3 ms·

Introversion and extroversion always seem to have hazy definitions, but one I like better than the popular social model of how people are "energized" is this:

Introversion and extroversion always seem to have hazy definitions, but one I like better than the popular social model of how people are "energized" is this: Rather than extroversion being about whether a person is socially "energized" by groups or not, it's really about how much stimulus a person can accept before their brain starts feeling saturated. IE, it's less about the social aspect and more about being able to process stimuli in general. It's just that social gatherings tend to provide a lot more stimuli (people are complicated!) In this model, an introverted person is simply a person that becomes saturated much more easily; and the reason they dislike crowds and other large gatherings is just because the amount of possible inputs are tremendous and need to be kept track of. An extroverted person might feel more comfortable in these situations, either because they can process more stimuli, or more likely in my opinion, because they're less sensitive to those stimuli. (I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the introverted people I know tend to pick up on subtle social cues a lot more readily than extroverts, and also tend to emit more subtle cues). As a person that's probably moderately introverted, thinking of it in terms of "saturation" feels more natural to me. If I'm in a large group I don't so much feel a loss of energy (unless I'm trying hard to be extra friendly); if anything, when I reach a saturation point I'm at a higher energy level, I'm just sort of "full". I wish I could remember where I first read about this way of thinking about it though and give some sources.

stray 15y ago
I suspect you read about it while reading some MBTI-related stuff. INTP?
- overgard 15y ago
  Haha yep, INTP exactly. Certainly sounds likely, I do have some books on that stuff.
  - personlurking 15y ago
    I'd be interested to see how many INTPs are HN readers. I, for one, am one.
    - jrs235 15y ago
      Me too.
    - kls 15y ago
      I am an INTJ which I would suspect a lot of the front-end people are here. I started out as a 3D artist doing simulation and ended up doing simulation development and then went into front-end, I have always suspected that there are a lot of INTJ's in that middle-land of front-end development and other disciplines that blend art with code. On a related note my friend in school was also an INTJ and we always frequented an Irish pub that a lot of elderly people hung out at. People would always ask us why we hung out there and knew if they wanted to find us that is where we would be. We hung out at the place because it was quite and we could talk to people in deeper conversations than the clubs. To this day I still prefer a quite bar or restaurant to one where a bunch of socializing is going on.
    - tkahn6 15y ago
      Someone does a poll every once and a while. Here are two: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=946249 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=946249 (858 days ago) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675197 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675197 (562 days ago)
      - mattmillr 15y ago
        Thanks for those links. The analysis on the older one is really interesting Most significantly, 76% of HNers were 'NT' types, compared to 11% in the general population. Since HN has grown quite a bit in the last few years, I'd be interested to see if we've drifted closer to the 'norm' or if we're still dominantly NT Rationals.
- vog 15y ago
  Note that MBTI shouldn't be taken as a reliable scientific model. Is just a nice idea with some applications, as long as you don't take it too seriously. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Validity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Val... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Reliability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Rel...
balsam 15y ago
there is actually a more quantitative basis for this than MBTI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11220447 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11220447 We need more experiments on this. A possible way to become an extravert, should one want to, is to become better at multitasking. (However, that research suggests that introverts are worse at picking up social cues --- only when they are already engaged in some other task, e.g. talking.)
kijin 15y ago
The model you're talking about also sounds similar to the Intense World Theory [1] of autism. It says that an autistic brain tries to process more details about the world around them than a typical brain does, and therefore gets easily overwhelmed when there's too much information to process. Autism, of course, is not exactly the same as introversion (autistic people usually don't get social cues), but the theory seems to have some commonalities with the idea you're describing. Saturation is exactly how I'd describe interacting with a large number of people at the same time, too. I feel like an app server that's suddenly getting hammered with more simultaneous requests than I can handle. I'd handle those requests much more efficiently if they were serialized, one by one. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21191475 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21191475
jrs235 15y ago
I pretty much agree with you and also believe it's not the ability to process more or less stimuli but rather how sensitive one is to stimuli. http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0307352145/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332637576&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/d... is an excellent book on the subject.
neilk 15y ago
I think you have something there. This notion of introversion and extraversion is really just a preference, and the preference has a real basis in experience. Perhaps we should just change our vocabulary, perhaps to say crowd-loving or crowd-avoiding. Even that's wrong because it's obviously some crowds and not all crowds. There are lots of reasons why one might be avoiding crowds. I suspect for the classic geek (or indeed any subculture), a lot of this is simply shame and embarassment fatigue. One is confronted with many people who will quickly size one up according to some unfavorable yardsticks. Wouldn't anybody find that to be "draining"?
marquis 15y ago
I'm not so sure. If I am in a room with 6 people who are not talking about something I am interested in or feel I cannot engage in, I am unstimulated and want to leave. If I am in a room with 6 academics or other kinds of highly interesting people (to me) I can talk all night. I cannot handle dance parties but I love dinner parties. Some people might classify me as an introvert because I'd rather read a book than sit around drinking beer all night, but it's all about the type of company and the kind of stimulus that energizes me.
ggchappell 15y ago
> Rather than extroversion being about whether a person is socially "energized" by groups or not, it's really about how much stimulus a person can accept before their brain starts feeling saturated. That's a nice idea, but I'd like to tweak it a bit. It's about the amount of stimulus you prefer. So, yes, as you indicated, introverts tend to have a difficult time with a lot of it. But what you didn't mention is that extroverts tend to have a difficult time if they don't get enough. Indeed, for just about anyone, there is "not enough", and there is "too much". FTA: > However, some of us can't do alone. We also can't do large groups well.

stray 15y ago

I suspect you read about it while reading some MBTI-related stuff. INTP?

overgard 15y ago
Haha yep, INTP exactly. Certainly sounds likely, I do have some books on that stuff.
- personlurking 15y ago
  I'd be interested to see how many INTPs are HN readers. I, for one, am one.
  - jrs235 15y ago
    Me too.
  - kls 15y ago
    I am an INTJ which I would suspect a lot of the front-end people are here. I started out as a 3D artist doing simulation and ended up doing simulation development and then went into front-end, I have always suspected that there are a lot of INTJ's in that middle-land of front-end development and other disciplines that blend art with code. On a related note my friend in school was also an INTJ and we always frequented an Irish pub that a lot of elderly people hung out at. People would always ask us why we hung out there and knew if they wanted to find us that is where we would be. We hung out at the place because it was quite and we could talk to people in deeper conversations than the clubs. To this day I still prefer a quite bar or restaurant to one where a bunch of socializing is going on.
  - tkahn6 15y ago
    Someone does a poll every once and a while. Here are two: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=946249 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=946249 (858 days ago) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675197 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675197 (562 days ago)
    - mattmillr 15y ago
      Thanks for those links. The analysis on the older one is really interesting Most significantly, 76% of HNers were 'NT' types, compared to 11% in the general population. Since HN has grown quite a bit in the last few years, I'd be interested to see if we've drifted closer to the 'norm' or if we're still dominantly NT Rationals.
vog 15y ago
Note that MBTI shouldn't be taken as a reliable scientific model. Is just a nice idea with some applications, as long as you don't take it too seriously. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Validity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Val... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Reliability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Rel...

balsam 15y ago

there is actually a more quantitative basis for this than MBTI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11220447 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11220447 We need more experiments on this. A possible way to become an extravert, should one want to, is to become better at multitasking. (However, that research suggests that introverts are worse at picking up social cues --- only when they are already engaged in some other task, e.g. talking.)

kijin 15y ago

The model you're talking about also sounds similar to the Intense World Theory [1] of autism. It says that an autistic brain tries to process more details about the world around them than a typical brain does, and therefore gets easily overwhelmed when there's too much information to process. Autism, of course, is not exactly the same as introversion (autistic people usually don't get social cues), but the theory seems to have some commonalities with the idea you're describing. Saturation is exactly how I'd describe interacting with a large number of people at the same time, too. I feel like an app server that's suddenly getting hammered with more simultaneous requests than I can handle. I'd handle those requests much more efficiently if they were serialized, one by one. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21191475 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21191475

jrs235 15y ago

I pretty much agree with you and also believe it's not the ability to process more or less stimuli but rather how sensitive one is to stimuli. http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0307352145/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332637576&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/d... is an excellent book on the subject.

neilk 15y ago

I think you have something there. This notion of introversion and extraversion is really just a preference, and the preference has a real basis in experience. Perhaps we should just change our vocabulary, perhaps to say crowd-loving or crowd-avoiding. Even that's wrong because it's obviously some crowds and not all crowds. There are lots of reasons why one might be avoiding crowds. I suspect for the classic geek (or indeed any subculture), a lot of this is simply shame and embarassment fatigue. One is confronted with many people who will quickly size one up according to some unfavorable yardsticks. Wouldn't anybody find that to be "draining"?

marquis 15y ago

I'm not so sure. If I am in a room with 6 people who are not talking about something I am interested in or feel I cannot engage in, I am unstimulated and want to leave. If I am in a room with 6 academics or other kinds of highly interesting people (to me) I can talk all night. I cannot handle dance parties but I love dinner parties. Some people might classify me as an introvert because I'd rather read a book than sit around drinking beer all night, but it's all about the type of company and the kind of stimulus that energizes me.

ggchappell 15y ago

> Rather than extroversion being about whether a person is socially "energized" by groups or not, it's really about how much stimulus a person can accept before their brain starts feeling saturated. That's a nice idea, but I'd like to tweak it a bit. It's about the amount of stimulus you prefer. So, yes, as you indicated, introverts tend to have a difficult time with a lot of it. But what you didn't mention is that extroverts tend to have a difficult time if they don't get enough. Indeed, for just about anyone, there is "not enough", and there is "too much". FTA: > However, some of us can't do alone. We also can't do large groups well.