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Introverts Have More Brain Activity?
* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us Yahoo News is reporting that introverted individuals tend to have more brain activity in general, specifically in the frontal lobe. From the article: "The attitude that there's something wrong with introverted people is widely shared in society, where fast talk and snap decisions are often valued over listening, deliberation and careful planning. Extroverts seem to rule the world or, at least, the USA, which hasn't elected an introverted president for three decades, since Jimmy Carter."
A. Stop posting stories submitted by this Beatles link spammer. He's using Slashdot to boost his Google pagerank.
B. The first President Bush was an ISTJ and thus an introvert.
...presented badly. Why of WHY did you have politicizing this subject?
Life is not for the lazy.
Introverted as I am I won't be able to express this but I do have FAR more brain activity than others. I don't think it has to do with my introverted but it's more of a symptom.
For example; today I had an awful day. I'll think about it until tomorrow morning. My extroverted friends will shrug it off as "bad day, tomorrow is another". If in fact I do "think" more, I'll spend less time socializing as it'll cut into my thinking time.
Yesterday at a church event I attempted to be even more extroverted than normal. I was insulted in the course of the evening, a minor misunderstanding of my position, and of course it distracted me the rest of the evening as I thought about how to restate and rectify my position.
So yes, we think more but why would the thinking want to associate with the brain-dead? We don't. We fall back into our shells and think about why the world is as it is.
Introverted people tend to seriously overanalize situations and have difficulty relaxing in social enviornments. The result is conversation that feels forced, somthing that most people don't find attractive.
Ever wondered why meeting people is easier when tipsy? It makes your brain shut up.
Jimmy Carter? You're kidding, right? This guy has done nothing but shoot his mouth off about every damn thing, whether any one wants to hear it or not.
....an introvert? No way man.
Don't get me wrong, Habit is a great great thing, but
Plus, I don't buy the brainpower thing either. I mean, the guy presided over an economy with a prime rate of 18% and gas lines like you won't believe. Brainpower....yeah, right.
There is frequently an assumption that the physical (brain chemistry, electrical activity) causes the behavior (introspection), as opposed to the other way around, or some other, independent cause.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I believe it was the late great philosopher Douglas Adams who stated, "If people stop talking, their brains start working."
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Excerpt pokes at the perception that there is something wrong with introverts, but furthers the perception that somehow more brain activity as better. A lot of brain activity has to do with inhibiting other nervous system activity. The brain isn't a processor where cycles per second have some significance. If anything, the morphology of the brain circuitry would have a much bigger impact than any measure of global activity.
Attaching a label to yourself is a great way to start a self fulfilling prophecy, unless you are simply self analyzing. The old "I'm an introvert so I don't get friends" philosophy is widespread and teribly limiting. You CAN be both, and I try to stretch both sides of me.
I try to beleive I'm a little more diverse than one word, the same way I don't describe myself as a Jew, or white, or red head, or whatever. If you are in a situation where you have to describe yourself as one word, you may be around the wrong people.
I wonder if the increased brain activity causes a person to be introverted (they are more immersed in their thoughts and less concerned with the outside world) or if a person being introverted causes them to have more brain activity (they think to fill the "void" where social interaction would fit in in an extrovert)
And neither realizes that they're about as smart as the next guy.
Being an introvert myself it's not surprising that I think that introverts are smarter in intellectual pursuits simply because they are constantly thinking instead of speaking. However, whether this higher intellect has much benefit for the world is questionable, as most intraverts keep it all to themselves. It is also likely that most intraverts easily form incorrect opinions and hold onto them because they don't test them in debate with other people as extraverts do. But what do I know, I've probably been thinking about this too much already.
There's a common belittling of the sheer amount of complexity we need to deal with to interact in a social environment. There's movement towards acknowleging this with things like "EQ" as well as "IQ" being measured, but it's couched in a lot of New Agey jargon too much of the time. Being able to do complex maths and write good computer programs involves a lot of brain activity, but so does being able to effectively model a person's personality in your mind and interact more effectively with them using that model. I usually score as more introverted than extroverted on MBPT tests and the like, but I still enjoy the process of experiencing social and group dynamics at times, and playing with it in a similar way to the way I'd work on a logic problem.
The main reason people decide on the introvert approach is because people don't actually care. If people actually cared then introverts would have a reason to be more outgoing. Think of it that way.
One key difference among introverts, introverts know you don't really care and stay in their own world. An Extroverts world and entire reality only exists if people in that reality allow for it.
View it like this, if you are an introvert because you don't want an overly dramatic, painful, insane life, and want actual control over your life, thats just the logical way to have control.
If you are an extrovert, you care what other people think of you, you care about others more than others care about you, and I'm not saying its wrong to care about others, but extroverts simply get attached to everyone, or no one, while introverts are very selective with whom they attach to and connect with.
It's just different strategies, if a person can put up with the pain of being an extrovert, then theres nothing wrong with it, but for others being an extrovert is impossible or difficult unless its in a very artificial way. The artificial way of being an extrovert is to pretend to care, pretend to listen to people, pretend to trust people, and pretend to be social. Example, being social at work or at school because you are supposed to, not because you actually like to or need to, this is how an introvert views.
An extrovert HAS to be social or they go insane with bordem. An extrovert HAS to feel loved or they get depressed. An extrovert MUST feel accepted, MUST feel normal, and so on and so forth.
introverts want to simply stay in their own world and enjoy their time here, and are much more time conscious in that they know its a complete waste of time to play social mind games with people.
On the other hand, many "nerds" who really struggle at small talk still crave opportunities to meet lots of people and on those rare occasions when they are on top of their game they feel energized and love it.
Being a nerd (or a geek for that matter) does not necessarily mean being an introvert.
Nothing exemplifies the supposed power of the extrovert more than The Apprentice. All those disgusting Type-A personalities backstabbing each other and ripping the crap out of each other for the tiniest mistakes to make themselves look good, and not only are we supposed to be amused by it, but we're also supposed to believe that that's really how you get real work done. It undoes what few remnants of "cooperation" are left from our positive Sesame Street educations and convinces us that being rude and loud at other people's expense is the only way to succeed.
"Nerds" struggle with most small-talk because they're not familiar with most small-talk topics, but have you ever noticed that when those nerds have a conversation they are both familiar with, their mouths just never stop? If nerds paid as much attention to social pleasanties and dramatic relationships, one could assume that they'd be very involved in "most small-talk".
That's very true though, although most nerds and geeks have characteristics of introverts, this is why it's applied to the unsocialables of society, i.e. nerds, geeks, and the like.
An introvert says it, but only after thinking it over, if it is the best thing to say, the timing, thinking about what others say a bunch to try to come up with good things to say, etc. An introvert can "over analyze" things like that.
Other things happen too. When I'm going to meet someone, I'll often think up entire conversations on the way. It isn't purposeful, but I think something along the lines of "I could say X", then that leads to "then they would say Y", and it continues and before you know it I've had a little conversation in my head.
I think about all sorts of stuff. I can be walking down the street and I'll start thinking about something completely irrelevant. I'm not talking about "I remember that one birthday", I'm talking about "how you could build X" which leads to how to solve problem Y, how X would be useful in situation Z, etc.
That is sort of the whole introvert/extrovert thing. Introverts do all this stuff inside. Extroverts might do these things as conversations with other people, or they might fill that "need" in some other way with normal conversation and such.
That's how I see it. I used to be more of an introvert, and I've never been an extrovert so I can't say I've had that point of view (outside of the odd situation).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Obviously introverts are smarter. We don't waste all our brain power talking about who hooked up with who, we actually go and do shit.
Extroverts simply like attention, like to talk, like to be heard, and would rather believe everyone cares than admit that they dont.
Think of it this way, why would anyone care who you hooked up with? and how exactly is this information good to put out there? I wont say introverts are smarter, but introverts are at least more cautious when it comes to the information they put out and the trust they put into individuals. It should be obvious.
Being introverted does not necessarily mean that you're a quiet, reflective kind of person in social situations. Being introverted really means that you don't like too much people, for too long a time at once. You need a good deal of "alone-time" to be comfortable.
That can mean that you're also quiet or a wallflower at parties, but does not at all have to be. It may just as well be that you're happily partying and jabbering away - just mostly with people you already know, preferably smaller groups, and not that often.
In fact, I prefer to see introversion as the positive difference of the clingy extrovert who can't stand being alone, who values themselves only through the eyes of others, and who has to fill their time with sounds and voices at any cost, whether if it means constantly blaring TV, spending hours on the phone saying nothing at all, or always having a boy/girlfriend just to have _someone_, since anyone, no matter what kind of creep, is better than being alone.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Let's see... This is an American website, run by Americans, for Americans, with a predominant American audience. Hmmm... seems that grousing about Americans and their worldview would be better done in another forum.
I'd say that extroverts trust more than introverts.
Introverts quickly learn they will never be accepted, and cannot trust the common individual.
Also, its not like someone who is an introvert cannot fake being an extrovert. Thats the difference. Any introvert can decide to pretend to be social. All you have to do is learn the body language and words which initiate certain patterns, conversations, etc.
Ultimately, if you want to be an extrovert yet be an introvert, talk to people when you have a reason to.
Does more brain activity = good or bad, or neither?
If there is an emergency do you tend to stand still and feel somewhat shutdown or in slow motion?
Well, I am certainly an introvert, but in an emergency I have this tendency to act fast and usually correct without really thinking about it. I think emergency behaviour and normal situation behaviour are not necessarily correlated, at least for introverts. Or maybe introverts tend to panic into inactivity while extroverts panic into (useless, dangerous) hyperactivity, while those that keep their heads act pretty similar, regardless of type?
Anyways, I think the best situation is a mix of both types with strong mutual respect.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This means, extroverts can't keep a secret, can't do something without telling the world about it, and like to gossip.
Gossiping is not something an introvert would ever do because whats the point? There is no logic behind gossip. So think of it this way, introverts are good planners, strategic thinkers, and this is good for certain fields and tasks. Extroverts are good salesmen, good with words, perhaps better with expression.
The problem is, expression without reason is art. Extroverts would make a good artist, but would you really want an extrovert to be handling strategy or any of the planning? All your plans would be gossip and sooner or later all your ideas and plans will be stolen.
So yes, its a catch 22, extroverts are great at marketing, but bad at planning. If you are running a business, it takes more than just marketing, because you cannot even get a patent or use your idea if your extrovert partner tells everyone the idea before you can patent it or actually build a business around it.
The planners therefore have to be introverts. The salesmen have to be extroverts, there can be exceptions for fields such as law in which you'd want to be capable of both.
While I'm sure that many introverts are turning over deep coding problems, coming up with the idea that will change the world, and making keen observations, others are neurotic, anxious, or wasting cycles on trivialities. Not all brain activity is condusive to health, happiness, and success.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Beatles-Beatles attempt at politicizing this seems off: Bush I and Bush II also appear to be introverts.
I think you're over-generalizing a little. Actually, a lot. Isn't it possible for a person to enjoy being social without being attached to everyone? Sure, an extroverted person needs to have someone to be extroverted to -- but that's a far cry from needing to be loved and accpeted by everyone, and from getting attached to everyone.
Introversion and extroversion are about what your focus is, not what you need. Some people have all the fun and energy in the world when they're with other people. Some people have a great time just thinking and doing things alone. That doesn't mean that an introverted person doesn't want or need love, or that extroverted people are some sort of incomplete half-humans when they're alone.
I'm guessing that you consider yourself an introvert (or you're a very bitter extreme extrovert) from your comments. That's fine but you seem to have some huge resentment towards more social people. Enjoying socializing is not the same as dependance on others or "play[ing] social mind games". Some people just like to hang out. Others like to amuse themselves.
If you think of sexual behaviour, you could classify it into homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual behaviour. Which of these is deviant?
In excess? All of the above.
In moderation? None of the above.
Just like with introverts/extroverts.
As long as you're not making your life and the lives of those around you miserable with your behavior, there's not problem. Many introverts ruin their own lives with shyness. I'd hardly call that a "smart" way to live. Likewise, many extroverts find themselves shunned as they are socially uncomfortable to be around. Either way, it's a costly mal-adjustment of behavior, and such people could probably gain from a little therapy or religion or whatever it takes to rattle their cages and see their own dysfunction for what it is.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I think you're about right. I'm extremely extroverted, but I don't mind being alone, either. I find people extremely interesting and entertaining...at least when there's something interesting and entertaining about them. I like being able to talk to pretty much anybody. It's really not hard...just ask them questions about themselves. What do you do? Where are you from? Do you have a family? What do you like to do for fun? The best questions to ask are "why" questions, because they're open ended and make people think, and also motivation questions, for the same reasons. "Wow, what made you want to be a chicken sexer?" usually makes for a very interesting story.
The problem occurs, however, when you meet truly boring people. The guy who works as an insurance claims adjuster and has no hobbies or interests. Thankfully that's pretty rare. Most of the time people have at least one thing about them that's truly interesting and unique, and if you get them started on that topic you can be entertained for quite awhile. As a bonus, they'll think you're the most interesting person in the world, too, since the most interesting people are those are interested in them. You better actually be interested in people, though, or you'll just find yourself getting annoyed.
Oh, but playing social mind games is fun, too.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Don't you think you are creating a false dichotomy though? For example, I am by no means an introvert, but I sometimes have trouble with doing/saying things impulsively. So where do I fit in? Honestly, I think this whole thing seems a bit fabricated, personality cannot be distilled into two catagories very easily(if at all)
Monstar L
Like many (well, MOST) things in psychology, this is a guide and nothing more. Psychology (like most disciplines) suffers from "Physics Envy"; that is they lack the ability to make concrete statements like Physics has ("Earth's gravity is 9.8 m/s^2").
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
James E. Carter and introvert? The guy who, for most of my lifetime, has been gallivanting around the planet advising and negotiating with anyone drawing breath, publicly criticizing all of his successors, participating in all manner of charitable causes, special interests and important events, and doing interviews for anyone capable of granting airtime? That "Jimmy" Carter? This guy visited TMI while the core was still molten.
Give me a ****ing break. The man has probably forgotten more friends than any ten of you will ever have.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
well one thing both of you are a little off about is introverts and extroverts "enjoy" acting out as one (or not acting out?). The basis of the test is really to prove whether you feel "recharged" after spending time by yourself or by interacting with others. Although people generally enjoy doing what they feel recharges them, you really can't interchange the two. Personally I'm about as introverted as it gets according to myers-briggs, however I really do enjoy interacting with people who I find interesting and when I feel that they find me interesting however, interacting with people really drains me and after a while of interacting with people I'll naturally just start to appear uninterested even though I'm just self-reflecting so that I'll be able to continue.
As for whoever said, extroverts need others to care about them, that can't be farther from the truth, they really just seem to have a more verbal way of self-reflecting. By talking with others, most extroverts I've known seem to realize more about themselves from either hearing other peoples experiences or just saying something about themselves aloud.
As for the parent poster stating that talking isn't hard, introverts know that, usually we genuinely just don't care and sometimes don't want to know the answer to these questions.
Give a man a match and he'll be warm for a minute, set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I beg to differ. Introverts just don't care if everyone knows how smart they are. Most of them don't really realize how smart they are. Introverts tend to spend more time thinking about actual interesting things and not just what people think of them. Which is probably why they seem antisocial - they really don't give a flying fuck what everyone else thinks. It's not that they don't care. It's more that they really don't stop to think about it.
I think it's why a lot of people who are intelligent and whom we think of as extroverts will admit to being introverts that have learned to fake extroversion in order to do what they want. A lot of actors, musicians, business men, etc that seem very public faces were introverts as children and return to introversion when they aren't working. Sort of an interesting twist on the whole thing I think.
Ahhhhh I like stories like this that tell me I'm smarter than everbody else!
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Mind Wide Open summarized this pretty well. Active scans of people working on a problem or engaged in a specific endeavor have shown repeatedly that extra brain activity is not a good thing. It means you're floundering. The more activity the worse you're doing. Your best results are when just that tiny minimum necessary bit of the brain lights up.
Thinking of several pronounced introverts I know I'd have to say this applies; sure they're thinking a lot, but what they're doing is obsessing on little problems and turning them into full-blown crises which they can mull over and over again for maximum horrorific effect.
Of course there are real introverted geniuses. I guess they just channel it better.
You can be an extroverted misanthropist, but it is more commonly associated with introversion.
Sick of WoW? Try the thinking man's MMORPG: EVE Online
The problem is that extroverts score much higher with people that they only have a passing acquaintance of than introverts. This gives them power in a larger society because they're more notorious and visible. They're seen as powerful go-getters and so on even if they are annoying to those near them or, quite often, self-serving scum.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
As an ENTP, basically at the top of the food chain, I can tell you that faking extroversion is impossible. In my line of work I see the occasional introvert socializing, talking to points, making very safe dry jokes, it's quite obvious they're not in their element. They stick to a plan like they'd already gone over the entire conversation in their head before opening their mouth. You can throw them off easily with offtopic remarks or clever jokes which they're usually slow to respond or they akwardly get back to what they were saying.
Charisma is not something you learn. Charm is not something you do. When you step outside your element you're not fooling anyone. I prefer the introverts I work with to just shoot me an email. It's weird to talk to someone that's staring at my feet, seriously.
Introversion and extroversion is more than a social trait. It's how you think. E's think outside the box, high-level, big-picture etc. I's think inside the box, detail-level, fine-tuning and so on.
When two extroverts are talking they may as well be mind-melding, references are acknowledged, cleverness is equaled, points are made, acknowledged, accepted, countered, rejected etc. For an E talking is as natural as thinking.
When two introverts are talking it is like some sort of clunky extract and load operation as each one must take the data in its proprietary format and convert it to spoken language which is then interpreted by the other person and converted to their own proprietary format. The conversions are lossy at both ends and very inefficient.
Of course the introvert's native thought format is much more efficient than spoken language for mowing over thoughts inside their head. That's why I's are so much better than E's at the inside-the-box stuff.
Two methods of thinking for two different purposes.
My favorite part is when we hear crowing from the righties about how we're only having a terrorism problem because Clinton cut and run in Somalia, not wanting a lengthy and bloody engagement. (I don't recall any Republicans shouting "stay the course!" at the time, but I might be wrong.) This, according to the narrative, showed the world that America was a paper tiger, which would back down if you bloodied its nose a bit, and led to 9/11, 7/7, and whatever else happens.
However, nothing is said about Reagan's Iran-Contra deal. If you recall, this is where we traded arms for hostages. That is, Reagan appeased the terrorists. Which is just about the worst kind of message you can send. It's like writing a blank check to the bad guys. Look, if your citizens are held hostage by these people, plan a daring rescue mission if you can, but if that doesn't work out, mourn them, 'cause they're already dead.
Reagan? Goddamn appeaser.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
And Berlin 1945 was only possible because of Versailles 1918. And Versailles 1918 was only possible because of Imperialism/Colonialism of all European/Wesetern nations wich was only possible because of trade and commerce which is only possible because of greed. But wait, greed is the recurring theme in anything that has been mentioned so far.
So if you want to do anything about it, fight greed and all it's symptoms.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
First of all, the idea that introverts get their energy from being alone (and are therefore overloaded around others) and that extraverts get their energy from being around others (because they are understimulated when alone) is OLD OLD OLD OLD news. I think I read about this in "Please Understand Me", the original book by the original Myers-Briggs people. Indeed, Carl Jung may have recognized this even earlier than that.
Secondly, people seem to want to be overly binary about this. I know people who get most of their energy from being alone. Those are introverts. I know people who get most of their energy from being with other people. Those are extraverts. I know people who seem to require a balance. What are THEY called?
There's also the conceit that powerful people have, that they can control the dangerous, powerful forces they unleash. They often get short-term gains, and longterm destruction.
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make install -not war