Review: Quiet by Susan Cain

A nice read on the research behind introverts and extroverts. I’ve been an introvert my whole life and wish I had found this book long ago. At this point, I’ve already figured out most of the key lessons from this book on my own (mainly the hard way), but it was still nice to read this and realize I’m not alone.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Being an introvert is normal. One-third to one-half of people are introverts. Some of the most accomplished people in history have been introverts, including Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Rosa Parks, Bill Gates, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Isaac Newton.

• Unfortunately, US culture pushes everyone towards extroversion. Many schools and universities focus on participation, group projects, speaking, sales, and other extroverted activities. Businesses tend to reward people who are the loudest and most noticeable rather than those actually doing the best work. And in some cases, being introverted is sometimes even seen as a mental problem that needs to be “fixed.”

• In reality, there’s nothing wrong with being introverted; in fact, there are many advantages.

• You can identify introverts even when they are just small babies. Babies that react more strongly to a strong stimulus (e.g., a balloon popping) tend to become introverts; babies that remain calm tend to become extroverts. It seems that a key characteristic of introverts is that they are more sensitive to stimuli (they are “high reactive”), can become overwhelmed easily (e.g., in a large crowd), and need more time to adapt to new situations (e.g., to meeting new people).

• Extroverts seem to be more sensitive to dopamine and tend to seek that buzz more by participating in thrilling, high risk activities. Introverts are less sensitive to dopamine and tend to have better self-control (e.g., better ability to delay gratification).

• Introverts can fake being extroverts—and in modern society, there are valid reasons to do so, such as giving talks or meeting with customers as part of your job—but you can only fake it up to a point. You then need to go back to a “restorative niche” where you can recharge your batters and be yourself. For example, you might go into the office three days a week to meet with customers, but also work from home two days a week to recover.

• Introverts and extroverts are both capable of reading social cues, but extroverts tend to be better at multitasking, so in situations where you both have to interact and read social cues (e.g., at a dinner party), extroverts tend to do better.

As always, I’ve saved some of my favorite quotes from the book, which capture a few more important takeaways:

“There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

“Introversion- along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness- is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.”

“Don’t think of introversion as something that needs to be cured.”

“We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally.”

“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 been prodded to come “out of your shell” -that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and some humans are just the same.”

“Scores of studies have shown that venting doesn’t soothe anger; it fuels it.”

“It’s not that I’m so smart,” said Einstein, who was a consummate introvert. “It’s that I stay with problems longer.”

“When you go to a football game and someone offers you a beer […], they’re really saying hi, have a glass of extroversion.”

Rating: 4 stars