While introversion is often stigmatized, extroversion is associated with addiction, personality disorders, and risky behaviour.

[side note: extrAversion is also acceptable spelling]

Extroversion: everyone’s favourite personality trait. On the surface anyway.

Understandably so: extroversion is assertiveness, gregariousness, warmth, charisma, and social ability. All very endearing traits, at least on a social level.

Yet extroverts are more prone to addictions (including to social media), adultery, and other risky behaviours. They’re less able to cope with acute sleep deprivation. Extraversion is also more highly associated with personality disorders (e.g. narcissism and histrionic personality disorder) and with attention deficit disorders.

Extroverts can see people as a means to an end (i.e. stimulation) and may care less about the actual person. This is especially the case if they are low in agreeableness, which inclines you to see people as competitors rather than creatures to be cared for.

My extroverted friends are sometimes more forgetful when it comes to experiences we’ve shared. One friend will say to me every so often, “do you remember so-and-so?” and I’ll be like “um, yeah we’ve talked about them a bunch of times.” I remember those conversations, but to my extroverted friends, that we talked about something one or two times is just a memory among a sea of conversational memories that were just everyday experiences.

As an introvert, my brain tends to be more about deep connection than fun, exciting connection, and as a result, I’ll remember conversations and the details better. Some research has shown introverts to have better memory in general.

This is a more ground-level problem with extroversion: while they tend to be more skilled socially, and often more approachable, warm, gregarious, assertive and energetic (socially at least), they tend to be less good with depth of connection.

This is pitfall #1: sacrificing depth for breadth of social connection (and maybe elsewhere). In more extreme cases, people become a means to an end – fun, stimulation, etc.

Speed Over Detail

Extraverted brains are more receptive to stimulation. They like it – they move to it, and make it happen, feeding off of it. Feedback loops can be helpful – except when they’re not.

Their brains are built for speed and activity more than thoughtfulness or attention to detail. The extraverted brain is quicker to its end pathways, since the paths are shorter. Introverted brains don’t move slower, but they make more stops along the way. This benefits detail and depth of insight, while extraversion is better for making positive associations more quickly.

In part, this shorter pathway seems to be because of extraversion’s association with dopamine. To summarize a study out of Cornell (Andy Bernard’s alma mater), extraversion inclines someone to the ability to make associations between situations/contexts and rewards. By way of example, an extrovert is more likely to go to a bar, have a great experience, and want to go back and party again the next day. An introvert is going to make the association of “bar = good, me go again” much more slowly.

Shorter dopaminergic pathway, quicker reward associations, higher rate of activity and positive emotion… and, therefore, higher rate of making friends/social connections/performing positive activities, but also higher risk of addiction or risky behaviours that produce rewards in the brain.

In a nutshell, extraverts sacrifice detail for speed, and speed can be dangerous.

That’s pitfall #2: living fast could mean dying young, or at least missing out on the details.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Like we’ve been discussing, one of the tasks of self-discovery and the development of your personality is balance. If you’re particularly high or low in a trait, you’ll want to look at those opposite you and develop that part of yourself. So, if you’re an extrovert, you’ll want to develop the introverted parts of you.

The extravert’s struggle is perhaps solitude and silence. Lack of people and lack of stimulation, something introverts love and thrive in, are exhausting ideas for the highly extroverted. But they’re also something that needs to be developed.

The occasional retreat (away from phones & computers) is good for anyone. A daily or semiweekly routine of putting all devices away and spending time alone is ideal… probably for anyone.

I might just take a moment here and quietly enjoy the fact that I’m telling extroverts to get silence and solitude.

I really recommend learning to just do nothing. Some call it the spiritual practice of contemplation. You don’t read, pray, or even meditate. It’s just… quietness.

Of course, those other things are good too. Reading is a low-stimulation activity, as is meditation. They help slow the brain down and deliberate. Journaling too.

Make More Stops Along the Way: The Art of Reflection

Reflective exercises in general are often staples in an introvert’s wheelhouse, and something extroverts aren’t super skilled at.

Reflection could help you catch what you have overlooked; whether it’s relationships that you’re taking too lightly or parts of your life that are moving too fast. It could also help you think more in terms of what you value and actually want in your life, rather than just letting yourself get caught up in the fun and stimulation of things.

Mindfulness, likewise. It includes thinking about the present moment – taking in detail that you might not normally take in. Noticing colours, textures, how the surface below your feet feels… how that relationship is going, or how much it means to you.

Whatever you do, work towards detail and mindfulness; practice slowing down.

Make more stops along the way.