38 - Two Elephants Go To A Holiday Party…
One mingles, the other...
When I asked DALL-E to create a picture of two Elephants at a holiday party, one an introvert the other an extravert, it produced these images.
(Frequent My Favorite Things readers will recall that The Elephantis a common way of portraying the everyday/unconscious part of our sensory/cognitive/behavioral makeup that processes the vast majority (>99%) of our everyday experiences “without having to think about them”; the “thinking part” (about 1%) is commonly called The Rider. See this essay for more details.)
It’s understandable that a generative AI would produce these two images: the conventional notion of an extravert is of a happy, cheerful, gregarious personality. The introvert is commonly depicted as quiet and staid; solemn even.
These conventional ideas about introverts and extraverts shape much of our thinking and emotional reactions to the two personalities.
Let’s back up a bit and look at the way Carl Jung first described introversion and extraversion (spelled by him with an “a” not an “o”) as “attitudes.” Jung defined an attitude as “the readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way.”
We commonly describe ourselves and others as “being” introverts or extraverts. That characterization makes it sound as if we ARE these ways-of-being. Like being short or red-haired.
Attitudes, on the other hand, are the predictable patterns that we use to perceive, make judgments about, and participate in the world we perceive. What we mean when we describe people as introverts or extraverts is the characteristic way “that we are ready to”, or prefer to interact with the world and others. Introversion and extraversion are characteristic ways of showing up in, processing, and reacting to the world. The key word there is “characteristic,” defined as “typical of a particular person, place, or thing.”
My doctoral dissertation advisor taught me a very important lesson about behavior many years ago. She pointed out that every behavior we engage in…from our comfort with mingling with other people or to eating in public…is subject to an important contextualizing question: “when?/when not?”. This means that anything we do is subject to environmental factors that make us more or less likely to engage in that behavior.
Take introversion. </Generalization mode on>. Introverts are more likely to engage with others comfortably when they are in familiar circumstances than when in large groups of strangers. </Generalization mode off>. That means the introvert’s Elephant is primed to assess its degree of familiarity/comfort with the social context before engaging with other people. (“Hmm, I’m a little nervous that there are going to be a lot of people I don’t know at this party…”) For extreme introverts, that comfort zone may be very small. Extreme extraverts, by contrast, may have a much smaller “when not?” zone for their typical style of social interaction. The contextual flexibility of our characteristic introvert/extravert preference leads many people to describe themselves as “ambiverts.” Ambiverts see themselves as not being too far toward either extreme of the introvert-extravert continuum.
That doesn’t mean that ambiverts don’t have preferred attitudes toward interacting with the others and the environment, only that they are aware of some “when not?” circumstances and use those as evidence of greater flexibility. My guess is that in a culture that highly values extraversion, introverts have historically preferred not to be put into that category. Think of the words we typically use to describe extraverts: lively, vibrant, sociable, friendly, exciting. Contrast those with ways we describe of introverts: shy, quiet, reserved, inscrutable, moody. (Recently, we have seen a growing counter-movement recognizing and extolling the benefits of introversion.)
Doing Extraversion vs. Being Extraverted
Is it possible for an introvert to become more extraverted and vice versa? Of course it is. Because behavior is contextual, each of us can identify the circumstances in which we are most likely to exhibit our characteristic preference. Once we know the conditions that are most likely to elicit the “when?/when not?” of our (largely inborn) preferences, we (our Riders) can prepare ourselves (our Elephants) for the upcoming situation.
That means that, if sufficiently motivated (“this is a big company holiday party and I want people to like me”) we are all capable of doing extraversion if not being extraverted. That makes identifying your own “when?/when not?” conditions an important part of exercising your freedom to engage with the world in beneficial ways.
Now…introverts…get your Rider to prepare your Elephant for the challenge of the New Year’s Eve party you’re about to attend. If successful, you can have fun (!!) doing extraversion for a while, secure in knowing that you’ll be able to return to comfortably being introverted when the party’s over. It’s all about “when?/when not?”
And, Happy 2024 to all!