Quiet (47 page)

  1.
Montgomery, Alabama. December 1, 1955
: For an excellent biography of Rosa Parks, see Douglas Brinkley,
Rosa Parks: A Life
(New York: Penguin, 2000). Most of the material in
Quiet
about Parks is drawn from this work.
   A note about Parks: Some have questioned the singularity of her actions, pointing out that she'd had plenty of civil rights training before boarding that bus. While this is true, there's no evidence, according to Brinkley, that Parks acted in a premeditated manner that evening, or even as an activist; she was simply being herself. More important for
Quiet
's purposes, her personality did not prevent her from being powerful; on the contrary, it made her a natural at nonviolent resistance.

  2.
“north and south of temperament”
: Winifred Gallagher (quoting J. D. Higley), “How We Become What We Are,”
The Atlantic Monthly
, September 1994. (Higley was talking about boldness and inhibition, not extroversion and introversion per se, but the concepts overlap in many ways.)

  3.
governs how likely we are to exercise
: Robert M. Stelmack, “On Personality and Arousal: A Historical Perspective on Eysenck and Zuckerman,” in Marvin Zuckerman and Robert M. Stelmack, eds.,
On the Psychobiology of Personality: Essays in Honor of Marvin Zuckerman
(San Diego: Elsevier, 2004), 22. See also Caroline Davis et al., “Motivations to Exercise as a Function of Personality Characteristics, Age, and Gender,”
Personality and Individual Differences
19, no. 2 (1995): 165–74.

  4.
commit adultery
: Daniel Nettle,
Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 100. See also David P. Schmitt, “The Big Five Related to Risky Sexual Behaviour Across 10 World Regions: Differential Personality Associations of Sexual Promiscuity and Relationship Infidelity,”
European Journal of Personality
18, no. 4 (2004): 301–19.

  5.
function well without sleep
: William D. S. Killgore et al., “The Trait of Introversion-Extraversion Predicts Vulnerability to Sleep Deprivation,”
Journal of Sleep Research
16, no. 4 (2007): 354–63. See also Daniel Taylor and Robert M. McFatter, “Cognitive Performance After Sleep Deprivation: Does Personality Make a Difference?”
Personality and Individual Differences
34, no. 7 (2003): 1179–93; and Andrew Smith and Andrea Maben, “Effects of Sleep Deprivation, Lunch, and Personality on Performance, Mood, and Cardiovascular Function,”
Physiology and Behavior
54, no. 5 (1993): 967–72.

  6.
learn from our mistakes
: See
chapter 7
.

  7.
place big bets in the stock market
: See
chapter 7
.

  8.
be a good leader
: See
chapter 2
.

  9.
and ask “what if”
: See
chapters 3
and
7
.

10.
exhaustively researched subjects
: As of May 2, 2010, in the PSYCINFO database, there were 9,194 entries on “extraversion,” 6,111 on “introversion,” and 12,494 on the overlapping subject of “neuroticism.” There were fewer entries for the other “Big 5” personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Similarly, as of June 14, 2010, a Google scholar search found about 64,700 articles on “extraversion,” 30,600 on “extroversion,” 55,900 on “introversion,” and 53,300 on “neuroticism.” The psychologist William Graziano, in an e-mail dated July 31, 2010, refers to introversion/extroversion as “the 300 lb. gorilla of personality, meaning that it is big and cannot be ignored easily.”

11.
in the Bible
: See “A Note on Terminology.”

12.
some evolutionary psychologists
: See
chapter 6
.

13.
one third to one half of Americans are introverts
: Rowan Bayne, in
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: A Critical Review and Practical Guide
(London: Chapman and Hall, 1995), 47, finds the incidence of introversion at 36 percent, which is in turn determined from Isabel Myers's own study from 1985. A more recent study, published by the Center for Applications of Psychological Type Research Services in 1996, sampled 914,219 people and found that 49.3 percent were extroverts and 50.7 percent were introverts. See “Estimated Frequencies of the Types in the United States Population,” a brochure published by the Center for Application of Psychological Type (CAPT) in 1996 and 2003. That the percentage of introverts found by these studies rose from 36 percent to 50.7 percent doesn't necessarily mean that there are now more introverts in the United States, according to CAPT. It may be “simply a reflection of the populations sampled and included.” In fact, a wholly separate survey, this one using the Eysenck Personality Inventory and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire rather than the Myers-Briggs test, indicates that extraversion scores have increased over time (from 1966 to 1993) for both men and women: see Jean M. Twenge, “Birth Cohort
Changes in Extraversion: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis, 1966–1993,”
Personality and Individual Differences
30 (2001): 735–48.

14.
United States is among the most extroverted of nations
: This has been noted in two studies: (1) Juri Allik and Robert R. McCrae, “Toward a Geography of Personality Traits: Patterns of Profiles Across 36 Cultures,”
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
35 (2004): 13–28; and (2) Robert R. McCrae and Antonio Terracciano, “Personality Profiles of Cultures: Aggregate Personality Traits,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
89:3 (2005): 407–25.

15.
Talkative people, for example
: William B. Swann Jr. and Peter J. Rentfrow, “Blirtatiousness: Cognitive, Behavioral, and Physiological Consequences of Rapid Responding,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
81, no. 6 (2001): 1160–75.

16.
Velocity of speech counts
: Howard Giles and Richard L. Street Jr., “Communicator Characteristics and Behavior,” in M. L. Knapp and G. R. Miller, eds.,
Handbook of Interpersonal Communication
, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), 103–61. (But note some good news for introverts: slow speech can be perceived as honest and benevolent, according to other studies.)

17.
the voluble are considered smarter
: Delroy L. Paulhus and Kathy L. Morgan, “Perceptions of Intelligence in Leaderless Groups: The Dynamic Effects of Shyness and Acquaintance,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
72, no. 3 (1997): 581–91.

18.
one informal study
: Laurie Helgoe,
Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength
(Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2008), 3–4.

19.
the theory of gravity
: Gale E. Christianson,
Isaac Newton
(Oxford University Press, Lives and Legacies Series, 2005).

20.
the theory of relativity
: Walter Isaacson,
Einstein: His Life and Universe
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 4, 12, 18, 2, 31, etc.

21.
W. B. Yeats's “The Second Coming”
: Michael Fitzgerald,
The Genesis of Artistic Creativity: Asperger's Syndrome and the Arts
(London: Jessica Kingsley, 2005), 69. See also Ira Progoff,
Jung's Psychology and Its Social Meaning
(London: Routledge, 1999), 111–12.

22.
Chopin's nocturnes
: Tad Szulc,
Chopin in Paris: The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 69.

23.
Proust's
In Search of Lost Time
: Alain de Botton,
How Proust Can Change Your Life
(New York: Vintage International), 1997.

24.
Peter Pan
: Lisa Chaney,
Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J. M. Barrie
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005), 2.

25.
Orwell's
1984
and
Animal Farm
: Fitzgerald,
The Genesis of Artistic Creativity
, 89.

26.
Charlie Brown
: David Michaelis,
Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography
(New York: Harper, 2007).

27.
Schindler's List, E.T.
,
and
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
: Joseph McBride,
Steven Spielberg: A Biography
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 57, 68.

28.
Google
: Ken Auletta,
Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
(New York: Penguin, 2009), 32

29.
Harry Potter
: Interview of J. K. Rowling by Shelagh Rogers and Lauren McCormick, Canadian Broadcasting Corp., October 26, 2000.

30.
“Neither
E=mc
²
nor
Paradise Lost
”
: Winifred Gallagher,
I.D.: How Heredity and Experience Make You Who You Are
(New York: Random House, 1996), 26.

31.
vast majority of teachers believe
: Charles Meisgeier et al., “Implications and Applications of Psychological Type to Educational Reform and Renewal,”
Proceedings of the First Biennial International Conference on Education of the Center for Applications of Psychological Type
(Gainesville, FL: Center for Applications of Psychological Type, 1994), 263–71.

32.
Carl Jung had published a bombshell
: Carl G. Jung,
Psychological Types
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971; originally published in German as
Psychologische Typen
[Zurich: Rascher Verlag, 1921]), see esp. 330–37.

33.
the majority of universities and Fortune 100 companies
: E-mail to the author, dated July 9, 2010, from Leah L. Walling, director, Marketing Communications and Product Marketing, CPP, Inc.

34.
introverts and extroverts differ in the level of outside stimulation … Many have a horror of small talk
: See Part Two: “Your Biology, Your Self?”

35.
introvert
is not a synonym for hermit
: Introversion is also very different from Asperger's syndrome, the autism spectrum disorder that involves difficulties with social interactions such as reading facial expressions and body language. Introversion and Asperger's both can involve feeling overwhelmed in social settings. But unlike people with Asperger's, introverts often have strong social skills. Compared with the one third to one half of Americans who are introverts, only one in five thousand people has Asperger's. See National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Asperger Syndrome Fact Sheet,
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/asperger/detail_asperger.htm
.

36.
the distinctly introverted E. M. Forster
: Sunil Kumar,
A Companion to E. M. Forster
, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2007).

37.
“human love at its height”
: E. M. Forster,
Howards End
(London: Edward Arnold, 1910).

38.
Shyness is the fear of social disapproval
: Elaine N. Aron et al., “Adult Shyness: The Interaction of Temperamental Sensitivity and an Adverse Childhood Environment,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
31 (2005): 181–97.

39.
they sometimes overlap
: Many articles address this question. See, for example, Stephen R. Briggs, “Shyness: Introversion or Neuroticism?”
Journal of Research in Personality
22, no. 3 (1988): 290–307.

40.
“Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum”
: William McGuire and R. F. C. Hall,
C. G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 304.

41.
Finland is a famously introverted nation
: Aino Sallinen-Kuparinen et al.,
Willingness to Communicate, Communication Apprehension, Introversion, and Self-Reported Communication Competence: Finnish and American Comparisons
. Communication Research Reports, 8 (1991): 57.

42.
Many introverts are also “highly sensitive”
: See
chapter 6
.