Succor for the Introvert
On set-points for socializing
“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
…And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair…”
from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot
As kids, one of the first questions we used to ask people was whether they were an extrovert or introvert. We thought the answer implied a lot about a person, not least who they’d be compatible with as friends. But I’m not sure the question actually mattered. There wasn’t a formula for who should match with who—the classic scenario of extroverts “adopting” introverts played itself out on our playground, as I suspect it did elsewhere. Complementarity wasn’t exactly sought for, either—groups of maenadic extroverts roved over the blacktop while self-isolating introverts often vibed separately, together. Compatible people just find each other.
I once bought into the usefulness of such a leading question, but it wasn’t without a sense of contradiction. I wasn’t really a loner; I frequently participated in and enjoyed team sports. But when recess was over, it was apparent that I’d much rather read on my own than hang out with prospective teammates.
I no longer play team sports like I used to, and today, the available options for socializing have only grown more numerous and diverse, far cries from those naturally self-organizing teams out on the blacktop. These grown-up ways of socializing now come mostly through considerable effort; those events which once simply waited for our participation now need to be sought after.
I still attend these grown-up events as unreflectively as I used to play those sports at recess. But every so often I find myself frustrated with the effort demanded of me now, and wonder if this is my inner introvert sending me a message. hey, maybe the effort isn’t worth all the trouble? quick, find an extrovert to do the work for you!
To begin with, why bother with the label “introvert”? Many of us live through cycles in which our personality changes. Those of us for whom this is true might see such labels as holding certain aspects of our personalities in place. We contain multitudes; what use have we for labels that restrict their development?
Yet as is true of many labels, those of extra- and introversion seem to point toward something real in behavior. There actually are people who tend to abstain from social reaches—you know, speaking up in group settings, making requests, etc.—and people who reach quite often. People can usually just observe our behavior and figure out which we are for themselves.
But from the inside, after some directed pondering about which category I belonged to, neither one seemed compelling; to call myself an extrovert seemed as incorrect as to call myself an introvert.
Unsurprisingly, some of the consternation is because I’ve changed so much over time. Like a lot of people, I was more extroverted by the end of college than at the beginning—now I make more social reaches—but I’m still far less extroverted than many people I know. But even more importantly, extraversion now feels like a dial or switch that I have considerable control over.
What could this imply about the personality trait?
Maybe a more accurate description of extraversion requires something clear and quantitative, like a percentile score based on how often I lead conga lines or initiate conversations. But this can’t be the whole picture. Extraversion isn’t only determined by one’s outward behavior, it also involves affective states—whether there are feelings of dread prior to and during social engagement, and whether such engagement drains one’s energies or invigorates them.1
So if it’s possible to disentangle behavioral and affective measures of extraversion, then maybe it’s possible to internally feel like an introvert while making social reaches like a person more outgoing. Over time, some degree of this disentanglement is what I think has happened to me; I still have feelings of pre-party dread, but I’ve (mostly) trained myself to overcome them. (Back when I was a kid, chasing a ball was a pretty effective dampener of such feelings.)
How, you may ask? Well, I learned a few mental exercises, some for before the party and some for when I’m there, that helped me get past my initial disposition to stay at home. I include them here in the hopes they might be useful to you, dear reader, but keep in mind that the specifics generalize less well than the overall methods (the same way that when constructing a mind palace, the associative landmarks must truly be your own). Following those specifics, I’ll give some (admittedly speculative) context for why I think they’re useful.
These two exercises, both variants of a technique called “reframing”, are meant to address the two main factors that I think make us unwilling to make social reaches: disinterest and restraint. We may not in the first place want to socialize, or maybe, despite the desire to do so, hold ourselves back for fear of embarrassment.
While disinterest and anxiety may feel different from the inside, the consequence of both, socially speaking, is often the same: you may have a harder time making and keeping friends. Skip too many dinners, turn down too many invites, and before you know it, you’re staying in not because you want to, but because there’s no empty dinner chair with your name on it. For these exercises to work, we must view this outcome as undesirable, not as…heaven.
So without further ado…
Before I head to a social event, I first try to avoid feeling that I’m pulled there against my will. I muster all the resources of my imagination to accomplish this—I picture myself barreling towards the event like a missile launched from the plans of my past self. I try to let myself feel that my attendance is a forgone conclusion, nothing can stop me going; even as I sit languidly on my couch looking at train schedules, I am already on my way, I am there.
The underlying principle is this: duty is the enemy of fun. If I were to let myself be pulled by obligation, my mind would turn slack, bringing forth the same attitude as for those family functions I disliked as a child, which presaged limp handshakes and even limper conversations.
But we’re older now, and as adults we’re expected to tighten up our motivations for doing things—channel our inner parents, so to speak. We have the mature task of sourcing our reasons—our “why’s”— from ourselves, and to not just rely on external coercion to go places or get things done.
So to move past my initial disinterest I remind myself of those inner reasons: I go to these events to learn from others and display my own learning, to see old friends and make new ones.
All very good reasons, all too easily forgotten. What can make us forget these reasons is nervousness, a feeling which sets in after the decision is made to go to “that” party, or do “that” presentation. Once we get past social disinterest, we realize the flipside is too much interest.
The process of exciting ourselves has brought our resolve to a boil, and the kettle of the mind whistles an anxious pitch. But as the whistling of a kettle is just an indicator of its readiness, so too is the bubbling anxiety. The presence of that jittery energy, we can remind ourselves, is justified: adrenaline is just chemical preparedness. With that, we can walk confidently through the door—through the curtain, if you like—to a waiting (or oblivious) audience.
The exercises I’ve described so far, while somewhat idiosyncratic, help serve a sort of “cognitive” balance; they enable me to set a set-point for a need—here, social connectedness—the way a thermometer tries to seek a certain temperature.
These methods are useful for cases in which our natural appetites for important needs don’t rise on their own, and so must be artificially tugged up or down. The ways we motivate ourselves to simulate hunger when we’re sick are analogous to the techniques we can use when social reaches don’t come naturally—“you should eat!” echoes “you should go out!” Often when using these methods, we find that we were, in fact, hungry, though our stuffed noses told us otherwise. Likewise, we had been starved for company, despite convincing ourselves of the contrary.2
But is socializing really a type of cognitive need? One way it could be is that it bears at least one important hallmark of those more familiar needs: it seems to exhibit what’s called response momentum. Response momentum refers to the proportional buildup of appetite after being deprived of certain goods, like water or food, which we then consume more ravenously once they’re acquired. Likewise, the longer I remain alone, I notice I tend to want to socialize, and vice versa—when I’ve glutted myself on social company, I can’t race home fast enough.
Unlike the more physiological set-points governing salt balances and glucose levels, many cognitive needs, like for social company or professional competence, seem drastically more malleable, and so more difficult to detect and satisfy.3 But this flexibility can also be freeing, since it implies that we’re not bound by our inclinations.
If extraversion really is like a switch or dial, perhaps it refers to where the set-point for socializing is to be found most of the time. And if we don’t have conscious control over it, it might easily be thought of as a fixed personality trait.
By now I hope to have shown this set-point may not be fixed—that many so-called extroverts are simply people in conscious control of it. What those with introvert tendencies have to do is try to set their appetite for socializing to a higher baseline, and try to regard isolation as deprivation (and vice versa for the extrovert, for whom solitude can correct the excess of constant company).
Easier said than done! A lot of the advice I’ve put forward boils down to “use your imagination!” and “stop thinking you can just be alone!” You’ve probably heard it all before. And who am I to stand against such time-honored wisdom?
POSTSCRIPT
In the end, what am I really: an introvert or an extrovert? It kind of depends on where my set-point for socializing is at any given time. But yes, your hunch was right, much of the time I make this set-point rather low; I feel quite comfortable being alone, or in the textual company of thinkers spatially and temporally far-removed. But every time I go out and talk to people I realize a certain lack in solitude, which allows me to see through the rationalizing of my deeper nature to be a shut-in.
The last defense of the introvert consists of a haughty claim: that by spending more time with themselves, they attain better self-knowledge than the extrovert. To some degree, perhaps. But nothing cuts better through this meager defense than live conversation. There are parts of ourselves that lie dormant when we’re alone, only to surface when those parts happen to be mirrored by someone else.
It turns out there are portions of our inner multitudes which live in shadow, yearning for light and mixture. Maybe it’s time, as containers of said multitudes, to flip the switch and let them pour free.
Though it weighs behavioral measures more heavily, the extraversion portion of the Big Five personality measure—psychology’s “most replicable result”—seems to also incorporate affective measures, so we’re probably on the right track.
Discretion advised: trusting your perception is good in most cases, except in cases of recognizable illness. But I’m willing to accept the implication that some of us, even me (once upon a time) have been varying degrees of socially-ill for much of our lives.
Technically speaking, even physiological set-points are flexible. What I describe isn’t “homeostasis”, since the goal isn’t to maintain a set-point at some fixed value, but “allostasis”, which refers how we pre-emptively change the values of set-points depending on anticipated environmental conditions.