The Great Divide in Personality

Carl G. Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology, distinguish the great divide between two personalities–extroverts, the “man of action”, and introverts, the “man of contemplation”–our society has been geared towards extroversion ideals. In the #Culture of Personality, we follow those who are confident and assertive than those who are reticent and unassuming.¹ Researchers estimates 50-70% that make up the population are extroverts, whilst 16-50% were introverts.²

Of course, personality has different flavors; its not always yin and yang of personality. If you take the The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test, there are actually 16 types of personalities based on the theory of psychological types explained by Jung.³ The purpose of this test is to make the type theory accessible to individuals and groups, and to help individuals find their a suitable profession for their type.

wide

Although MBTI is a paid service and is restricted for use only to certified professionals⁴, there is a free online personality test similar to MBTI that is more accessible to anyone who desires to know their type.⁵

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain - Chapter 1: The Rise of the “Mighty Likeable Fellow”
↩︎
https://www.jibc.ca/sites/default/files/community_social_justice/pdf/cl/Introverts_and_Extroverts_(Psychology_Today).pdf
↩︎
https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/
↩︎
https://www.myersbriggs.org/frequently-asked-questions/ways-to-take-the-mbti-assessment/
↩︎
https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
↩︎

2021-09-03

#Reward Sensitivity
- In an attempt to simplify reward sensitivity, it is the measure of our motivation to seek reward such as money, sex, or fame and influence. A highly reward-sensitive person can get so excited by the prospect of the reward that it impairs good judgement and ignore obvious warning signals. While a reward-insensitive person can get too careful that they miss out on opportunities they should have taken. It is the trade-off that separates the #two great personality trait from each other.
#How Did Introverts Survive The Process of Evolution
- Elaine Aron, clinical research psychologist and author, believes that high-sensitivity were not particularly selected, but rather the vigilance and reflective traits that helped introverts survived were cherry picked by natural selection. Surely, if evolution permitted these traits to survive, it must be advantageous, if not superior, to other #personality traits that didn’t. In fact, as Aron speculates, sensitivity is a by-product of the survival of the fittest. It is the words of Aron that make these clearer:
#Why Extroverts Are Cool and Why Introverts Are Not?
- As it turns out, scientifically, being “cool” has some dermatological truth to it. Among other #personality trait tests, researchers used skin conductance to determine the physiological reaction of our body to various stimuli. Researchers recorded how much people sweat in response to noise, strong emotions, etc., and concluded that high-reactive introverts sweat more as compared to their low-reactive extrovert peers.
#Optimal Levels of Stimulation
- Hans Eysenck, an influential research psychologist in the late 1960s, hypothesized that we humans always seek “just right” levels of stimulation¹–input from the outside world that our brain processes. Eysenck saw the connection between #the two great personality trait and levels of stimulation: introverts find it optimally stimulating when they work alone in a quiet place, while the party-seeking extroverts chase more stimulations and can be seen more often socializing.
  1. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain - Chapter 5: Beyond Temperament
    ↩︎
#Temperament
- Jerome Kagan, one of the great developmental psychologists of the twentieth century, conducted a study on five hundred four-month-old infants for Child Development at Harvard, predicting, on the strength of forty-five-minute evaluation, which babies were more likely to turn into #introverts or extroverts.
#Struggles of the Introverts in an Extroverted Society
- Introverts have always been unfairly treated for their “unenthusiastic energy” or that introversion are often seen in a negative light. There is roughly an equal distribution of #both personality types, but how come extroverts always the desirable ones?# We can conclude from the theory of evolution–the strong survive and the weak cease to exist–that introverts have their own unique capabilities that put them in a unique advantage#.
#Extrovert vs Introvert Leadership
- First things that come to mind to most of us when we think of leadership #personality are solid people skill, gregariousness, electrifying speeches, life of the party, etc., and that quite leadership is an oxymoron. It’s only natural that we require these traits from a good leader as our society #leans toward extroverted ideals. We strive to be the Steve Jobs or the Martin Luther King, Jr of the world and less like Steve Wozniak or Rosa Parks, though the latter are just as exceptional, if not more, than the former.

Are Introverts Smarter Than Extroverts?
- By nature, introverts are analytical and introspective people who “wait before pouncing” at every possible opportunity. On the other hand, extroverts are risk takers and #reward-sensitive people who “act before thinking” to get where they want to be as quickly as possible. Of course, not everyone falls solely on either side of the spectrum. Some are partial to both categories while others lie smack dab in the middle. However, despite the temperamental difference between the two #personality traits, neither has superior intellect over the other.
Delayed Gratification
- Delay of Gratification is the act of resisting an immediate pleasure in hope of obtaining a more gratifying reward in the future. As simple as it sounds, as it turns out, most of us, if not all, struggles to resist our impulses to take immediately available rewards even with the knowledge that a bigger reward is available had we resisted. This applies to almost every aspect of our life: from our occupation, to our education, to our hobbies, to our life choices. The famous Marshmallow Test¹, despite of what we think of ourselves, outlines our very weakness when it comes to immediate rewards and self discipline. It shows our ability to resist temptation which tells a lot about our #personality and potentially vaguely predict our future. In our defense, self-discipline can taught to fight our most primal urges. But part of our innate temperament stick around even how much we train to resist.
  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX_oy9614HQ (The Marshmallow Test | Igniter Media | Church Video)
    ↩︎
Zettel Posts
Psychology
Book Notes

Culture of Character to Culture of Personality#
- A shift from the Culture of Character to the Culture of Personality brings new wave of #cultural ideals from which we would never quite recover.
🧠 Index 🧠#