An inquiry into social habits

[andrewducker]

I've been thinking about personality types recently, most specifically the Myers/Briggs scale/Kiersey temperaments (where I'm a solid INTP every time). I've been mulling over why I'm introverted - and what this means. In discussion with green_amber it became obvious that I'm _not_ an introvert when amongst geeks, but I am when amongst pretty much everyone else. This seems odd, as introversion/extraversion is supposed to be a constant. 

Much thinking later, I came up with the following thinking about why people are introverted in the first place, and how they may come to be that way.  So when I'm talking about social situations I'm covering the whole range of them from hanging out with a close friend to being at a party with a load of people you don't know, to being in work with people who have a very disparate range of interests:

1) There is no absolute right/wrong, just what people like/don't like.
2) Therefore you can't logically expect people to either want the same things or have the same interests as you.
3) Therefore, if you want them to do the same things as you in social situations, or talk about the same things, then sometimes you'll need to provide an impetus for them to do so, offer your own compromises, talk about the things they're interested in, go along to the things they have an interest in.
4) This constant social negotiation involves empathising with others and seeing things from their point of view, to see what they want and how you can manage to achieve both that and what you personally want. This requires effort, less for some people, more for others (quite a lot for me, usually requiring a fair amount of thought).
5) The harder work people find it, the more like themselves their chosen group will have to be in order to minimise effort. They will tend to congregate with people who have similar hobbies, beliefs and approaches to life in order to not stress themselves out.
6) Some people don't find the social juggling hard hard - indeed they may not even see it as an effort - they get a buzz from being around people and don't really notice the subconscious juggling process.  We call these people extraverts.
7) Some people find the process very wearing - they tend to focus inwards instead, avoiding the stress that is social situations. If people find it hard to deal with people more than slightly different from themselves then we call them introverts.

Further thinking made me think that this can be simplified even further:

If you have interests that are unusual then you will tend to be around people who you have little in common with, and thus have problems dealing with 'people in general' rather than just the occasional person.  So it's not that geeks are naturally introverts, but that they are socialised into acting in a more introverted manner because the energy necessary to cope with the majority of people is higher for them.  If talking to people requires lots of compromise and effort then you'll associate socialising with that effort and be less inclined to do so.

Which leads me to wonder - are some people interested in unusual things, thus causing them to have problems dealing with others, causing introversion; or are some people naturally introverted, causing them to avoid being with other people and thus focussing on other things instead?

[Poll #354061]

Comments

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

I think that the idea that it takes more "energy" (or whatever you want to call it) for some than others in order to socialize is pretty well-established. I don't think it can be entirely attributed to having different interests, though. Social intelligence is just another kind of intelligence and for whatever reason, some people have more of it than others. There's a correlation between socializing not coming naturally and having unusual interests, but I'm not quite ready to assert a causal relationship either way.

[andrewducker]

I was heading in that direction because when I'm amongst geeks I'm definitely fairly extroverted. It's when I'm amongst non-geeks that I'm introverted.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

I definitely share that experience, but I think that's just a matter of the fact that it's more difficult to socialize with people who you don't have an easy instant connection with. Being able to have a meaningful conversation if you got stuck in an elevator with anybody is a skill that some seem to be born with, though others can learn it.

[pacotelic.livejournal.com]

I know this is off topic, but I think your poll should be on the bottom of every livejournal post, everywhere, for everybody.

[andrewducker]

It's largely there as an experiment. I was wondering if sticking a poll at the bottom made people more likely to read it...

Re: more likely to read it.

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

Eh. I always read your stuff. It's always very thought-provoking...

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I hate to say this, cos there is a lot of sense to this, but I don't think so - speaking as someone established as atotal extrovert (somewhat to my surprise) everytime I do this test.. I reckon my intersts are relatively unusual - as we both know i'm enough of a geek to get on with you:-) - yet I like and feel energised by mixing with new people. Not stupid people admittedly but new people who don't necessarily share that much with me. Some of this is to indeed to do with categorisation of "people like you". I think the more introvert you are the narrower that categorisation gets. Experience proves that I can empathise with geeks, people into Internet law, people who like colouring their hair, people who know and like Americans/canadians, people who've thrown up jobs to go back to university , people who like hal hartley films, etc etc ad nauseam. i am good at drawing parallels - empathy - between people and my life . This makes socialising energising, empowering. I feel there are more people out there like me AND who like me. This is what exactly happned to me tonight (social gathering with people I don't know that well). It is also something to do with getting bored with people I too easily share every point of comparison with. If i were you (and this is not a judgmental statement , honest) I would be bored with my relatively closed friends group. So perhaps extroverts are people who can find analogies, empathy with a very wide group of people and who are also driven to do so by a need for social stimulation (rather than intellectual stimulation - all the books in the world can exist and they won't do it for me like people)and a low boredom threshold.

What you're talking about - the effort involved to interact with new people - strikes me as a friction co efficient rather than an actual definition of what seperates extroverst from introverts. I feel it too, but it doesn't divert me from my primary goals of empathy, fighting boredom and affirmation.

[darkoshi]

hmm. "low boredom threshold". when reading that first, I thought you meant you weren't easily bored, and that's why you're good at talking with people - they don't easily bore you. But after the last sentence, I guess you meant the opposite.

So, while I might find a lot of conversations boring, and prefer to go off and do something more interesting by myself, extroverts might find doing most things by themselves boring, and prefer to go socialize. Interesting to think about.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Yes, I find being by myslef both boring and after a bit, slighly creepy. I suspect introverst find the opposite. It doesn't mean I'm not shy about new people, cos I am - that is another axis again. But I find large groups of new people (eg large parties) where I'm not responsible for enetrtaining any single one of them in particular very pleasant, as opposed to 1 to 1 conversations witrh newish acquaintances - which again I suspect for introverst is the exact opposite. (I don't quite know whey tho.)

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I lean towards your POV too. I don't think being introverted or otherwise has anything to do with what your interests are - unless your interests could be classed as "people".

I'd consider myself an introvert and my father an extrovert, and I'd say the reason he's an extrovert is he likes company, not because he shares common interests with a wide range of people.

Your "fighting boredom" rings true too. I'm more likely to feel bored around people than when I'm on my own, while extroverts seem to be the opposite.

So I think it boils down to whether you like company, not what your interests are.

Which doesn't explain Andrew being an extrovert when around geeks, but that may be the case with most "intoverts" - they're able to like the company of their own peer group.

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

But introverted doesn't equal shy! It's much more about need for internal recharging and the like. Poke me when I'm not horrendously jetlagged and I'll look you out some resources, if you like.

I'm an INFJ myself :)

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

I'm ENFP :_)

Re: Introversion

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

My answers might've been predictable, especially based on #1.

I'm rather an introvert but much of that is due to my heavy internal dialogue and need to resolve things inside myself. I suspect that I wouldn't seem as extroverted ass I do if one of the things that I find the most interesting wasn't what other people think. Statistics where n = 1 really suck.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

It's not to do with the sort of people. All people irritate me wear me out -- even my friends. I like my own company (though not all the time): doesn't mean I don't also like people, or that I find it difficult to interact. 'Wearing', sometimes 'tedious', sometimes 'irritating' and sometimes 'much less interesting than the new Neal Stephenson book', yes. 'Difficult', no.

Except for you of course :)

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

We can turn this whole thing on its head: Its not just the geeks being introverted - its other people's reaction to being told "I work with computers" or "I'm an IT professional" or "I'm a computer programmer".

One of the most common 'small talk' opening lines is "So: what do you do?" - geek professions are a real conversational turn off for most people who aren't geeks. Its not that geeks aren't interested in the interests of other people, it that other people aren't interested in the interests of geeks.

Case in hand: wedding a few weeks ago. I could *see* the face of people turning to stone as they hit the conversational brick wall that comes with my reply "I build global computer networks". The effort after this point is all mine because I then have to bring the conversation back to the other person's job and interests to stop the conversation falling completely flat because they don't know what to say to someone who has a geek job. Alternatively, they say "thats nice" and get 'rescued' by partner and go off in search of more wine...

Luckily I found another geek. Of course I only found out that he was a geek *after* I'd spent 3 hours sitting at a table with him, studiously avoiding conversation with him because I was too introverted to ask him what he did for a living.

[darkoshi]

I remember being introverted & very shy before becoming interested in geeky things. One of the attractions of playing with video games and computers, etc., was that it didn't need to involve other people. Of course, I also loved the neat-oh electronics & special effects aspects. But still, if I were more of a people-person, I might have instead pursued some of my other potential interests which would have been more people-oriented.