I want to change the world in my own way. So I do stuff that’s artificial. I don’t really like being the guest at someone else’s party, because then I have to be entertaining. But I’ll host parties be...
I think it’s our culture, explains Tiffany Liao, a poised Swarthmore-bound high school senior whose parents are from Taiwan. Study, do well, don’t create waves. It’s inbred in us to be more quiet. Whe...
I realize it’s not true that I’m no longer shy; I’ve just learned to talk myself down from the ledge (thank you, prefrontal cortex!). By now I do it so automatically that I’m hardly aware it’s happeni...
He views self-monitoring as an act of modesty. It’s about accommodating oneself to situational norms, rather than grinding down everything to one’s own needs and concerns. Not all self-monitoring is b...
From outside the evangelical community, this seems an astonishing confession. Since when is solitude one of the Seven Deadly Sins? But to a fellow evangelical, McHugh’s sense of spiritual failure woul...
Extroverts are better than introverts at handling information overload. Introverts' reflectiveness uses up a lot of cognitive capacity, according to Joseph Newman. On any given task, he says, ''if we...
Everything in the service involved communication, he says with gentle exasperation. Greeting people, the lengthy sermon, the singing. There was no emphasis on quiet, liturgy, ritual, things that give...
Do you really believe in what you said or wrote – in the thing that’s bringing criticism? And if I do believe it, I can withstand anything.
College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups. Even elite athletes in team sports often spend unusual amounts of time in solitary practice. What
Charlie Ledley and Jamie Mai, whose entire investment strategy was based on FUD: they placed bets that had limited downside, but would pay off handsomely if dramatic but unexpected changes occurred in...
Can introverts be leaders? Is
But the catharsis hypothesis is a myth— a plausible one, an elegant one, but a myth nonetheless. Scores of studies have shown that venting doesn’t soothe anger; it fuels it.
But for all their differences, shyness and introversion have in common something profound. The mental state of a shy extrovert sitting quietly in a business meeting may be very different from that of...
But buzz also has considerable downsides. Everyone assumes that it’s good to accentuate positive emotions, but that isn’t correct, the psychology professor Richard Howard told me, pointing to the exam...
But as the word satyagraha implies, Gandhi’s passivity was not weakness at all. It meant focusing on an ultimate goal and refusing to divert energy to unnecessary skirmishes along the way. Restraint,...
Big Five traits: Introversion-Extroversion; Agreeableness; Openness to Experience; Conscientiousness; and Emotional Stability.
Anyone can be a great negotiator, I told them, and in fact it often pays to be quiet and gracious, to listen more than talk, and to have an instinct for harmony rather than conflict. With this style,...
Another study, of 38,000 knowledge workers across different sectors, found that the simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity. Even multitasking, that prized feat...
All of this would be fine if more talking were correlated with greater insight, but research suggests that there’s no such link.
Alex also took advantage of his natural strengths. I learned that boys basically do only one thing: they chase girls. They get them, they lose them, they talk about them. I was like, ‘That’s completel...