Why am I an introvert?

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0:39Late last year, I was at a Dina event and when I saw everybody there ready and having fun, I'm like, whoa, I'm not going to be able to survive here. You're listening to CrowdScience from the BBC World Service, the programme that's trying to overcome our social anxiety and work up a small amount of courage to answer your science questions. Unfortunately, I couldn't talk to anybody because the person I went with also knew people there and he went right ahead to start talking to them and I was essentially left alone and I couldn't connect. I'm Alex Laffbridge and today I'm trying to find out why talking to new people is rather difficult.

1:19Everybody's already here. What am I going to talk to? I'm already in my mind, not knowing what to do next. Yes. Listener Daniel from Ghana wrote in to us with some questions about personality, specifically about being an introvert. And so I'm wondering, how does one become an introvert and how different is the thinking process from that of an extrovert who is so lively and bubbly and everybody likes them? So I met up with Daniel in a cafe in the east of Accra, near where he works. My name is Daniel Selome. In our local language, I would say, you're from Daniel Selome. I'm LSO, I would say Nyankwene Daniel Salome.

1:57I'm from the Volta region of Ghana and I've been in Accra since 2015. So what would you define introversion to be? Well, I see introversion as somebody who enjoys their own company, somebody who doesn't talk a lot. It takes time for them to get comfortable with people. They may not gel with everybody. They're very selective of who they engage with. What would you then say extroversion is? Well, in my view, there are people who are able to connect with people very easily. So I go to programs sometimes and I meet people who walk up to me and they're able to start conversations so casually. I'm not able to do that.

2:30So I see the opposite of me typically as an extrovert. Somebody who's able to, I don't know, tell their stories better. They're able to connect more. Daniel's question isn't just abstract scientific curiosity. He's written in to us for a little bit of careers advice. What do you do? What is your job? Well, I'm a communication specialist. I'm at the middle stage of my career. I must say, and I'm looking at how I can rise. And so I've been wondering that, has being an introvert really a good thing? Because it feels like people who are sometimes overly loud, are able to build friendships quite easily, tend to rise, not necessarily because they're good at their jobs.

3:10So here I am, preferring to work behind the scenes. And I feel like I'm not being seen enough because I don't enjoy talking. It takes time for me to engage with people. I'm like, is this really limitation if I want to rise. How different are we? How do we become an introvert or an extrovert? I mean, speaking to you now, you seem quite bubbly, gregarious. Is this not the case? Well, I've learned to adjust. Yes. This is not an easy conversation for me. I'm nervous, but I've come to understand that you ought to do this to be able to succeed. And it's It's quite interesting for me because all my career, I have never gotten a job through an interview before.

3:51So it's always been recommendations and people are always speaking for me because I do good work. But at some point in my life, I ought to be able to say that as a communications person, I should be able to go for an interview and ace it. And I'm wondering if it's because I'm an introvert or there's more to it. What are the good things about being introverted? I think introverts are very calculated. I'm not going to make a decision in rush So I'll take time to think about it People think that you don't like people when you're an introvert But you may like certain people It's not like you don't want to engage people But you're very selective of who you engage with And it may not be apparent to everybody That's what I think, yeah A lot of our CrowdSense listeners may feel some form of shyness So what sort of advice would you give to them About owning how they are or accepting it?

4:43there's something I believe in that putting yourself out there is not going to kill you it's a learning process whenever I'm going to speak out in public I'm always scared it gets so bad to the point that sometimes my tummy aches but I do it and I'm fine afterwards so nervousness is not going to kill you so you ought to just brace it up and do what you have to do for me these days some I tell people I'm an introvert and I don't believe it as well because I'm no more shy. I'm still shy. I can't look people directly in the eye and talk to them, but I just find my way around it. You know what, Daniel?

5:19It sounds like you've actually got lots of ways to understand your introversion and adapt to uncomfortable social situations, so well done you. But why does Daniel have to work so hard at something which seems to come naturally for many others? And like he feared, could his introversion be holding him back? A good place to start is by getting our heads around the terminology. When psychologists talk about introversion and extroversion, what do they actually mean? I guess you can say they mean what environments are you most comfortable in? Where are you able to express yourself the most and be you to the fullest?

6:01So I've come across the city to the University of Ghana Medical School to talk to someone who knows the brain inside and out, Dr. Thomas Tago. I am a neuroscientist by training with speciality in behaviour, learning and memory and some aspects of mental health. Thomas explained that introversion and extroversion, they're not two sides of the same coin as some might believe. People aren't one or the other. It's more like a spectrum with extreme introversion at one end and extreme extroversion at the other. And most people are somewhere in the middle. So if we put it on that spectrum, then those on one side, being your extroverts, find it easy to be in spaces where they must speak a lot and just engage a lot with people.

6:47Highly stimulating environments, they're like fishing water. Then you come to the other end of the spectrum, so you have your introverts. Highly stimulating environments aren't great in terms of external stimulation, but then they are great with internal stimulation. And that is where they then draw their energies from. Do you consider yourself an extrovert or an introvert? I think I'll consider myself as an introvert, but I have the benefit of being able to stray and visit extrovert territory and return back home as and when needed. So introvert to me would like to be by myself, working on whatever I need to, and I'll only step out for lunch and come back.

7:28but then extrovert version may require going and having a lecture and engage the class for two hours and be very positive and engaging in field questions so i can step out and do that thomas is rather underselling himself here yes he does step out of his office to give lectures but he's also one of the co-founders of gh scientific an organization that works across ghana to spread scientific curiosity and change society for the better. He even produces a radio show so he's definitely putting himself out there but at the end of the day he says he's an introvert. There's that need to sort of almost come back to my safe space and just re-corporate.

8:09It's so easy to confuse introversion with being shy or being anti-social and they're not exactly the same are they? No, no, no, it's not quite right at all. And I think you've hit a spot on introversion, extroversion is on a different spectrum by itself. So there are all these different parameters. And since the 1800s, people have been asking these questions and trying to categorize it. And that's where these big five personality traits come from. The big five personality traits are a staple of modern psychology. How do you break down the utter uniqueness of every single human being into cold hard data to be measured and analysed?

8:50Well, in the 1980s, psychologists narrowed it down to just five categories, five spectrums that they thought you could use to get a broad sense of anyone's personality. The big five. Five spectrums that seems to be able to capture everyone's personality. Each one is a spectrum and you can score anywhere along it from one end to the other. The introverted to extroverted spectrum is just one of them. But then you have four other spectrums, right? There's also openness. You know, how open is the person to ideas, new experiences, and so on. Then there's conscientiousness. So, orderliness. Think of it along that side.

9:31So that's three we've done now. The fourth is agreeableness. Easy to negotiate, easy to get along with, not really difficult to deal with. And the final piece of the personality puzzle is neuroticism. How emotionally stable are these people? Do they take negative feedback really hardly? It's very easy to get them down. So this creates five spectrums, which seems that it captures many people and you're able to find someone anywhere on that spectrum. So I guess with that model in mind, you could have someone who's very introverted and yet they might score higher on being open and agreeable. And perhaps that person wouldn't then come across as introverted.

10:18Yeah, you're very spot on. It's not like if you're fully agreeable, then you're also fully extrovert. No, it's very different between all five. There are some that seem to be related. If you have an extroverted person, they are more likely to be agreeable. And if you have an introverted person, they are more likely to be conscientious. And then the overall personality will then be based on where it sits on all these five areas. Did someone say a personality test that can give me an insight into my character and turn 30 odd years of cultivation of who I am as an individual into quantifiable data points?

10:57Sign me right up. Two, one, let's go. So, worry about things. Very inaccurate. make friends easily, moderately inaccurate. The Big Five model is pretty widely accepted across psychology, but it doesn't necessarily explain where these personality traits come from. And because it was developed primarily in Western cultures, these five categories may overlook personality traits that are important in non-Western societies, like here in Ghana. However, it's a useful lens for us to start to take a look at ourselves. Neither accurate nor inaccurate. Trust others. Moderately inaccurate. Complete. All successfully.

11:42All of these traits sit on a spectrum. Most people actually fall somewhere in the middle. So to all of those introverts out there, you might not be as introverted as you think. You probably have some extroverted qualities in there too. Moderately accurate. Okay, these are the last ones. Act without thinking, very inaccurate. Okay, see results. For extroversion and introversion, people who fall in the middle of the scale are called ambiverts. They like human company, sometimes, and also like being alone, sometimes. Let's see where I score. It's all out of 120. Neuroticism, 59. extroversion 68 openness to experience 93 agreeableness 76 conscientiousness 98 huh your score on extroversion is low indicating you are introverted reserved and quiet your socialization tends to be restricted to a few close friends so i score like mid table on friendliness and gregariousness but quite high in activity level and quite low on cheerfulness which tracks yeah this is actually entirely what i was expecting um like i i know i'm an introvert but i actually do like being around people it's just that i get tired of it i like to go back home and hang around with my dog so it turns out that daniel thomas and i have something in common we're all in jobs that require us to get out there and talk to people all of the time but we're all deep down a little bit more introverted but what's actually going on in the brains of introverts like us that makes us so different from the extroverts back to dr thomas tago a large part of it will be how they process stimulation your neurotransmitters they're the chemicals within the brain that are involved in communicating and so on things like your dopamine, you'll find differences between introverts and extroverts.

13:53They don't need as much to feel the same level of satisfaction as your extroverts. Dopamine is one of our brain's reward chemicals. It basically makes us feel rather good. But extroverts and introverts process it a little differently. For people who are more extroverted, their brains respond more strongly to external rewards socializing noise new experiences so they might seek out busy environments to get that hit people who are more introverted are more sensitive to stimulation so that same busy environment that energizes someone who's more extroverted can flood an introvert system causing it to be overwhelmed and you reach your limit faster on the flip side another neurotransmitter called acetylcholine is triggered by that quiet focus, learning, and deep thinking.

14:50It's not a big high, just calm and content. This is what introverts naturally go towards. And while these differences are hardwired into us, they're not set in stone. There's definitely a strong genetic basis where people are more predisposed to one end of the spectrum or the other. But what's even more interesting is that it's not fixed, right? There's a very large environmental element to it, meaning based on the experiences, the culture, the place where the individual finds themselves, they may end up expressing themselves in one way more than the other. They adjust and they become comfortable in that space.

15:33It's one of the beauties and flexibilities that we have as human beings, that based on what the demand is, we can meet it. Now, of course, the problem comes when the demand is higher than what we can meet. And that's when, you know, people get stressed. So what would you say to people like listener Daniel or crowd science listeners out there who think that they're at a disadvantage in life because they're introverted? Okay. So first thing, I have a PhD and I say you are wrong. You are not disadvantaged.

16:09it's easy to think that you know you are disadvantaged because you're introvert because unfortunately the world seems to have been built around extroverts but there's nothing that suggests that it's true throughout all the data it shows that the benefits of being an extrovert are equally matched by the benefits of being an introvert someone who's introverted it's more likely to also be conscientious. You know, they bring in some order. They bring in some thoughtfulness. They're probably very good listeners. They can really pay attention. They'll also be maybe more empathetic. All right. If you come to the extrovert side of it, someone like that may be more agreeable.

16:52So each seems to have its own benefits, depending on where you are. To put it down straight, Daniel, being an introvert is not a disadvantage. You have the perks that extroverts lack. and it's about playing to your strengths. Okay, Daniel, this is pretty good news. Being an introvert definitely doesn't mean you're doomed to a life of feeling awkward at parties. It's more about where you get your energy from and how much external stimulation your brain needs to tick along at its best. But Daniel, your question was about work. In the fast-paced world of employment, could being an introvert be holding you back?

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18:11You're listening to CrowdScience from the BBC World Service, where we muster up the courage to talk to each other about science. I'm Alex Lathbridge, and I'm trying to tease out the differences between introverts and extroverts. I'm an extrovert. I like to make people happy. as a teacher i go to classroom and if i don't crack jokes i can't teach if you want to find out about introversion in the brain talk to a neuroscientist but if you want to talk about introversion in the workplace you're probably better off talking to an economist sometimes i go home and i sit and i said i think i overdid it today i think i have to be quiet and just concentrate by the time i realize i'm having some conversation cracking jokes so it becomes very difficult to suppress it.

19:00This is William Barb-Warteng, economics professor and vice chancellor at the Methodist University of Ghana here in Accra. Why should economists care about personality traits like extroversion, introversion at all? Well, in economics, we are always emphasizing skills of the individual. So we're talking about education, the person has masters, a person has a bachelor's, PAD. But even though you can have your PAD, you can have all the skills, there are some inbuilt talent that also influence how you work. It could affect your economic performance. A few years back, one of Williams' students wrote their PhD thesis on Daniel's question on how your personality affects your performance at work.

19:45This is a PAD work by one of my students. He's called Johnson Wilson Apiakubic. And the motivation was to go beyond the normal economic variables and go into what comes out naturally that can influence their performance. The study was titled Personality and Performance of Household Non-Farm Enterprises in Ghana. What does that mean? What are non-farm enterprises? Because non-farm enterprises, to me just sounds like anything that isn't a farm. Well, non-farm enterprise is more of business at a household level. Small and micro entrepreneurship kind of activity. If somebody is having a shop, that's a non-farm activity.

20:30If somebody is having a restaurant, it's a non-farm activity. That's the kind of activity that we are talking about. How did you measure business performance? We measured business performance on sales. All right, so there's obviously a lot more to success than just sales. Depending on your job, you might need attention to detail, creativity, quick thinking, good organizational skills, ability on the microphone, the list goes on and on. But in this study, they were measuring sales, the ability to make a deal. The workers were assessed according to those big five personality traits, using quizzes similar to the one I did.

21:11The extroverts performed better relative to the others. They're able to get more sales per worker. But interestingly, something like openness and agreeableness didn't come out quite strongly. So in that case, extroverts are seen to be performing better in this regard. Why do you think that is? Well, that is because if you have somebody who is extrovert, he wants to be with people, he's outgoing, he knows how to convince people and so on, then you expect that you will get more sales. But if you have what it takes to convince people by your introvert and you are not able to express yourself, get people to know how good your product is, then it will stay where it is.

22:03extroversion correlated with a 7 to 9 percent increase in sales which is pretty impressive hustle for extroverts i wanted to get a sense of just how important extroversion is to people who have to talk all day i've come to macula market here in accra where the back and forth between buyers and sellers never seems to stop and they sell everything onions and peppers they got you Six bolts of fabric for your cousin's traditional wedding, right there. Design the sunglasses and trainers for a suspiciously low price. Walk 100 meters down the road from the guy selling mangoes. Everyone here is trying to make a sale.

22:42So I asked them, what kind of character do you need to stand out? You have to be bold and brave. If you are shy, you can't. Because you meet a whole lot of people. You need to talk to them. Try to convince them for them to buy. So if you are shy, you can't. Yeah. I am rough. I'm free. I can do things like you. You cannot do it. Like what? Oh, like enjoyment, you know. Life, life. I'm joy, joy, joy, joy. That is my character. For this particular job, you don't have to be shy. With the personality that you are putting up there, bold and smart. Yeah. I have children. They are shy. So if you are shy, you can sell this thing.

23:31But me, I will not shy. If you give me pure water, I will sell it. Bye-bye. Come out. Having now seen Makala first-hand, it's time to go back to Professor Boateng and his much quieter office of economics. In their study, extroversion wasn't the only personality trait that had a strong correlation. Neuroticism or emotional instability had a negative impact. If you are dealing with customers and you don't have emotional stability, you cannot deal with stress easily. You may not be able to get a lot of customers to come to you. And conscientiousness, you know, things like being disciplined, reliable, organized.

24:18traits which you might expect to have a really positive impact in the world of work they had very little impact on sales at all which could be disappointing news for any hard-working conscientious introverts out there it does not mean that if you are an introvert it's bad it depends on where you are where you are looking for people who are outgoing and so on in that context you say yes extroverts are very useful in other contexts where you want things to be done in a calm manner and so on, you may want to get somebody who is introvert. I will give you just a typical example. In the secret service, when you want people to keep confidential information, you may need somebody who is introvert.

25:05And in business management, the ability to be able to assemble the best team is also a plus. I require some people who are extrovert and can go out there I will engage somebody who is extrovert and that is how I can be successful. And then in other times you might think there's a hole in my team I need someone more introverted. Excellent and depending on the task that I want a person to perform I would rather go for the introvert to be able to protect that part of the business. So our listener Daniel now he works in communications and he considers himself an introvert and so he's had to adapt.

25:44But from what you're saying, humans aren't as simple as introversion, extroversion. There are all of these other variables that perhaps he didn't really take into account. Yes, you may have somebody who is introvert, and that person will be goal getter. So wherever you find yourself, the kind of personality traits that you have should not box you down. so for daniel he may be introvert and he's doing his best to come out which is good i give it up to him for working hard to adapt to be able to get what he wants so daniel you may be an introvert but if i had to guess i'd probably say that you score rather highly on agreeableness i've met you so i should know and you seem rather conscientious too ready to show up and put in an honest day's work.

26:36Now the beautiful thing about humanity is that we're all so different and the world needs all of us. All of the introverts and extroverts, all of the people who are open to new experiences and the ones who see the value in tradition. All the conscientious people making plans and sticking to them and their uninhibited counterparts who thrive on spontaneity. The world needs all of us. So Daniel, stop focusing so much on the things that you can't do and focus instead on the things that you're brilliant at, one of which is reading this week's credits. That is all from this episode of CrowdScience from the BBC World Service.

27:18This week's question was from me, Daniel, from Accra here in Ghana. The show was presented by Alex Ladbridge and the producer was Emily Knight. If you have a question on any science subject and you want the team to investigate, why not email crowdscience at bbc.co.uk.

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