Build the Life You Want by Arthur C. Brooks & Oprah Winfrey

Author:Arthur C. Brooks & Oprah Winfrey [Brooks, Arthur C. & Winfrey, Oprah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

Challenge 1

your personality

By all accounts, Edgar Allan Poe was an introvert. Perhaps you are, too, and you consider that to be an inhibiting factor in the ability to make more friends and get closer to people. It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, what might have seemed like a high personality barrier to your developing more friendships might be your source of strength, if you use it right.

An easy measure of friendship health is the number of friends you have. You will read here or there that you need three friends, or five, or some other specific number to be happy. This is arbitrary, and it doesn’t take account of your specific personality. Here is the rule of thumb: you need at least one close friend besides your spouse, and there is an upper limit of perhaps ten friendships that you can realistically spend enough time on to regard them as close. The exact number depends on you, and especially whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. Neither is better or worse than the other if managed properly, but each personality can experience its own difficulties.

Psychologists see extroversion/introversion as one of the Big Five personality dimensions, along with agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.[12] The Big Five theory has been a staple of psychology since the 1980s, but the introvert-extrovert binary was first popularized in 1921 by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who posited that the two groups have different primary life goals.[13] The former, he thought, seek to establish autonomy and independence; the latter seek union with others. Those stereotypes have persisted to this day.

The German-born psychologist Hans Eysenck further developed Jung’s theory in the 1960s, arguing that our genetics determine our relative extroversion.[14] He believed that cortical arousal—that is, the brain’s level of alertness—was more difficult to achieve for extroverts than introverts, so the former seek stimulation in the company of others, ideally the fresh company of new people.[15] Subsequent research has shown mixed results on Eysenck’s specific theory, but has found clear cognitive differences between the groups.[16]

In general, extroverts are happier than introverts. In 2001, a group of Oxford scholars broke a sample of survey respondents into four groups: happy extroverts, unhappy extroverts, happy introverts, and unhappy introverts.[17] The happy extroverts outnumbered the happy introverts by about two to one. One common explanation for the happiness differential between introverts and extroverts follows from stereotypes like Jung’s and Eysenck’s: humans are inherently social animals, so contact brings happiness; extroverts seek out contact, so they are happier.

Extroverts also have a natural edge in enthusiasm—“a passionate state of mind,” according to one famous psychoanalyst in the 1960s—which is one of the elements of personality most closely associated with happiness.[18] Enthusiasm about life’s events leads to higher enjoyment and a better mood. It also lowers the tendency to withdraw socially.

The fact that introverts prefer solitude and often struggle with sociability doesn’t mean that they don’t need friends. It just means that new friendships can be harder for them to establish.

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