Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can\'t Stop Talking pdfdrive com

A Note on the Words 
Introvert
 and 
Extrovert
This book is about introversion as seen from a 
cultural
point of view. Its
primary concern is the age-old dichotomy between the “man of action”
and the “man of contemplation,” and how we could improve the world if
only there were a greater balance of power between the two types. It
focuses on the person who recognizes him-or herself somewhere in the
following constellation of attributes: reflective, cerebral, bookish,
unassuming, sensitive, thoughtful, serious, contemplative, subtle,
introspective, inner-directed, gentle, calm, modest, solitude-seeking, shy,
risk-averse, thin-skinned. 
Quiet
is also about this person’s opposite
number: the “man of action” who is ebullient, expansive, sociable,
gregarious, excitable, dominant, assertive, active, risk-taking, thick-
skinned, outer-directed, lighthearted, bold, and comfortable in the
spotlight.
These are broad categories, of course. Few individuals identify fully
with only one or the other. But most of us recognize these types
immediately, because they play meaningful roles in our culture.
Contemporary personality psychologists may have a conception of
introversion and extroversion that differs from the one I use in this book.
Adherents of the Big Five taxonomy often view such characteristics as
the tendency to have a cerebral nature, a rich inner life, a strong
conscience, some degree of anxiety (especially shyness), and a risk-
averse nature as belonging to categories quite separate from
introversion. To them, these traits may fall under “openness to
experience,” “conscientiousness,” and “neuroticism.”
My use of the word 
introvert
is deliberately broader, drawing on the
insights of Big Five psychology, but also encompassing Jungian thinking
on the introvert’s inner world of “inexhaustible charm” and subjective
experience; Jerome Kagan’s research on high reactivity and anxiety (see
chapters 4
and 
5
); Elaine Aron’s work on sensory processing sensitivity
and its relationship to conscientiousness, intense feeling, inner-
directedness, and depth of processing (see 
chapter 6
); and various
research on the persistence and concentration that introverts bring to

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problem-solving, much of it summarized wonderfully in Gerald
Matthews’s work (see 
chapter 7
).
Indeed, for over three thousand years, Western culture has linked the
qualities in the above constellations of adjectives. As the anthropologist
C. A. Valentine once wrote:
Western cultural traditions include a conception of individual variability which
appears to be old, widespread, and persistent. In popular form this is the familiar
notion of the man of action, practical man, realist, or sociable person as opposed to
the thinker, dreamer, idealist, or shy individual. The most widely used labels
associated with this tradition are the type designations extrovert and introvert.
Valentine’s concept of introversion includes traits that contemporary
psychology would classify as openness to experience (“thinker,
dreamer”), conscientiousness (“idealist”), and neuroticism (“shy
individual”).
A long line of poets, scientists, and philosophers have also tended to
group these traits together. All the way back in Genesis, the earliest book
of the Bible, we had cerebral Jacob (a “quiet man dwelling in tents” who
later becomes “Israel,” meaning one who wrestles inwardly with God)
squaring off in sibling rivalry with his brother, the swashbuckling Esau
(a “skillful hunter” and “man of the field”). In classical antiquity, the
physicians Hippocrates and Galen famously proposed that our
temperaments—and destinies—were a function of our bodily fluids, with
extra blood and “yellow bile” making us sanguine or choleric (stable or
neurotic extroversion), and an excess of phlegm and “black bile” making
us calm or melancholic (stable or neurotic introversion). Aristotle noted
that the melancholic temperament was associated with eminence in
philosophy, poetry, and the arts (today we might classify this as
openness to experience). The seventeenth-century English poet John
Milton wrote 
Il Penseroso
(“The Thinker”) and 
L’Allegro
(“The Merry
One”), comparing “the happy person” who frolics in the countryside and
revels in the city with “the thoughtful person” who walks meditatively
through the nighttime woods and studies in a “lonely Towr.” (Again,
today the description of 
Il Penseroso
would apply not only to introversion
but also to openness to experience and neuroticism.) The nineteenth-
century German philosopher Schopenhauer contrasted “good-spirited”

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people (energetic, active, and easily bored) with his preferred type,
“intelligent people” (sensitive, imaginative, and melancholic). “Mark this
well, ye proud men of action!” declared his countryman Heinrich Heine.
“Ye are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of
thought.”
Because of this definitional complexity, I originally planned to invent
my own terms for these constellations of traits. I decided against this,
again for cultural reasons: the words 
introvert
and 
extrovert
have the
advantage of being well known and highly evocative. Every time I
uttered them at a dinner party or to a seatmate on an airplane, they
elicited a torrent of confessions and reflections. For similar reasons, I’ve
used the layperson’s spelling of 
extrovert
rather than the 
extravert
one
finds throughout the research literature.

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