Appreciation For Deep Thinking Diminished In Strongly Extroverted Societies
In an earlier article, the thesis was launched that America's marked preference for Extroversion over Introversion, as a personality trait for its people, is the natural and inevitable consequence of being a “nation of immigrants”, since immigrating, roughly speaking, is an Extroverted thing to do. In this follow-up article, the path that an Extroverted nation takes is unveiled.
The gifts that God distributes to His people are varied; He gives differently to different people. When comparing Extroverts and Introverts, we can say that the gifts of boldness and resilience are given more often to the Extrovert, while the gifts of careful contemplation and intellectual brilliance are given more often to the Introvert.
A study published in the Journal Of Secondary Gifted Education in 2004 noted that, among adolescents, those with an Introverted Myers-Briggs typing were significantly more likely to be gifted than those with an Extroverted typing. 1 Professionals who work extensively with the gifted, such as psychologists Christine Fonseca, or Dr. Kathleen Noble, will often report that a majority of their gifted clients are Introverts.
Logically then, it must stand that a society with a strong Extrovert preference will have an underwhelming supply of, and respect, for intellect, and a preference for the Less Intellectual as societal ideals. Evidences from the past and present indicate that this is indeed the true nature of the United States Of America.
In the 1830s, the young American nation was observed firsthand by an astute French visitor, Alexis De Tocqueville, whose sojourn took him through an amazing cross-section of American society over many months. In Democracy In America, the result of this sojourn: Tocqueville wrote: “In democracies, nothing is greater or more brilliant than commerce...not only for the sake of the profit it holds out to them, but for the love of the constant excitement occasioned by that pursuit.”2 A “constant excitement” that recalls the larger average size of the Extrovert's medial orbitofrontal cortex, an important pleasure-seeking area of the human brain. On the other hand, Tocqueville wrote: “there is no class...in America in which the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with hereditary fortune and leisure, and by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor.”3
The scholar Joshua Kaplan summarized Tocqueville's view of America as being a place where, as a result of breakdowns in the Old World aristocracy, people of average intellect adamantly refused to defer to their intellectual superiors, leading to an increase in public mediocrity. And despite America's guarantee of Constitutionally protected free speech, in Tocqueville's opinion there was no country on earth with less independence of mind and freedom of discussion than the United States.4
Over one century later, prompted by witnessing how the highbrow Adlai Stevenson was treated during the 1950s presidential campaigns, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote his landmark analysis Anti-Intellectualism In American Life. Here, he defines the issue as “a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind, and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life.” Hofstadter's book spans more than 300 years of history and touches on religion, business, government and education in America. He said of his country: “I think that [anti-intellectualism] is a problem of more than ordinary acuteness here...I am disposed to believe that it may be a part of our English cultural inheritance.”5 Yet, the British are not the only anti-intellectuals in America, nor are they the most afflicted, and it would be more accurate to say that it's part of our heritage as a nation of excitement-seeking highly Extroverted immigrants more generally.
Commentaries on the “idiocracy” continued after Hofstadter. The 2009 book Idiot America is a much crasser, less graceful portrait of the American personality, one more wedded to partisan liberal political causes of its time. Yet even here, author Charles Pierce hits on something when he noted how heavily American life is predicated on the premise that “Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.”6 Saying things loudly, of course, comes more easily to Extroverts.
Not all immigration to America was Non-Introverted or Anti-Intellectual. The Puritan English who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony and New England in the 1620s were deep thinkers, totally committed to a life path of acquiring knowledge, using the cultivated mind to solve spiritual and social problems. But these Puritans would be greatly outnumbered in the following century by the much larger migration of the Borderer People (also known as the “Scots-Irish”), who'd spent centuries living in the areas of Britain most ravaged by constant war and crime, where life was too precarious and fleeting to get much use out of books, businesses, the sciences, or careful long-range thoroughness in planning one's future.7 Borderers are usually quite Extroverted; one need only read a biography of arch-Borderer Andrew Jackson, our 7th president, to understand that. So not only were the Puritans pushed out of the mainstream, but the growing phenomena of very different peoples trying to share the same continent contributed to the inability of America to reach consensus on much of anything, before, during and after the Civil War.
Today, the Extrovert-Introvert divide is just one of many divides in a nation often speculated to be on the brink of a Second Civil War, a divide where it's clear Introverts have drawn the short straw. The solution to this sort of marginalization would have to be a vision for society that Extroverts and Introverts alike find wholly compelling, where each side has its own dominion of rule and mastery. The answer cannot come from immigration reforms, because the nature of who wants to immigrate, usually the more Extroverted, remains the same and keeps things out of balance.
It could, however, come instead from transforming a different aspect of American heritage, one that has nothing inherent to do with immigration, yet nonetheless has contributed to the diminished prospects of the gifted, Introverted and intelligent in the New World. A forthcoming article will discuss the role of Protestant Reformation in shaping American life, a role that continues to this day, and how this insight might actually hold the key to producing a positive consensus for America's future.
Ugur Sak. 2004. A synthesis of research on psychological types of gifted adolescents. Journal Of Secondary Gifted Education, 15(2), 70-79 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.4219/jsge-2004-449
De Tocqueville, Alexis. (1835/1956). Democracy In America: Volume II. New York City, New York. Alfred A. Knopf Inc. Pages 155 to 156.
De Tocqueville, Alexis. (1835/1841). Democracy In America: Volume I. New York City, New York. J. & H.G. Langley. Page 54.
Kaplan, Joshua. (2005). Political Theory: The Classic Texts And Their Continuing Relevance. Prince Frederick, Maryland. Recorded Books LLC. Lecture On Tocqueville (audiobook).
Hofstadter, Richard. (1962/1963). Anti-Intellectualism In American Life. New York City, New York. Vintage Books. Page 20.
Pierce, Charles. (2009/2010). Idiot America. New York City, New York. Anchor Books. Page 41.
David Hackett Fischer in Albion’s Seed (1989), and Thomas Sowell in Black Rednecks And White Liberals (2005) have also written about the Scots-Irish.