If fast and slow animals had parties, writes the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, some of the fasts would bore everyone with their loud conversation, while others would mutter into their bee...
If this is true—if solitude is an important key to creativity—then we might all want to develop a taste for it. We’d want to teach our kids to work independently. We’d want to give employees plenty of...
Don is a bitter introvert, as he cheerfully puts it—bitter because the more time he spends at HBS, the more convinced he becomes that he’d better change his ways.
Because conflict-avoidant Emily would never bite or even hiss unless Greg had done something truly horrible, on some level she processes his bite to mean that she’s terribly guilty— of something, anyt...
Aron and a team of scientists have also found that when sensitive people see faces of people experiencing strong feelings, they have more activation than others do in areas of the brain associated wit...
Difference has to do with how the two cultures define respect.
Why shouldn’t quiet be strong? And what else can quiet do that we don’t give it credit for?
Whoever you are, bear in mind that appearance is not reality. Some people are like extroverts, but the effort costs them in energy, authenticity, and even physical health. Others seem aloof or self-co...
When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly.
We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal—the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight.
To advance our careers, we’re expected to promote ourselves unabashedly.
The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They
The New Groupthink did not arise at one precise moment. Cooperative learning, corporate teamwork, and open office plans emerged at different times and for different reasons. But the mighty force that...
That’s because top performers overwhelmingly worked for companies that gave their workers the most privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption. Six...
Schwartz, the director of the Developmental Neuroimaging and Psychopathology Research Lab. Schwartz has bright, inquisitive eyes, graying brown hair, and a quietly enthusiastic manner. Despite our unp...
Respect for individual human personality has with us reached its lowest point, observed one intellectual in 1921, and it is delightfully ironical that no nation is so constantly talking about personal...
It’s about the call of his conscience. It’s about the survival of the planet, he says. Nobody is going to care who won or lost any election when the earth is uninhabitable. If you’re a sensitive sort,...
It was a mystery with one intriguing clue: programmers from the same companies performed at more or less the same level, even though they hadn’t worked together. That’s because top performers overwhel...
It may also help explain why they’re so bored by small talk. If you’re thinking in more complicated ways, she told me, then talking about the weather or where you went for the holidays is not quite as...
If you're an introvert, you also know that the bias against quiet can cause deep psychic pain. As a child you might have overheard your parents apologize for your shyness. Or at school you might have...