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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."
I'm recycling a comment from another AC in another Scuttlemonkey/**Beatles-Beatles post. This guy's getting worse than Roland Picklepail:
Am I the only person who has noticed the numerous stories that get posted by *--Beatles-Beatles? Am I also the only person who has noticed that the link used in is name is a constantly changing URL (depending on the story) with pointers to various scammy sites? Is it not obvious what he's doing? He's using the awesome PageRank of slashdot do promote his sites based on searches that have the word Beatles in them.
It's a small price to pay for free advertising. Find a story, summarize it in 5 minutes, post to slashdot, and get a pagerank boost that advertisers would pay hundreds (or maybe thousands) for. (Text links on high-ranking sites is big business - just ask oreilly).
Slashdot should at least put a ref=nofollow in the links to submitters (or better yet, only link the submitter's name to his/her user page).
In closing, a quick bit of WHOIS shows that all the sites linked by **B-B are registered to Carl Fogle. Carl, cut this crap out.
"...fast talk and snap decisions are often valued over listening, deliberation and careful planning..."
:v)
Maybe on your side of the pond, mate.
Vik
Extroverts try to convince everyone how smart they are. Introverts assume everyone already knows it.
Glog!
A while back I read an article in The Atlantic titled "Caring for Your Introvert" by Jonathan Rauch. Absolutely great piece.
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What about perverts?
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.
More information here: http://www.theintrovertadvantage.com/
Here's a quick bit from the site:
Are You One?
We all use both our introverted and extroverted skills, but we are hard wired to be more one than the other. Look at the lists below and determine which one feels more like YOU!
Not every aspect will fit exactly for you because we are all unique. If you don't feel like you fit one side more than the other, even by 51% to 49%, then ask yourself this question: If there is an emergency do you tend to stand still and feel somewhat shutdown or in slow motion? If you have a standstill reaction to stress more often, then you are probably an introvert. In a crisis do you tend to move your body immediately and feel like taking action, maybe without pausing to think? Then you are probably an extrovert if you react with movement. Under stress we can experience our innate temperament. Look over the two lists and think about how you ARE, not as you'd like to be. If your still uncertain, as a last ditch effort, ask someone you trust and who is honest to read these and suggest which one sounds more like you.
Introverts:
Extroverts:
I recommend this book if you think you are or know somebody that you think is indeed an introvert, as this book says alot about what an introvert is and what the article briefly describes.
So basically this is a colony of introverts, and we get a story about how great introverts are. What does that do for us in terms of teaching us? It feels like nerds needed to give each other a pat on the back.
I feel the karma burning, but hey, I got a 4 today, so I can afford a -1.
I believe it was the late great philosopher Douglas Adams who stated, "If people stop talking, their brains start working."
This space unintentionally left blank.
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.
Ok, so you are saying that recent American Presidents have not had much frontal lobe activity...
You know, we'd guessed....
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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.
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.
Introverted people tend to seriously overanalize
Oh, no, I bet Mr. Goatse is quite extroverted.
He certainly seems to be aggressively interested in sharing his innermost feelings to all and sundry.
Quite practiced at it, too.
I would think introverts would tend to avoid analizing at nearly all costs.
Ever wondered why meeting people is easier when tipsy? It makes your brain shut up.
Typical extrovert thinking... "hey why don't you get drunk then you'd have fun just like me". I don't blame you for thinking that, an extrovert can't help it, they have no chance of understanding what makes an introvert tick because not only do we not care to spend the time to tell you, but you won't sit still long enough to hear it.
Here's the thing. Introverts don't want your kind of fun, we're quite happy doing our own thing, sitting down, talking quietly and thinking about stuff - that is what is fun for us, not mindless verbal diahhorea (sp?), getting drunk and hitting on anything with legs.
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Even though I am against spamming, I beg to differ on your request to ban someone from submitting articles. I know many users (examples: top ten submitters) who submit articles that are cohesive, thought out and in general good that also use their article author link to promote a site.
It seems to me that as long as the flow of the articles is coherent, insightful and fresh, this is what is important. Now yes, if every 1 out of 7 articles ever posted on slashdot was from this submitter than I would worry, but that is not the case here. The issue is on the quality of the articles, and not just based on who submits them. This is what it is about, correct? As Martin Luther King said
"a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".
In this case, the submitters should be judged by quality of the articles they submit, not by what kind of author-link they have.
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.
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Maybe this isn't as much of an issue as you think it is.
Goo goo g'joob.
"All jocks ever think about is sports - all nerds ever think about is sex."
The difference being that jocks get invited to sports.
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Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Non-political...BAH!
Even you know very well that "American Cheese" isn't really cheese. It's mostly oil, and foreign oil at that.
Q: How can you tell an extroverted computer geek from an introverted computer geek?
A: The introverted computer geek will look at his shoes while he talks to you. The extroverted computer geek will look at your shoes while he talks to you.
Q: How do you tell if an Extroverted computer geek is Russian?
A: His shoes look at you while he is talking.
After 2+ years, it still doesn't get old.
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o0t!
I could be in a minority, but I almost never look at author links. I didn't notice this one until I saw your post. Maybe this isn't as much of an issue as you think it is.
/. is so huge, we can have a major Google impact. Having your site linked to from /. helps it, esp. if it is linked with a relevant keyword, and being linked to in an article is a huge deal.
It's not you the message is intended for, it's Google. Google ranks sites at least partially (and primarily) by a method designed to determine the usefullness of a site based on links. Links from some sites count for more than others. Because
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.
Not directed just at you, though I am replying to you, but I think the definitions of introvert and extravert as used in psychology need to be clarified here.
First put forward by Freud and greatly elaborated by Jung neither introvert nor extravert necessarily determines skills at either thinking or socializing. Both have to do with which mode of behavior a person finds energizing and which s/he finds draining. Because of this energizing/draining aspect it is likely, though by no means guaranteed that introverts will be drawn more to reflection and therefore become more skilled thinkers, planners, visualizers, etc than they are socializers. Conversely it is more likely, though not assured, that extraverts will become more skilled socializers than they are thinkers, visualizers, etc.
An introvert finds that directing attention inwardly (hence the term into (inward) vert (to turn)) comes easily and is energizing, while directing attention outward (for example, in social gatherings) is draining. This does not mean that introverts cannot be good at socializing. It is just that doing so is an effort. They then need alone time to recover from the socializing.
An extrovert finds that directing attention outward (hence the term extro (outward) vert (to turn)) comes easily and is energizing, but directing attention inwardly (for example reflecting on feelings or past experiences) is draining. The extrovert can become quite skilled at this interior focus but s/he will need some social time to recover from it, just as the introvert will need alone time to recover from the perceived drain of socializing.
So both types can behave in both ways. Their behavior is not what defines them as introverts or extroverts. What defines them as one type or the other is how they respond to these two spheres of activity - inward looking and outward looking - by finding one energizing, one draining, one coming easily and one requiring an effort.
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