Why Does America Prefer Extroverts?
When it comes to matters of personality, it's no secret that the United States Of America has greatly preferred Extroversion to Introversion. Susan Cain wrote her 2012 best-selling book Quiet about “the power of Introverts”, a power that has often been ignored, denied or suppressed in America, which Cain describes as "among the most extroverted of nations”. 1
The picture of American life that emerges in Quiet will be familiarly discouraging to many us who are Introverted: In one scene, Cain speaks to a human resources director at an unnamed major American media company, who tells her: “we want to attract creative people [to work for us]”. When Cain asks her to define the word “creative”, the director clarifies: “you have to be outgoing, fun and jazzed up to work here.” 2 In another scene, Harvard Business School students participating in a group problem-solving activity dismiss a highly experienced student’s valuable advice, merely because he expressed his advice in an Introverted manner. 3 One particularly heartbreaking moment is when Cain meets with an Introverted minister, Adam McHugh, who lamented how, as he became more involved in Evangelical Christianity, whose churches usually reinforce cultural Extroversion, he experienced increasing guilt and tension about his preference for privacy and reflection, to the point where he felt like God was displeased with him for being the way he was. 4
Susan Cain isn’t the first person to fight for Introverts. A decade prior, psychotherapist Marti Olsen Laney made an impressive impact with her 2002 book The Introvert Advantage. Laney subtitled her book: “How Quiet People Can Thrive In An Extrovert World”, which isn’t very optimistic. The phrase “Extrovert World” implies that Introverts are second-class by default, and only through meticulous discipline and intense exertion can they obtain a fulfillment and flourishing that comes easily to Extroverts. Those who grew up in the United States often accept this condition as inevitable.
Why is America like this? There are a few reasons. Cain hones in on the industrialization of the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a tipping point. As the nation’s productive output rose, so did businesses demand for salesmen who were charming, loquacious and bold enough to persuade the world to buy their products. It was this demand, says Cain, that caused the stock value of Extroversion to soar. She discusses Dale Carnegie, the extraordinary salesman and public speaking trainer, whose How To Win Friends And Influence People became an American literary classic, as a paragon of this era of change. 5
Yet theoretically, America had the free choice to not overstress the business culture, to form its life, institutions and goals differently, and it didn’t. It had the free choice to pass on Dale Carnegie’s gospel of salesmanship, and it didn’t. It had the free choice to honestly assess the advantages and disadvantages of Extroversion and Introversion, and it didn’t. Thus, what happened in the Carnegie Era must be only part of the story.
Laney writes: “America was built on rugged individualism and the importance of citizens speaking their minds. We value action, speed, competition and drive”6, but with no hint as to why. Even Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his historical study of the American character, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life (1963), addresses the origins obliquely, saying that America “was settled by men and women who repudiated European civilization for its oppressiveness or decadence”.7
In a short paragraph, one that deserves far more elaboration, Cain gets to the heart of the matter: America’s population “descends largely from the migrants of the world…It makes sense that world travelers were more extroverted than those who stayed home – and that they passed on their traits to their children, and their children’s children.”8
The terms “Introversion” and “Extroversion” became widely known with the publication of Carl Jung’s Psychological Types in 1921. Jung viewed Extroverts as being pulled relentlessly towards the external world like a magnet, while viewing Introverts as magnets themselves, relentlessly pulling the outer world into their inner worlds.⁹ From this model, it was determined that Extroverts gain their energy from socialization, while Introverts gain theirs from solitude.
In subsequent decades, physiological research has helped to explain why people have this variation in their energy systems: Extroverts and Introverts have physically differing brain structures. In particular, the brains of Extroverts respond more strongly to the effects of the neurotransmitter dopamine, when exposed to stimuli such as amphetamines or gambling victories. The average size of the medial orbitofrontal cortex, a portion of the brain which is “related to the monitoring, learning and memory of the reward value of reinforcers”, is larger in Extroverts. The greater dopamine response causes Extroverts to usually possess more of a trait called “Reward Sensitivity”, or the tendency to seek out rewards, from pleasure and excitement, to achieving a goal, to increasing one’s fame or popularity.¹⁰
Extroverts, according to this research, are more vulnerable to boredom, and using stimulation to keep that threat at bay. Introverts are not as vulnerable to boredom, but they are more easily overstimulated, which leads to a preference for low-stimulation environments. Bolder, quicker and more confident, but also more hedonistic, less cautious and less able to delay gratification.
Now, consider how stimulating or unstimulating the following activities would be:
Riding a very tall, very fast rollercoaster.
Going to a restaurant you’ve been to dozens of times, and ordering the same thing you always order.
Being thrown a surprise birthday party by your family and closest friends.
Spending Friday night at home with a great novel and a warm mug of chamomile tea.
Boarding a boat to travel to a land you’ve never been to before, having little money, few contacts, and only a passable grasp of the language, to start a new life there.
…Does America make more sense now?
Roughly speaking, what’s happened since the discovery of the New World is that Europe’s Extroverted population (and more recently the Extroverts of Latin America and Asia) has become enamored with the idea of journeying thousands of miles to the United States, often penetrating ever deeper into the frontiers, to reach their dreams. This was especially true if the Extroverted European was also a devout supporter of the Protestant Reformation, as many immigrants to Colonial America, like the English Puritans, desired to rid their lives entirely of the Catholic Church’s influence.
Meanwhile, the Introverts stayed home in Europe, reading their books, writing letters and scholarly tomes, and composing symphonies (Europe’s greater friendliness to Introverts is also mentioned by Laney). Further, migration not only influences the temperaments of the newcomers, it influences the standards and values that those in the New World live according to, those that they pass on to family members, those that they expect society in general to abide by. Children of Extroverts might even be more likely to inherit the medial orbitofronal cortex of their parents too, something that has yet to be researched extensively.
America became a nation of Extroverts as a result of being a nation of immigrants. This is both good news and bad news for American Introverts.
The good news is that America doesn’t prefer Extroverts for malicious reasons. The tendency is organic and spontaneous; the societies created by those who are most eager to migrate simply do not devote large amounts of time to deeply contemplating the mysteries of existence.
The bad news is that, because migrants are disproportionately Extroverts, America’s personality imbalance will never change; Extroversion will remain the more-preferred default, with Introversion as the less-preferred alternative. Introverts will never be able to appeal to a mainstream or majority for our terms and preferences. Better chances at thriving can be obtained by educating the public about the differences between the two temperaments, and what each of their unique needs are. Thriving is more likely to be obtained by carving out niches and safeguarding certain institutions that resist the trend, tending instead towards Introversion.
Perhaps it’d also be beneficial to learn about places on Earth where the situation is the opposite.
American Introverts have often reported positive, rejuvenating experiences after living in countries more supportive of their temperament. Copywriter Chantal Panozzo was rebuked by her U.S. public school teachers as “too quiet”. She learned to fake Extroversion and was rewarded for it in her copywriting career. She then moved to Introvert-dominated Switzerland to work at an advertising agency there. “I smiled. I had finally found a culture that would not force me to be anything but my introverted self at work. It had taken another culture to teach me that my personality deserved respect too.”
Hal Freeman spent some time living in Russia as an English teacher and found: “there wasn’t the hunger for immediate gratification that we Americans find so attractive.” Freeman is also a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy from Southern Baptism and added: I would say the spirituality that dominates in Russia is more of a reflective and contemplative spirituality. There is not the fascination with being spiritually entertained in Russia that predominates in the more popular ‘seeker sensitive’ churches in America.”
There are, of course, a number of elements of life in Japan that will appeal to introverts too: “trains in Japan are usually quiet, even when packed full like a can of sardines. It’s unlikely that anyone is going to come up to you randomly and start a conversation. You can go out to a bar by yourself and have a peaceful night without feeling any pressure to talk to anyone.”
Zooming the camera out takes the focus off of Extroverted-dominated America, and provides hope by revealing locales and cultures where the yin is balanced with yang. This is an Introvert’s world, too.
ENDNOTES
Cain, Susan. (2012/2013). Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking. New York City, New York. Broadway Books. Page 4.
Ibid, Page 48.
Ibid, Page 50.
Ibid, Page 66.
Ibid, Pages 19-21.
Laney, Marti Olsen. (2002). The Introvert Advantage: How Quiet People Can Thrive In An Extrovert World. New York City, New York. Workman Publishing Company Inc. Page 5.
Hofstadter, Richard. (1963). Anti-Intellectualism In American Life. New York City, New York. Vintage Books. Pages 45 to 51.
Cain, Susan. Quiet. Page 29.
Jung, Carl. (1921/2017). Psychological Types. London, England. Routledge Classics. Pages 4 to 5.
“Neurobiology of the Structure of Personality: Dopamine, Facilitation of Incentive Motivation, and Extroversion. Behavioral And Brain Sciences 22, No. 3 (1999): 491-569.