I, the closet shoe gazer (Part II)

What it means to be an introvert

In Part I, I left off on the topic of how the Extrovert Ideal - a phrase coined by Susan Cain in her brilliant book Quiet - came to rule the fast-paced corporate cultures of the West (America's, but also Britain's). Whether in school, university or the workplace, we are conditioned to believe that the necessary qualities for success in the workplace include leadership skills, team playing prowess, ability to talk the talk, a penchant for risk taking, and general gregariousness. These are all extrovert-type attributes, as they focus on our outward attitude and relations to other people. In essence, success as defined by the Extrovert Ideal is measured by the influence we have over other people. 

In contrast, introverted qualities like thoughtfulness,  reflectiveness, and being able to listen to others are considered secondary. But the tide could be shifting. The growing business of mindfulness in the workplace is surely a response to the proven ill effects of being switched-on and connected all the time.

As I mentioned in Part I, the Extrovert Ideal was something I became conscious of as a young child. My dad acknowledged but did not prize the stereotypical Chinese parental values of quiet studiousness over qualities like leadership and (measured) risk-taking. He wanted me to become a bold, people-oriented human being unafraid to speak rather than one closeted in the drama and strife of her own internal life. Unfortunately, in his eyes I was dangerously hurtling toward becoming the latter personality type. After all, I was a timid child who seldom spoke up in class and recoiled at anything new and challenging. So from the ages of 6-15, my parents committed me to one long confidence building course that included team sport participation and drama lessons. My dad - bless him - also coached me on the speeches I had to give every year from Year 5 through to Year 9 in secondary school. Thankfully, his efforts duly paid off as my speech giving always landed me near the top of the class. 

My parents' work to stretch my comfort zone continued outside of school. I was encouraged to interact with their adult friends, so that by the time I became a teenager, I felt far more comfortable in their company than with my pimply peers. My early initiation into the grown-up world of conversation also taught me how to speak in proper, cogent sentences, about a range of topics that did not involve the merits or demerits of this or that boy in the class next door. 

Gradually, with all this social desensitisation, I was able to override my shyness to the point that I am now able to appear outgoing and gregarious! As we shall see in Part III, a subset of introverts do indeed have the trickery to appear extroverted. 

But first, what makes an introvert introverted?

Introverts aren't (necessarily) people haters

You may be familiar with the stereotype of an introvert: someone who is a socially awkward, misanthropic who has trouble maintaining eye contact. While there is always some truth to stereotypes, the assumption that introverts dislike other people is actually wide off the mark. An introvert often has a close circle of friends with whom they enjoy deep (even serious) conversations. This implies that introverts often find small talk at best a waste of time, and at worst as uncomfortable as a ticking time bomb of social blundering. That explains why I never liked networking events. 

Extroverts on the other hand tend to boast larger social circles (500+ friends on Facebook) but their relationships are more superficial. Which kind of makes sense when there are only 24 hours in a day.

Nor is introversion exclusively a social attitude. As will be explained later, many scientists and psychologists now reckon that introverts are actually physiologically more sensitive than extroverts are to environmental stimuli, whether that is people, sunsets, caffeine or noise. This means that their nervous systems react more profoundly to environmental input of any kind. They are therefore more likely to be overwhelmed by the onslaught of happenings at a cocktail party or the hustle and bustle of urban life than extroverts, who are by nature drawn to outward stimulation especially from people. This would explain why introverts generally prefer less stimulating environments than extroverts.  

In my case, although I need my regular dose of a good chin wag with friends, I also know that my threshold for social interactions is probably lower than that of a number of my acquaintances who seem to need people around them all the time. Social occasions, no matter how much I enjoy them, can utterly exhaust me. No alcohol needed! 

Cain talks about the necessity for both introverts and extroverts to create environments, whether at work or at home or out socialising, that they find offers "optimal levels of arousal". Introverts often thirst for “restorative niches”, a phrase coined by Professor Brian Little, a legendary former Harvard psychology professor and self-described 'classical introvert' who won countless students over with his style of lecturing. Restorative niches are moments of calm designed to break up an introvert's day especially if they are engaged in a series of highly extroverted activities, such as giving presentations, negotiating or socialising.

I know that on almost any given day I will hanker for a little solitary walk or some time out to read my book. My soon-to-be-husband M, who is even more introverted than I am, often voices his frustration at not having any time to himself in a work environment that is intellectually and socially demanding. On top of this, he finds it difficult to participate in the British culture of afterwork pubcrawling with colleagues. The truth is, after 8 hours of interacting with his colleagues, the last thing he wants to do is to socialise with them as well. If he liked beer, he could at least drink away that discomfort!

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue" - Shakespeare 

The theory that introversion is really a preference for a certain amount of outward stimulation also explains why many introverts dislike or struggle to speak on the fly or wing it on the podium. Social interaction, whether it is engaging in conversation or speaking to the public, is an immensely complex set of behaviours that involves a whole host of psychological processes. In fact, it is one of the most stimulating activities humans do. But as we've seen, introverts have a lower threshold for stimulation of any kind. Numerous studies have shown that overarousal interferes with attention and short-term memory - which, as Cain writes, are key components to being able to improvise on the spot. I, for one, have caught myself losing my train of thought mid-sentence with someone when the environment that I am in becomes too crowded with other peoples' conversations. It's probably a case of my brain shutting down from being a bit too overwhelmed.

Cain's advise for introverts whose jobs demand that they give presentations or network with clients, prepare beforehand! Once introverts know what they are talking about, they can go on and on. Think Al Gore on climate change.

I'm not touchy, I'm just highly reactive!

One of the most fascinating sections of Quiet looks at the physiological and neuroscientific basis of introversion. The implication is that the brains and nervous systems of introverts are significantly different from the brains and nervous systems of extroverts.

Cain introduces us to the pioneering work of Jerome Kagan who, in the late 1980s, studied the different attitudes or approaches to novel stimulus of infants. He found that about 20 per cent of the infants he studied reacted overtly (crying, arms flailing) to novel stimulus such as balloons popping, tape recorded voices and cotton swabs. In contrast, the other 80 per cent of infants were decidedly more calm. 

Kagan concluded that babies are born with one of two contrasting temperaments: they are either 'high reactive' or 'low reactive', and that these temperaments roughly correspond to the personality types of introversion and extroversion. High reactive types are physiologically more sensitive to novelty and their environments in general than low reactive types are. For instance, the group of high reactive babies in Kagan's study exhibited greater spikes in their heart rates, blood pressure, finger temperature, pupil dilation and other nervous signals when immersed in a strange, unfamiliar environment. Such reactions are linked to these babies having more active amygdalae, that structure in our primitive brain that processes emotions like fear and pleasure, and sets off the fight-or-flight response via the sympathetic nervous system. 

If memory serves me correctly, there is every indication that I would have been one of the children in Kagan's study who cried and flailed at balloons popping... I remember:

• I hated the explosive bangs of balloons and fireworks and was always startled by someone suddenly entering a room when I was alone in it. Even now, the sound of sirens and balloons popping still send me on edge.
• One of the most excruciating experiences of my childhood was having to stare into the line of the sun for a photo opportunity. I cried every time as if I'd just walked into a room full of onion vapour. 
• Unlike other children, I did not like fizzy soft drinks because my super sensitive tongue could not hack the bubbles. As a consequence, I did not get my first cavity until I was 12 or around the time I started eating sweets without my parents knowing. 
• Despite being a water baby (I'm both a Pisces and a Water Rat), I had to be desensitised to the aqueous stuff with the heroic patience of my parents. I remember screaming and shouting at my poor mum whenever she got me under the shower head. I just hated having liquid in my eyes that wasn't my own!

And as for my approach to the social world, I was definitely the kid who stood at the sidelines observing the playground until I'd deemed it safe enough to wade in. The prospect of meeting new kids at a family friends' gathering always made my stomach turn. But once I'd 'warmed up', I could be the friendliest child on the planet!

So there you have it. I would have fit right into Kagan's group of highly reactive children. Luckily, I've come a long way since the trials with novelty in the playground. Through a mix of coercion and sheer willpower, I have become pretty adept at navigating new situations and challenges, to the extent that I can appear to be rather restless!

Kagan's research on differing responses to novelty might explain an introvert's preference for working alone rather than in an environment requiring input from other people. In an interview with Cain, he says that high reactives often choose solitary intellectual vocations like writing because "you're in charge: you close the door, pull down the shades and do your work. You're protected from encountering unexpected things." 

Temperament versus Personality

As nothing in psychology is ever black and white, Kagan reminds Cain that not all high reactive children develop into introverts nor are all introverts necessarily in possession of highly reactive nervous systems. Elaine Aron, another research psychologist, reckons that 70 percent of sensitive or high reactive people are introverts, while the remaining 30 percent are extroverts who nonetheless need more alone time than the typical extrovert. 

Jung already saw the difference between temperament (high versus low reactivity) and personality (introversion versus extraversion). You're pretty much born with a certain temperament, but your personality type is only 40-50 per cent heritable – that is, determined by your genetic makeup. 

In other words, while your temperament has a role in shaping your personality, your upbringing and environment has a significantly larger part to play in who you'll become. 

Can you 'grow out' of your temperament?

The short answer is no, at least not completely. 

In my case, I was probably born with a high reactive temperament but because of the opportunities my parents afforded me (all those speech and drama lessons!), I was able to stretch my comfort zone and successfully engage with the world outside my own head. By 19, I was living in Los Angeles, thousands of miles away from my family in New Zealand, and I was studying hard and playing harder. Now more than 20 years since, I have lived in four different continents, experimented with even more career options, including being a travelling salesperson of all extroverted occupations! 

Despite the fact that I've managed to turn my life around (and upside down as an Antipodean living in the UK), something has nevertheless stuck within me. 

Carl Schwartz, a protégé and colleague of Kagan's, continued Kagan's research on high reactivity by conducting a set of novelty-response experiments on the same participants in Kagan's first study who were now all grown up. Sure as nuts, the individuals who were deemed 'high reactive' in the first experiment as children still exhibited more activity in their amygdalae - the brain centre involved in processing emotion - to images of unfamiliar faces than their low reactive counterparts. This was the case even if the high reactive individuals were unconscious of being affected by the images. 

Fortunately, as in my own story, with a bit (or a lot) of willpower, one can override one's natural tendencies, even if it's just for a moment.

This is because our behaviour is governed by the relative strength of signals coming from two brain systems. I've already mentioned the older limbic structures of the midbrain centring around the amygdala. On top of this, we have evolved a new brain structure that makes us uniquely human. This is the neocortex and in particular the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is involved in our ability to make decisions and to put forward the most appropriate actions in any circumstance. As Daniel Goleman explains in his highly influential book Emotional Intelligence our response to the environment is mediated by the cross talk between the neocortex and the older emotional brain. We can only make decisions if we know how we feel about the possible outcomes. In other words, all decision making is emotional.

But we can train the neocortex to have a greater influence over our actions than the amygdala. Take the classic case of deciding whether or not to have that extra slice of chocolate cake. The amygdala, which is also integral to a person's internal reward system as we shall see in Part III, may be screaming 'Yes, please!' at the sight and smell of the cake. But the prefrontal cortex, the seat of willpower and reason, is telling us that it's an appetite spoiler. If we attempt to ignore this little voice, chances are, guilty feelings will surface. That's because the prefrontal cortex is also the seat of morality!

To take another example, when a shy introvert approaches a room full of strangers, his amygdala will probably go haywire. What hopefully prevents him from flipping out completely are the circuits in his prefrontal cortex that enable him to assess the situation and conclude that it is actually non-life threatening and therefore it's not necessary to flee.

Even so, when it comes to overriding the whims of the amygdala, one can never actually extinguish its response. In other words, we are hardwired to feel fear (or pleasure) to certain stimulus. This is most certainly the case when it comes to shyness, a primitive fear response that is probably a behavioural adaptation from our time as hunter gatherers roaming a predator-heavy savannah.

As Cain writes, “This helps explain why many high reactive kids retain some of the fearful aspects of their temperament all the way into adulthood, no matter how much social experience they acquire or free will they exercise.”

In my case, I still encounter networking opportunities (which I do my best to avoid) with trepidation no matter how many such events I had to attend when I was a staff magazine writer. Similarly, conducting interviews when I was a journalist was never my favourite part of the job. I much preferred doing the write-up afterwards.

And even though I crave a bit of adventure these days, certain novel situations, particularly situations in which there is a lot of uncertainty and for which I have little control over, still make my palms sweat and my heart beat faster. Knowing this, my choice to work with children now seems utterly counterintuitive. Every new day in the classroom dredged up the same set of psychological challenges that I have to overcome beforehand. Kids, after all, are as unpredictable as the weather, charming one moment, irascible another. After reading Cain's book, I now see how by choosing to work with kids, I was asking for more novelty than I actually like.

In Part III, I look at why introverts and high reactive people can be awesome and why the world needs them.