly how I feel. I am certainly selfish, and pretty self-obsessed, and these are not good things, but it's very helpful to separate these bad qualities from something as intrinsic to me as being an introvert; it makes it easier to see how I can try to be better without attempting not to be who I essentially am.
A lot of life's worries seem to come down to working out which things are intrinsic and which things are not. Go Reinhold Niebuhr!
Also, I wonder if many introverted people keep pets? One of the best things about pets is their non-human quality -- it annoys me when people suggest that they're some sort of human substitute (enough people have suggested that I have rats instead of a boyfriend, or occasionally, children...). They're so straight-forward in comparison to people that they make good restful company. They completely lack the tiring quality of people because their wants are so simple in comparison -- in my experience, a rat who can't be cheered up with a yogurt drop will have died within about thirty-six hours. (Thankfully my two are currently bouncy and eating their antibiotics with every sign of pleasure. At the moment they are curled up in their hammock, and too lazy to open more than one eye to look at me as I go past.)
Sunday, 1 July 2007
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Have you seen this?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch
Follow-up here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200602u/introverts
I think the penultimate paragraph of that one - about wanting to be with people but not talk to them - fits with the pet thesis.
Myers-Briggs is fab (as long as you take it with a pinch of salt and think of it as a personal development and self-knowledge tool rather than as a way to put people in essential boxes. Some practitioners argue that people have only one essential personality type which I think is wrong -- people change type regularly). As a fun self-development tool it can be really useful; and it's especially useful if you use it with several people as a dynamic personal interaction tool, especially in team working, as it helps people see why they have conflict with others in the workplace (i.e. they can recognise that someone else isn't necessarily doing things wrong per se, they just work in a different way -- for example, it helps people to understand how they as an ENFP should understand their interaction with someone who is an ISTJ without getting frustrated with them, for example.)
ReplyDeleteI personally think every workplace should be MBTI'd (especially some workplaces which I could mention..... :) ) You need a practitioner to run the full test, as it's copyrighted; but you can normally find abbreviated versions of the test online which are great fun if you want to try it out. Hours and hours of productive time can be wasted doing the test on behalf of everyone you know to find out what their personality types might be :)
Oddly, though introverts are in the minority in most workplaces, which are structured around the preferences of extroverts, it seems to be the opposite in academia. I have a very strong EN bias, and I find academia as a workplace sometimes very frustrating, because it's one workplace that is structured almost entirely around the working preferences of introverts (and, more precisely, IS introverts, who are detail-focused -- the direct opposite of the EN bias). I really like open-plan offices and teamwork and meetings and lots of unstructured interaction, which I find energising (most of my previous workplaces were like this); but most of my faculty colleagues really don't like that kind of thing at all! In fact, there's nothing they find more stressful than a big noisy meeting with no structured agenda, or even someone knocking on their office door for a chat when they haven't mentally prepared themselves to see someone. I always have to keep remembering this fact when I'm pottering around the faculty --"caring for your introvert", as Rauch calls it in the article posted above (which is great fun and very true!! :)
There was also a column on this topic recently in the Chronicle:
http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/12/2005121401c.htm.
I also think the origins of these kind of personality tests are really interesting from a research point of view, too -- they developed out of a combination of Jungian psychoanalysis and early 20th.c American social psychology, and the underlying assumptions of some of the early formulations of the tests are fascinating (whether or not they are actually true.....) Some day, when I have some time, I want to do some more research on this....!
I just did a (probably a bit hokey) quick online test and came out as ESTJ/ENTJ. Not sure what that means, but if stc is right I'm probably in the wrong job.
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