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So It Turns Out You’re Not an Introvert, After All
Whichever personality type you identify with, there’s something to glean from the experience of self-isolation
If the great lockdown’s memes are any indication, this global pause has introverts finding out they’re extroverts — and vice versa:
Carl Jung first proposed a psychological theory on introverts and extroverts as personality types in 1921. Since then we’ve come to think of it like this: Introverts gain energy from solitude, while extroverts recharge by being around other people. Psychology broadly recognizes that introversion and extroversion happens along a continuum, but in the popular imagination it’s often perceived as binary.
The idea that people can get all their energy from one source or the other is looking less convincing, however, amidst the mass quarantine that much of the world is now under. We’ve all been forced to sit with ourselves more. And with that mandatory stillness comes an opportunity to examine our relationship to social interaction.
We’ve long lived in a world in which extroverts thrive. Research conducted in the U.S. tells us that extroverts get ahead and tend to be happier while doing so. Perhaps in reaction to that cultural dominance, a sense of introvert pride has been on the rise in recent years, with a legion of self-proclaimed homebodies tweeting witticisms about their hermitry from their couches. From Susan Cain’s bestselling book Quiet to the very notions of…
