” It does mean that solitude matters and that for some people it is the air that they breathe.”
I decided to start my first blog post with Susan Cain’s TED talk about the power of the introvert because it helped me figure out our society’s misconceptions against introverts and understand how our generation stereotypes these people as having more negative and socially undesirable personalities.
According to our textbook, 1 MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) personality framework states that “Extroverted individuals are outgoing, sociable, and assertive. And introverts are quiet and shy”. I define myself as an introvert because I lose my energy from meeting people and need time to recharging myself. However, a person can be both extroverted and introverted to some degree. Susan introduces us to a new term called “Ambiverts” for people who have both tendencies.
In the video, she claims that 2 “our most important institutions are designed for extroverts”. Since extroverts are more capable of speaking in public and spreading ideas, many of them have a leadership role in our Western society. This makes people believe that introverts are not as capable as leaders and it is essential to have extroverted traits in order to be successful in their life. Because of this social norm that favours extroverts, we often force many introverts to act like extroverts instead of helping them develop their unique talent of deep thinking.
Susan identifies that great leadership and ideas can come from either personality type. She addresses how introverts favour quality of relationships over quantity and how they like to think thoroughly before making a decision, giving them a great advantage as leaders.
I believe the unique talents and traits that introverts have are great assets in our society. It is very important to understanding misconceptions of different personalities and try to make a balance that can help different individuals get along with others and to get the best out of everyone in a group as well as our society.
References
1. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 49.
2. Cain, Susan. “The Power of Introverts.” TED. Feb. 2012. Lecture.
Eat those pizza pops you still have in your fridge!
Introversion and extroversion; these two traits have always bothered me because of how black and white they are. They mean to define people as either outgoing or anti-social, but that just isn’t how humans are. From personal experience, humans are much more back-and-forth than the MBTI might suggest so it is ridiculous to think that people stay as one of the traits for more than several months at a time.
I agree with your view point that introverts are great assets to our society. Moreover, clearing the misconceptions around introverted people is of utmost importance. But how would we go about clearing them?