Quiet (51 page)

45.
considerably more cheerful Theodor Geisel
: Judith Morgan and Neil Morgan,
Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel: A Biography
(New York: DaCapo, 1996).

46.
legendary advertising man Alex Osborn
: Alex Osborn,
Your Creative Power
(W. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1948).

47.
group brainstorming doesn't actually work
: Marvin D. Dunnette et al.,
“The Effect of Group Participation on Brainstorming Effectiveness for Two Industrial Samples,”
Journal of Applied Psychology
47, no. 1 (1963): 30–37.

48.
some forty years of research
: See, for example, Paul A. Mongeau and Mary Claire Morr, “Reconsidering Brainstorming,”
Group Facilitation
1, no. 1 (1999): 14. See also Karan Girotra et al., “Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea,”
Management Science
56, no. 4 (April 2010): 591–605. (The highest level innovation comes from a hybrid process in which people brainstorm on their own before sharing ideas with colleagues.)

49.
“business people must be insane”
: Adrian Furnham, “The Brainstorming Myth,”
Business Strategy Review
11, no. 4 (2000): 21–28.

50.
Groups brainstorming electronically
: Paul Mongeau and Mary Claire Morr, “Reconsidering Brainstorming.”

51.
The same is true of academic research
: Charlan Nemeth and Jack Goncalo, “Creative Collaborations from Afar: The Benefits of Independent Authors,”
Creativity Research Journal
17, no. 1 (2005): 1–8.

52.
usually believe that their group performed much better
: Keith Sawyer,
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
(New York: Basic Books, 2007), 66.

53.
the fear of public humiliation
: Susan K. Opt and Donald A. Loffredo, “Rethinking Communication Apprehension: A Myers-Briggs Perspective,”
Journal of Psychology
134, no. 5 (2000): 556–70.

54.
two NCAA basketball teams
: James C. Moore and Jody A. Brylinsky, “Spectator Effect on Team Performance in College Basketball,”
Journal of Sport Behavior
16, no. 2 (1993): 77.

55.
behavioral economist Dan Ariely
: Dan Ariely, “What's the Value of a Big Bonus?”
New York Times
, November 19, 2008.

56.
Gregory Berns
: The Solomon Asch and Gregory Berns experiments are described in Gregory Berns,
Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently
(Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2008), 59–81. See also Sandra Blakeslee, “What Other People Say May Change What You See,”
New York Times
, June 28, 2005. And see Gregory S. Berns et al., “Neurobiological Correlates of Social Conformity and Independence During Mental Rotation,”
Biological Psychiatry
58 (2005): 245–53.

57.
heightened activation in the amygdala
: In fact, in some iterations of the experiment, where the volunteers played with a group of computers rather than with a group of people, their amygdalae stayed quiet even when they disagreed with the computers. This suggests that people who don't conform suffer not so much the fear of being wrong as the anxiety of being excluded from the group.

58.
face-to-face interactions create trust
: Belinda Luscombe, “Why E-Mail May Be Hurting Off-Line Relationships,”
Time
, June 22, 2010.

59.
population density is correlated with innovation
: Jonah Lehrer, “How the City Hurts Your Brain,”
Boston Globe
, January 2, 2009.

60.
creating “flexible” open plans
: Davis et al., “The Physical Environment of the Office.”

61.
At Pixar Animation Studios
: Bill Capodagli, “Magic in the Workplace: How Pixar and Disney Unleash the Creative Talent of Their Workforce,”
Effectif
, September/October 2010: 43–45.

62.
Similarly, at Microsoft
: Michelle Conlin, “Microsoft's Meet-My-Mood Offices,”
Bloomberg Businessweek
, September 10, 2007.

        
A general note on this chapter
: Chapter 4 discusses the psychologist Jerome Kagan's work on high reactivity, which some contemporary psychologists would consider to lie at the intersection of introversion and another trait known as “neuroticism.” For the sake of readability, I have not elucidated that distinction in the text.

  1.
For one of those studies, launched in 1989
: This study is discussed at length in Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman,
The Long Shadow of Temperament
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

  2.
“Carl Jung's descriptions of the introvert and extrovert”
: Ibid., 218.

  3.
reserved Tom and extroverted Ralph
: Jerome Kagan,
Galen's Prophecy
(New York: Basic Books, 1998), 158–61.

  4.
Some say that temperament is the foundation
: See
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Warfield3.html
.

  5.
potent organ
: Kagan and Snidman,
The Long Shadow of Temperament
, 10.

  6.
When the Frisbee looks like it's headed straight for your nose
: This image comes from an online video with Joseph Ledoux, a scientist at NYU who studies the neural basis of emotions, especially fear and anxiety. See “Fearful Brain in an Anxious World,”
Science & the City
,
http://www.nyas.org/Podcasts/Atom.axd
(accessed November 20, 2008).

  7.
“alert attention”
: Elaine N. Aron,
Psychotherapy and the Highly Sensitive Person
(New York: Routledge, 2010), 14.

  8.
They literally use more eye movements
: Various studies have documented these tendencies in high-reactive children. See, for example, Jerome Kagan, “Reflection-Impulsivity and Reading Ability in Primary Grade Children,”
Child Development
363, no. 3 (1965): 609–28. See also Ellen Siegelman, “Reflective and Impulsive Observing Behavior,”
Child Development
40, no. 4 (1969): 1213–22. These studies use the term “reflective” rather than “high-reactive,” but it's a safe bet that they're talking about the same group of children. Siegelman describes them as “preferring low-risk situations generally but choosing harder, more solitary intellectual
tasks … less motorically active, and more cautious” (p. 1214). (Similar studies have been done on adults; see
chapters 6
and
7
.)

  9.
High-reactive kids also tend to think and feel deeply
: Elaine Aron,
The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them
(New York: Broadway Books), 2002.

10.
If a high-reactive toddler breaks another child's toy
: See the studies by Grazyna Kochanska referred to in chapter 6.

11.
how a group of kids should share a coveted toy
: Winifred Gallagher (quoting Kagan), “How We Become What We Are.”
The Atlantic Monthly
, September 1994.

12.
blue eyes, allergies, and hay fever … thin body and narrow face
: Kagan,
Galen's Prophecy
, 160–61.

13.
Take Disney movies
: Ibid., 161.

14.
extroversion and introversion are physiologically
: David G. Winter,
Personality: Analysis and Interpretation of Lives
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 511–16.

15.
40 to 50 percent heritable
: Thomas J. Bouchard Jr. and Matt McGue, “Genetic and Environmental Influences on Human Psychological Differences,”
Journal of Neurobiology
54 (2003): 4–5.

16.
Nazi eugenics and white supremacism
: This has been written about in various places including, for example, Peter D. Kramer,
Listening to Prozac
(New York: Penguin, 1993), 150.

17.
“I have been dragged, kicking and screaming”
: Gallagher (quoting Kagan), “How We Become What We Are.”

18.
The publication of his early findings
: Kramer,
Listening to Prozac
, 154.

19.
Kagan ushers me inside
: I conducted a series of interviews with Jerome Kagan between 2006 and 2010.

20.
describes himself as having been an anxious
: Jerome Kagan,
An Argument for Mind
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 4, 7.

21.
public speaking is the number-one fear
: Victoria Cunningham, Morty Lefkoe, and Lee Sechrest, “Eliminating Fears: An Intervention that Permanently Eliminates the Fear of Public Speaking,”
Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy
13 (2006): 183–93.

22.
Public speaking phobia has many causes
: Gregory Berns,
Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently
(Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2008), 59–81.

23.
introverts are significantly more likely
: Susan K. Opt and Donald A. Loffredo, “Rethinking Communication Apprehension: A Myers-Briggs Perspective,”
Journal of Psychology
134, no. 5 (2000): 556–70. See also Michael J. Beatty, James C. McCroskey, and Alan D. Heisel, “Communication Apprehension as Temperamental Expression: A Communibiological
Paradigm,”
Communication Monographs
65 (1998): 197–219. See also Peter D. Macintyre and Kimly A. Thivierge, “The Effects of Speaker Personality on Anticipated Reactions to Public Speaking,”
Communication Research Reports
12, no. 2 (1995): 125–33.

24.
in a group of people, on average half of the variability
: David G. Winter,
Personality
, 512.

25.
temperature or humidity
: Natasha Mitchell, “Jerome Kagan: The Father of Temperament,” radio interview with Mitchell on
ABC Radio International
, August 26, 2006 (accessed at
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2006/1722388.htm
).

26.
“climb a few fences … danger and excitement”
: Gallagher (quoting Lykken), “How We Become What We Are.”

27.
“The university is filled with introverts”
: Interview with the author, June 15, 2006.

28.
if raised by attentive families in safe environments … “twigs on the same genetic branch”
: Winifred Gallagher,
I.D.: How Heredity and Experience Make You Who You Are
(New York: Random House, 1996), 29, 46–50. See also Kagan and Snidman,
The Long Shadow of Temperament
, 5.

29.
kids acquire their sense of right and wrong
: Grazyna Kochanska and R. A. Thompson, “The Emergence and Development of Conscience in Toddlerhood and Early Childhood,” in
Parenting and Children's Internalization of Values
, edited by J. E. Grusec and L. Kucynski (New York: John Wiley and Sons), 61. See also Grazyna Kochanska, “Toward a Synthesis of Parental Socialization and Child Temperament in Early Development of Conscience,”
Child Development
64 no. 2 (1993): 325–47; Grazyna Kochanska and Nazan Aksan, “Children's Conscience and Self-Regulation,”
Journal of Personality
74, no. 6 (2006): 1587–1617; Grazyna Kochanska et al., “Guilt and Effortful Control: Two Mechanisms That Prevent Disruptive Developmental Trajectories,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
97, no. 2 (2009): 322–33.

30.
tragedy of a bold and exuberant temperament
: Gallagher,
I.D.
, 46–50.

31.
dubbed “the orchid hypothesis”
: David Dobbs, “The Science of Success,”
The Atlantic
magazine, 2009. See also Jay Belsky et al., “Vulnerability Genes or Plasticity Genes?”
Molecular Psychiatry
, 2009: 1–9; Michael Pluess and Jay Belsky, “Differential Susceptibility to Rearing Experience: The Case of Childcare,”
The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
50, no. 4 (2009): 396–404; Pluess and Belsky, “Differential Susceptibility to Rearing Experience: Parenting and Quality Child Care,”
Developmental Psychology
46, no. 2 (2010): 379–90; Jay Belsky and Michael Pluess, “Beyond Diathesis Stress: Differential Susceptibility to Environmental Influences,”
Psychological Bulletin
135, no. 6 (2009): 885–908; Bruce J. Ellis and W. Thomas Boyce, “Biological
Sensitivity to Context,”
Current Directions in Psychological Science
17, no. 3 (2008): 183–87.

32.
with depression, anxiety, and shyness
: Aron,
Psychotherapy and the Highly Sensitive Person
, 3. See also A. Engfer, “Antecedents and Consequences of Shyness in Boys and Girls: A 6-year Longitudinal Study,” in
Social Withdrawal, Inhibition, and Shyness in Childhood
, edited by K. H. Rubin and J. B. Asendorpf (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1993), 49–79; W. T. Boyce et al., “Psychobiologic Reactivity to Stress and Childhood Respiratory Illnesses: Results of Two Prospective Studies,”
Psychosomatic Medicine
57 (1995): 411–22; L. Gannon et al., “The Mediating Effects of Psychophysiological Reactivity and Recovery on the Relationship Between Environmental Stress and Illness,”
Journal of Psychosomatic Research
33 (1989): 165–75.

33.
Indeed, about a quarter of Kagan's high-reactive kids
: E-mail from Kagan to the author, June 22, 2010.

34.
good parenting, child care, and a stable home environment
: See, for example, Belsky et al., “Vulnerability Genes or Plasticity Genes?”, 5. See also Pluess and Belsky, “Differential Susceptibility to Rearing Experience: The Case of Childcare,” 397.

35.
kind, conscientious
: Aron,
The Highly Sensitive Child
.

36.
They don't necessarily turn into class presidents
: Author interview with Jay Belsky, April 28, 2010.

37.
world of rhesus monkeys
: Stephen J. Suomi, “Early Determinants of Behaviour: Evidence from Primate Studies,”
British Medical Bulletin
53, no. 1 (1997): 170–84 (“high-reactive infants cross-fostered to nurturant females actually appeared to be behaviourally precocious.… These individuals became especially adept at recruiting and retaining other group members as allies in response to agonistic encounters and, perhaps as a consequence, they subsequently rose to and maintained top positions in the group's dominance hierarchy.… Clearly, high-reactivity need not always be associated with adverse short- and long-term outcomes,” p. 180). See also this video on the
Atlantic Monthly
website: (
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/12/the-science-of-success/7761/
), in which Suomi tells us that “the monkeys who had that same short allele and grew up with good mothers had no problems whatsoever. They turned out as well or better than monkeys who had the other version of this gene.” (Note also that the link between the short allele of the SERT gene and depression in humans is well discussed but somewhat controversial.)

38.
thought to be associated with high reactivity and introversion
: Seth J. Gillihan et al., “Association Between Serotonin Transporter Genotype and
Extraversion,”
Psychiatric Genetics
17, no. 6 (2007): 351–54. See also M. R. Munafo et al., “Genetic Polymorphisms and Personality in Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,”
Molecular Psychiatry
8 (2003): 471–84. And see Cecilie L. Licht et al., “Association Between Sensory Processing Sensitivity and the 5-HTTLPR Short/Short Genotype.”

39.
has speculated that these high-reactive monkeys
: Dobbs, “The Science of Success.”

40.
adolescent girls with the short allele of the SERT gene …
less
anxiety
on calm days
: Belsky et al., “Vulnerability Genes or Plasticity Genes?”

41.
this difference remains at age five
: Elaine Aron,
Psychotherapy and the Highly Sensitive Person
, 240–41.

42.
even more resistant than other kids
: Boyce, “Psychobiologic Reactivity to Stress and Childhood Respiratory Illnesses: Results of Two Prospective Studies.” See also W. Thomas Boyce and Bruce J. Ellis, “Biological Sensitivity to Context: I. Evolutionary-Developmental Theory of the Origins and Functions of Stress Reactivity,”
Development and Psychopathology
27 (2005): 283.

43.
The short allele of the SERT gene
: See Judith R. Homberg and Klaus-Peter Lesch, “Looking on the Bright Side of Serotonin Transporter Gene Variation,”
Biological Psychiatry
, 2010.

44.
“sailors are so busy—and wisely—looking under the water line”
: Belsky et al., “Vulnerability Genes or Plasticity Genes?”

45.
“The time and effort they invest”
: Author interview with Jay Belsky, April 28, 2010.