Started: [[2024-07-07]] Finished: [[2024-08-20]] Averaged 6 pages a day. ## New words - misanthrope - a person who hates and avoids other people - ambivert - a person having characteristics of both extrovert and introvert - phalanx - 1. A compact or close-knit body of people.  1. A formation of infantry carrying overlapping shields and long spears, developed by Philip II of Macedon and used by Alexander the Great.  2. A bone of a finger or toe. - opine - hold and state as one's opinion. - "‘The man is a genius,’ he opined" - cerebral - If you describe someone or something as cerebral, you mean that they are intellectual rather than emotional. - extemporaneously - in an extemporaneous way (= done or said without any preparation or thought): - speak extemporaneously: She is used to speaking extemporaneously on highly scientific subjects. ## Notes ### Small notes - Shyness and introversion are two different things. P12 - > A popular [[1926]] sex guide observed, “[[homosexuals]] are invariably timid, shy, retiring.” P25 - At [[37signals]] they have “No-Talk Thursdays” where employees aren’t allowed to talk to one another so they can focus on work. P86 - “Overarousal interferes with attention and short-term memory”. Introverts are aroused more easily than extroverts (and we’re talking about brain, not sexual arousal here). That’s why they might remember less of a conversation in a busy, noisy environment than an extrovert. P126 - “When someone offers you a beer, they’re really saying ‘hi, have a glass of extroversion’” — Brian Little. P143 - > “A 2010 University of Michigan study shows that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than they were thirty years ago, with much of the drop having occurred since 2000. (The study's authors speculate that the decline in empathy is related to the prevalence of social media, reality TV, and "hyper-competitiveness.")” P141 - Blushing is largely uncontrollable and difficult to fake. That makes it useful in judging what people are feeling. P144 - Extroverts seem to get a bigger hit of dopamine from dopamine-rewarding activities. - There’s a test down on students worldwide every 4 years called TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). Asian countries like Korea, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan consistently rank highest. There’s many reasons for that. But one is ‘quiet persistence’. The exam has a long winded personal questionnaire that gives students no extra points for completing. However, the nations whose students often fill out the questionnaire also tend to have students who do well in the test. “In other words, excellent students seem not only to possess the cognitive ability to solve math and science problems, but also to have a useful personality characteristic: quiet persistence.” p201 - People who have [[Botox]], which limits their ability to frown and make angry faces, are less anger-prone. The very act of frowning triggers the amygdala to process negative emotions. p233 ([citation](https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/why-darwin-would-have-loved-botox)) - Introverts are often “recoiling from novelty or overstimulation, not from human contact.” But from the outside it nearly always looks like the later. P248 - A common theme is that for extroverts school is often the best time of their life. And for introverts it’s often the worst. P262 - “ The secret of life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some it’s a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. - “Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches.” P266Introverts are often “recoiling from novelty or overstimulation, not from human contact.” But from the outside it nearly always looks like the later. P248 - A common theme is that for extroverts school is often the best time of their life. And for introverts it’s often the worst. P262 - “ The secret of life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some is a Broadway spotlight; for other - “Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches.” P266 ### 1. Introduction #### [[Rosa Parks]] Despite being known for a defiant act that required bravery, Rosa Parks was known to be timid and shy. She was described as soft-spoken, sweet and small in stature. I didn’t realise that the [[Montgomery Improvement Association]] arranged a boycott of the city buses after the Parks incident. It lasted 381 days. P1-2 Parks had had a run-in with the bus driver of the bus she refused to move out of the seat of 12 years prior. He was a known bigot and she strongly disliked him: > Not many people know that twelve years before her showdown with the Montgomery bus driver, she’d had another encounter with the same man, possibly on the very same bus. It was a November afternoon in 1943, and Parks had entered through the front door of the bus because the back was too crowded. The driver, a well-known bigot named James Blake, told her to use the rear and started to push her off the bus. Parks asked him not to touch her. She would leave on her own, she said quietly. “Get off my bus,” Blake sputtered in response. > > Parks complied, but not before deliberately dropping her purse on her way out and sitting on a “white” seat as she picked it up. “Intuitively, she had engaged in an act of passive resistance, a precept named by Leo Tolstoy and embraced by Mahatma Gandhi,” writes the historian Douglas Brinkley in a wonderful biography of Parks. It was more than a decade before King popularized the idea of nonviolence and long before Parks’s own training in civil disobedience, but, Brinkley writes, “such principles were a perfect match for her own personality.” > > Parks was so disgusted by Blake that she refused to ride his bus for the next twelve years. On the day she finally did, the day that turned her into the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” she got back on that bus, according to Brinkley, only out of sheer absentmindedness. ### 2. The Rise of the “Mighty Likeable Fellow” #### [[Dale Carnegie]] Dale Carnegie changed his last name to that from “Carnagey” to evoke Andrew Carnegie. He was from a rural farming background and scared of being poor like his parents. He wasn’t good at public speaking at first, but with time got good at it and started winning contests. He started teaching a public speaking class at the YMCA. He asked the $2 a session. The director refused to pay that kind of money, thinking that it’s not a class that will be popular. It becomes an overnight sensation. P20 > Carnegie's metamorphosis from farmboy to salesman to public-speaking icon is also the story of the rise of the Extrovert Ideal. Carnegie's journey reflected a cultural evolution that reached a tipping point around the turn of the twentieth century, changing forever who we are and whom we admire, how we act at job interviews and what we look for in an employee, how we court our mates and raise our children. America had shifted from what the influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality-and opened up a Pandora's Box of personal anxieties from which we would never quite recover. > > In the Culture of Character, the ideal self was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private. The word personality didn't exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of "having a good personality" was not widespread until the twentieth. > > But when they embraced the Culture of Personality, Americans started to focus on how others perceived them. They became captivated by people who were bold and entertaining. "The social role demanded of all in the new Culture of Personality was that of a performer," Susman famously wrote. "Every American was to become a performing self." P21 #### Extrovert Ideal According to the cultural historian [[Warren Susman]] America changed from the Culture of Character to the Culture of Personality. The word ‘personality’ didn’t exist in English until the [[1700s]]. One of the easiest ways to track this transition is via self help books, always popular in America. Pre-1920 they were mostly about ‘character’. The modesty of Abraham Lincoln was an ideal. In 1889 there was a manual called “Character: The Grandest Thing in the World”. In it a shop girl gave money to a homeless man and ran off because anyone could see her in the act. But by 1920 self help books were less about inner virtue and more about outer charm. P20 #### [[Inferiority Complex]] The Inferiority Complex (IC) was one of the first ‘fashionable’ mental conditions. It started to be retroactively applied to everyone from [[Abraham Lincoln]] to [[Napoleon]]. It was used as an all purpose explanation for many problem areas in life. P26 > The field of psychology also began to grapple with the pressure to project confidence. In the 1920s an influential psychologist named Gordon Allport created a diagnostic test of "Ascendance-Submission" to measure social dominance. "Our current civilization," observed Allport, who was himself shy and reserved, "seems to place a premium upon the aggressive person, the 'go-getter."" In 1921, [[Carl Jung]] noted the newly precarious status of introversion. Jung himself saw introverts as "educators and promoters of culture" who showed the value of "the interior life which is so painfully wanting in our civilization.” But he acknowledged that their “reserve and apparently groundless embarrassment naturally arouse all the current prejudices against this type. > > But nowhere was the need to appear self-assured more apparent than in a new concept in psychology called the inferiority complex. The IC, as it became known in the popular press, was developed in the 1920s by a Viennese psychologist named Alfred Adler to describe feelings of inadequacy and their consequences. "Do you feel insecure?" inquired the cover of Adler's best-selling book, Understanding Human Nature. "Are you fainthearted? Are you submissive?" Adler explained that all infants and small children feel inferior, living as they do in a world of adults and older siblings. In the normal process of growing up they learn to direct these feelings into pursuing their goals. But if things go awry as they mature, they might be saddled with the dreaded IC-a grave liability in an increasingly competitive society. > > The idea of wrapping their social anxieties in the neat package of a psychological complex appealed to many Americans. The Inferiority Complex became an all-purpose explanation for problems in many areas of life, ranging from love to parenting to career. In 1924, Collier's ran a story about a woman who was afraid to marry the man she loved for fear that he had an IC and would never amount to anything. Another popular magazine ran an article called "Your Child and That Fashionable Complex," explaining to moms what could cause an IC in kids and how to prevent or cure one. Everyone had an IC, it seemed; to some it was, paradoxically enough, a mark of distinction. Lincoln, Napoleon, Teddy Roosevelt, Edison, and Shakespeare-all had suffered from ICs. (Page 26) #### Parenting and teaching for personality In the [[1920s]] schools and parents started aiming to improve children’s personalities. It was all about having a ‘winning personality’. And shyness and introversion wasn’t part of that. #### It’s not enough to be brilliant In the [[1950s]] Universities weren’t just focused on test results. The person had to be ‘well-rounded’, a “pretty gregarious, active type” who has done “plenty of extracurricular activities. How true this is today, I don’t know. But it’s still presumed to be his way. When I was young lots of people did a [[Duke of Edinburgh Award]]. Not because they wanted to, but because it would make their TV “stand out”. Based on the number of kids I see doing the award each time I go to [[Ashridge]] I presume this is still the case. I remember also being told that the fact that I played rugby would help my cause when it came to jobs and University admissions. #### Europe and America is more extroverted Apparently there’s more extroverts in Europe and America. The believed reason is that their populations descend largely from migrants. Immigrants were more extroverted than average, and they passed these genes onto their kids. ### 2. The Myth of Charismatic Leadership #### [[Harvard Business School]] > Between 2004 and 2006, 20% of the top three executives at the Fortune 500 companies were Harvard Business School graduates. P44 Nearly everything at HBS is done in groups. Students are put into “Learning Teams” with other students. And when you’re preparing for a class you do it in a group, not alone. HBS is a very extroverted place. And being social in and out of class is a big part of it. For introverted students, it can prove tough. It feels performative and exhausting. But at the end of the day, HBS does prepare students for the real world in this regard. Business in the real world is a bit sociability, peacocking and pitching: > "Socializing here is an extreme sport," one of Don's friends tells me. "People go out all the time. If you don't go out one night, the next day people will ask, 'Where were you?' I go out at night like it's my job." Don has noticed that the people who organize social events-happy hours, dinners, drinking fests-are at the top of the social hierarchy. "The professors tell us that our classmates are the people who will go to our weddings," says Don. "If you leave HBS without having built an extensive social network, it's like you failed your HBS experience." > > By the time Don falls into bed at night, he's exhausted. And sometimes he wonders why, exactly, he should have to work so hard at being outgoing. Don is Chinese-American, and recently he worked a summer job in China. He was struck by how different the social norms were, and how much more comfortable he felt. In China there was more emphasis on listening, on asking questions rather than holding forth, on putting others' needs first. In the United States, he feels, conversation is about how effective you are at turning your experiences into stories, whereas a Chinese person might be concerned with taking up too much of the other person's time with inconsequential information. > > "That summer, I said to myself, 'Now I know why these are my people,'" he says. > > But that was China, this is Cambridge, Massachusetts. And if one judges HBS by how well it prepares students for the "real world," it seems to be doing an excellent job. After all, Don Chen will graduate into a business culture in which verbal fluency and sociability are the two most important predictors of success, according to a Stanford Business School study. P47 #### The bus to Abilene The [[Abilene paradox]] is a collective fallacy where people in a group agree on an action that they individually disagree with, but that they go along with because they believe the group as a whole wants it, despite the vast majority of the group not wanting it. > A well-known study out of UC Berkeley by organizational behavior professor Philip Tetlock found that television pundits—that is, people who earn their livings by holding forth confidently on the basis of limited information—make worse predictions about political and economic trends than they would by random chance. And the very worst prognosticators tend to be the most famous and the most confident—the very ones who would be considered natural leaders in an HBS classroom. The U.S. Army has a name for a similar phenomenon: “the Bus to Abilene.” “Any army officer can tell you what that means,” Colonel (Ret.) Stephen J. Gerras, a professor of behavioral sciences at the U.S. Army War College, told Yale Alumni Magazine in 2008. “It’s about a family sitting on a porch in Texas on a hot summer day, and somebody says, ‘I’m bored. Why don’t we go to Abilene?’ When they get to Abilene, somebody says, ‘You know, I didn’t really want to go.’ And the next person says, ‘I didn’t want to go—I thought you wanted to go,’ and so on. Whenever you’re in an army group and somebody says, ‘I think we’re all getting on the bus to Abilene here,’ that is a red flag. You can stop a conversation with it. It is a very powerful artifact of our culture.” > > The “Bus to Abilene” anecdote reveals our tendency to follow those who initiate action—any action. We are similarly inclined to empower dynamic speakers. One highly successful venture capitalist who is regularly pitched by young entrepreneurs told me how frustrated he is by his colleagues’ failure to distinguish between good presentation skills and true leadership ability. “I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they’re good talkers, but they don’t have good ideas,” he said. “It’s so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They’re valuable traits, but we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.” #### Good leaders have little 'charisma' [[Peter Drucker]] said that good leaders can have lots of different personality types. But the one thing he noticed the good ones lack is 'charisma': > “Among the most effective leaders I have encountered and worked with in half a century, some locked themselves into their office and others were ultra-gregarious. Some were quick and impulsive, while others studied the situation and took forever to come to a decision.… The one and only personality trait the effective ones I have encountered did have in common was something they did not have: they had little or no ‘charisma’ and little use either for the term or what it signifies.” – [[Peter Drucker]] #### The introverted leader vs. the extroverted leader [[Wharton School]] management professor Adam Grant looked at the outcome of a team having an introverted leader versus an extroverted one. He discovered that teams that are made of mostly passive members perform better under extroverts. But teams made up more of those who were more proactive did better with introverted leaders. > His hypothesis was that extroverted leaders enhance group performance when employees are passive, but that introverted leaders are more effective with proactive employees... > > In the first study, Grant and his colleagues analyzed data from one of the five biggest pizza chains in the United States. They discovered that the weekly profits of the stores managed by extroverts were 16 percent higher than the profits of those led by introverts—but only when the employees were passive types who tended to do their job without exercising initiative. Introverted leaders had the exact opposite results. When they worked with employees who actively tried to improve work procedures, their stores outperformed those led by extroverts by more than 14 percent. > > [...] Why did these leaders’ effectiveness turn on whether their employees were passive or proactive? Grant says it makes sense that introverts are uniquely good at leading initiative-takers. Because of their inclination to listen to others and lack of interest in dominating social situations, introverts are more likely to hear and implement suggestions. Having benefited from the talents of their followers, they are then likely to motivate them to be even more proactive. Introverted leaders create a virtuous circle of proactivity, in other words. In the T-shirt-folding study, the team members reported perceiving the introverted leaders as more open and receptive to their ideas, which motivated them to work harder and to fold more shirts. > > Extroverts, on the other hand, can be so intent on putting their own stamp on events that they risk losing others’ good ideas along the way and allowing workers to lapse into passivity. “Often the leaders end up doing a lot of the talking,” says Francesca Gino, “and not listening to any of the ideas that the followers are trying to provide.” But with their natural ability to inspire, extroverted leaders are better at getting results from more passive workers. ### 3. When Collaborations Kills Creativity #### Studying in solitude is special Studying and practising alone is important, and the hours spent doing it can be an indicator of success at something. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues did a study on violinists. They asked their music teachers to put them into “best”, “good” and “average”. They then looked at how many hours these students spent time practising alone. The results were clear. The “best” group spent 24.3 hours a day practising alone. The “average” group spent 9.3 hours a day. They found similar effects of solitude when looking at other performers, such as chess. Why: > What's so magical about solitude? In many fields, Ericsson told me, it's only when you're alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful—they're counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them. > > Deliberate Practice is best conducted alone for several reasons. It takes intense concentration, and other people can be distracting. It requires deep motivation, often self-generated. But most important, it involves working on the task that's most challenging to you personally. Only when you're alone, Ericsson told me, can you "go directly to the part that's challenging to you. If you want to improve what you're doing, you have to be the one who generates the move. Imagine a group class you're the one generating the move only a small percentage of the time”. P81 #### Programmers work better in peace Consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister did a study called Coding War Games to find the best of 600 programmers at 92 different companies. The results showed the experience made no difference in who did the best, quickest work. Salary didn’t make a difference really either. Nor time spent trying to solve it. It was mystery. But programmers from the same companies performed at more or less the same level – even though they hadn’t worked together. The ones who did best worked at companies who gave them the most privacy, space and least amount of interruptions. P83-84 - What the programmers said: - Workspace was acceptably private: - Best performers: 62% - Worst performers: 19% - People often interrupted them needlessly: - Best performers: 38% - Worst performers: 76% #### Open place offices are terrible > A mountain of recent data on open-plan offices from many different industries corroborates the results of the games. Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They're associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure. Open-plan workers are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and elevated stress levels and to get the flu; they argue more with their colleagues; they worry about coworkers eavesdropping on their phone calls and spying on their computer screens. They have fewer personal and confidential conversations with colleagues. They're often subject to loud and uncontrollable noise, which raises heart rates; releases cortisol, the body's fight-or-flight "stress" hormone; and makes people socially distant, quick to anger, aggressive, and slow to help others. p84 #### [[Franz Kafka]] on how you have to work alone > “You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough” – Franz Kafka #### [[Brainstorming]] doesn't work An advertising executive named Alex Osborn popularised(?) brainstorming. He felt his employees weren’t creative enough. He thought they had good ideas, but were loath to share them for fear of judgement. So he came up with the four rules of brainstorming: 1. Don’t judge or criticise ideas. 2. Be freewheeling. The wilder the idea, the better. 3. Go for quantity. The more ideas you have, the better. 4. Build on the ideas of fellow group members. He said it worked in helping people and groups produce better ideas. And it’s still used often today. But it doesn’t actually seem to work. A study in 1963 by Marvin Dunnette at the University of Minnesota that was done on 48 3M executives and scientists showed that they produced more ideas when they brainstormed alone instead of in a group. The quality of their ideas were also ranked. And the quality of ideas thought up alone were of equal or greater quality than the group ones. P87-88 The reasons why group brainstorming is worse is likely because of: - ‘Social loafing’. Some people tend to sit back and let others do the work. - ‘Production blocking’. Only one person can talk or produce an idea at once. - ‘Evaluation apprehension’. The fear or looking stupid in front of one’s peers. However: > The one exception to this is online brainstorming. Groups brainstorming electronically, when properly managed, not only do better than individuals, research shows; the larger the group, the better it performs. The same is true of academic research-professors who work together electronically, from different physical locations, tend to produce research that is more influential than those either working alone or collaborating face-to-face. P89 ### Is Temperament Destiny? #### Low-reactive and high-reactive children prefers extroversion and introversion Scientist Jerome Kegan and his team did a longitudinal study in which he followed the development of children from infancy through adolescence, documenting their physiologies and personalities along the way. He did a series of tests on children when they were infants, two, four, seven and eleven years old. The tests would be things like balloons popping, meeting strangers or clowns. Things like their heart rate, blood pressure and more was then monitored. If the infants responded a lot, they were put in the high reactive category. If they didn’t and were quite casual and calm, they were put in the low reactive category. The study showed that the infants who were high-reactive were much more likely to become introverted. And the low-reactive types, extroverted. Kegan’s team monitored heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature as it’s believed they’re controlled by the [[amygdala]]. “Located deep in the limbic system, an ancient brain network found even in primitive animals like mice and rats. This network – sometimes called the emotional brain – underlies many of the basic instincts we share with these animals, such as appetite, sex drive, and fear.” The high-reactive types had a more sensitive amygdala. P98-102 #### High-reactive has downsides and upsides High-reactive kids are more sensitive to things like marital tension, death and abuse. If they come across them they’re more likely than low-reactive types to get depression and anxiety. However, when raised in stable, loving homes, they’re around 25% less likely than low-reactive kids to develop depression. Also: > High-reactive children raised in supportive environments are even more resistant than other kids to the common cold and other respiratory illnesses, but get sick more easily if they're raised in stressful conditions. P111-112 ### Beyond Temperament #### Introverts are more sensitive to things like noise There was a study done where introverts and extroverts had to play a challenging word game where they had to learn the principle of the game via trial and error. And all whilst wearing headphones that emitted random bursts of noise. They were asked to set the volume “just right”. Extroverts chose 72 decibels. Introverts 55 decibels. When the introverts had to do the word game at the extroverts preferred noise level they underperformed, taking 9.1 trials rather than 5.8. Full passage: > In another famous study, introverts and extroverts were asked to play a challenging word game in which they had to learn, through trial and error, the governing principle of the game. While playing, they wore headphones that emitted random bursts of noise. They were asked to adjust the volume of their headsets up or down to the level that was "just right." On average, the extroverts chose a noise level of 72 decibels, while the introverts selected only 55 decibels. When working at the volume that they had selected-loud for the extroverts, quiet for the introverts-the two types were about equally aroused (as measured by their heart rates and other indicators). They also played equally well. > > When the introverts were asked to work at the noise level preferred by the extroverts, and vice versa, everything changed. Not only were the introverts over-aroused by the loud noise, but they also underperformed-taking an average of 9.1 trials rather than 5.8 to learn the game. The opposite was true for the extroverts-they were under-aroused (and possibly bored) by the quieter conditions, and took an average of 7.3 trials, compared with the 5.4 they'd averaged under noisier conditions. P124 ### 6. “Franklin was a politician, but Eleanor spoke out of conscience” #### [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] - Franklin was an extrovert. Eleanor an introvert. He was the politician. She was conscientious one. - As Franklin climbed the political ladder Eleanor was required to do more and more social events. She strongly disliked this. - Eleanor hired a social secretary named [[Lucy Mercer]] to help her with her engagements. Lucy was lively and outgoing. She and Franklin started a lifelong affair. Eleanor found out, but remained in the marriage. Albeit with the romantic side of the relationship gone. P130-133 - Eleanor had a very strong sense of feeling for people’s suffering. And historian Geoff Ward said “she kept at him on issues which he might, in the rush of things, have wanted to overlook.” P139 - With time she learnt to love public life. She was the first First Lady to hold a press conference, address a national convention, write a newspaper column, and appear on talk radio. P139 #### Animals are shy too There’s plenty of animal species who have extroverted and introverted types. The former have a “just do it” approach and often survive when times are harsh. They’ll go for the prey without much thought. But later do better when times are good. They’ll take their time, so are less likely to get eaten themselves. The introvert types are useful in a herd: > "Suppose a herd of antelope... has a few members who are constantly stopping their grazing to use their keen senses to watch for predators. Herds with such sensitive, watchful individuals would survive better." — Elaine Aron In the species that have both types, about 20% are the “introverted” kind. P146 #### Committees and politicians are often extroverted Committees and politicians are often extroverted, which can make getting them to take notice of subtle issues difficult. When [[Al Gore]] (who is an introvert) organised the first hearings on [[global warming]] in Congress in the [[1970s]] no one paid attention. The members of Congress would have likely have been made up of the low-reactive babies, just all grown up. They need intense stimulation to get a response out of them. So the theoretical of global warming didn’t trigger any interest or response from them. Even a receding glacier wouldn’t do much to them. It was only when Al Gore packaged his concerns on global warming into a Hollywood documentary called [[An Inconvenient Truth (2006)]] that Congress paid some attention. P150-151 #### Introverts do small talk last Extroverts start conversations with small talk before considering going to “deeper” subjects. Introverts are the reverse. They prefer those deeper subjects first: > It's not that there's no small talk, observes Strickland, the leader of the gathering. It's that it comes not at the beginning of conversations but at the end. In most settings, people use small talk as a way of relaxing into a new relationship, and only once they're comfortable do they connect more seriously. Sensitive people seem to do the reverse. They "enjoy small talk only after they've gone deep," says Strickland. "When sensitive people are in environments that nurture their authenticity, they laugh and chitchat just as much as anyone else." p152 ### 8. Soft Power #### [[Mahatma Gandhi|Gandhi]] He was incredibly shy as a youth. And even when he became a leader later in life he disliked giving speeches. He was good at choosing his battles. If there was going to be no benefit to resisting something, he wouldn’t. He’d bide his time for the right issue or the right moment. > “I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.” — Gandhi ### 10. The Communication Gap #### Reading social cues Introverts and extroverts are just as good at reading social cues. However, introverts aren’t as good whilst *in* a social encounter. They’re good at reading social cues from afar. But they seem to find there to be too much going whilst in an actual conversation, and they struggle. It’s only when they’re played back a recording or think about it later that they might register these social cues. P236-237 ![[IMG_3931.jpeg]] #### How introverts and extroverts talk One study found that introverts tend to focus on one or two serious subjects whilst talking to one another. And they often talked about problems or issues. Whereas extroverts would cover more subjects, and they’d be lighter in nature. But one interesting thing is that when the two types talk to the other they really like it. The introverts like how the extroverts take the lead and let them ‘rest’. And the extroverts like how the introverts will deeply listen to them and they felt freer to confide in them. P239 ### 11. On Cobblers and Generals #### Helping your introverted child Finding out from your introverted child how they’re finding school is important, but can be difficult. “Many kids won’t share experiences that made them feel ashamed.” It’s easier for younger kids to open up, so nurture this within them early. Don’t just say “how was your day?” or “what did you do today?” Say “do you like your teacher?” And “what do you not like so much?”. “Try to avoid asking, in an overly bright voice of parents everywhere, “Did you have fun in school today?” She’ll sense how important it is that the answer is yes. And sometimes right after school or at the dinner table is a bad time to ask. They need time to decompress and process. Cozy, relaxed moments in the evening can be a better time. During bath time or reading time. P258 ## Highlights > “A species in which everyone was General Patton would not succeed, any more than would a race in which everyone was Vincent van Gogh. I prefer to think that the planet needs athletes, philosophers, sex symbols, painters, scientists; it needs the warmhearted, the hardhearted, the coldhearted, and the weakhearted. It needs those who can devote their lives to studying how many droplets of water are secreted by the salivary glands of dogs under which circumstances, and it needs those who can capture the passing impression of cherry blossoms in a fourteen-syllable poem or devote twenty-five pages to the dissection of a small boy's feelings as he lies in bed in the dark waiting for his mother to kiss him goodnight.” – [[Allen Shawn]] (Page 1) *** > Poets and philosophers have been thinking about introverts and extroverts since the dawn of recorded time. Both personality types appear in the Bible and in the writings of Greek and Roman physicians, and some evolutionary psychologists say that the history of these types reaches back even farther than that: the animal kingdom also boasts "introverts" and "extroverts," as we'll see, from fruit flies to pumpkinseed fish to rhesus monkeys. As with other complementary pairings-masculinity and femininity, East and West, liberal and conservative-humanity would be unrecognizable, and vastly diminished, without both personality styles. > > Take the partnership of Rosa Parks and [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]: a formidable orator refusing to give up his seat on a segregated bus wouldn't have had the same effect as a modest woman who'd clearly prefer to keep silent but for the exigencies of the situation. (Page 3) *** > It makes sense that so many introverts hide even from themselves. We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal—the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight. The archetypal extrovert prefers action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. He favors quick decisions, even at the risk of being wrong. She works well in teams and socializes in groups. We like to think that we value individuality, but all too often we admire one type of individual-the kind who's comfortable "putting himself out there." Sure, we allow technologically gifted loners who launch companies in garages to have any personality they please, but they are the exceptions, not the rule, and our tolerance extends mainly to those who get fabulously wealthy or hold the promise of doing so. > > 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 under 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. (Page 4) *** > [[Dale Carnegie]]'s metamorphosis from farmboy to salesman to public-speaking icon is also the story of the rise of the Extrovert Ideal. Carnegie's journey reflected a cultural evolution that reached a tipping point around the turn of the twentieth century, changing forever who we are and whom we admire, how we act at job interviews and what we look for in an employee, how we court our mates and raise our children. America had shifted from what the influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality-and opened up a Pandora's Box of personal anxieties from which we would never quite recover. > > In the Culture of Character, the ideal self was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private. The word personality didn't exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of "having a good personality" was not widespread until the twentieth. > > But when they embraced the Culture of Personality, Americans started to focus on how others perceived them. They became captivated by people who were bold and entertaining. "The social role demanded of all in the new Culture of Personality was that of a performer," Susman famously wrote. "Every American was to become a performing self." (Page 21) *** > Despite the hopeful tone of this piece, child guidance experts of the 1920s set about helping children to develop winning personalities. Until then, these professionals had worried mainly about sexually precocious girls and delinquent boys, but now psychologists, social workers, and doctors focused on the everyday child with the "maladjusted personality", particularly shy children. Shyness could lead to dire outcomes, they warned, from alcoholism to suicide, while an outgoing personality would bring social and financial success. The experts advised parents to socialize their children well and schools to change their emphasis from booklearning to "assisting and guiding the developing personality." Educators took up this mantle enthusiastically. By 1950 the slogan of the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth was "A healthy personality for every child." > > Well-meaning parents of the midcentury agreed that quiet was unacceptable and gregariousness ideal for both girls and boys. Some discouraged their children from solitary and serious hobbies, like classical music, that could make them unpopular. They sent their kids to school at increasingly young ages, where the main assignment was learning to socialize. Introverted children were often singled out as problem cases (a situation familiar to anyone with an introverted child today). > > William Whyte's The Organization Man, a 1956 best-seller, describes how parents and teachers conspired to overhaul the personalities of quiet children. "Johnny wasn't doing so well at school," Whyte recalls a mother telling him. "The teacher explained to me that he was doing fine on his lessons but that his social adjustment was not as good as it might be. He would pick just one or two friends to play with, and sometimes he was happy to remain by himself." Parents welcomed such interventions, said Whyte. "Save for a few odd parents, most are grateful that the schools work so hard to offset tendencies to introversion and other suburban abnormalities." > > Parents caught up in this value system were not unkind, or even obtuse; they were only preparing their kids for the "real world." When these children grew older and applied to college and later for their first jobs, they faced the same standards of gregariousness. University admissions officers looked not for the most exceptional candidates, but for the most extroverted. Harvard's provost Paul Buck declared in the late 1940s that Harvard should reject the "sensitive, neurotic" type and the "intellectually over-stimulated" in favor of boys of the "healthy extrovert kind." In 1950, Yale's president, Alfred Whitney Griswold, declared that the ideal Yalie was not a "beetle-browed, highly specialized intellectual, but a well-rounded man." Another dean told Whyte that "in screening applications from secondary schools he felt it was only common sense to take into account not only what the college wanted, but what, four later, corporations' recruiters would want. "They like a pretty gregarious, active type,' he said. 'So we find that the best man is the one who's had an 80 or 85 average in school and plenty of extracurricular activity. We see little use for the "brilliant" introvert. > > This college dean grasped very well that the model employee of the midcentury—even one whose job rarely involved dealing with the public, like a research scientist in a corporate lab-was not a deep thinker but a hearty extrovert with a salesman's personality. "Customarily, whenever the word brilliant is used," explains Whyte, "it either precedes the word 'but' (e.g., 'We are all for brilliance, but...') or is coupled with such words as erratic, eccentric, introvert, screwball, etc." "These fellows will be having contact with other people in the organization," said one 1950s executive about the hapless scientists in his employ, "and it helps if they make a good impression." > > The scientist's job was not only to do the research but also to help sell it, and that required a hail-fellow-well-met demeanor., At IBM, a corporation that embodied the ideal of the company man, the sales force gathered each morning to belt out the company anthem, "Ever Onward," and to harmonize on the "Selling IBM" song, set to the tune of "Singin' in the Rain." "Selling IBM," it began, "we're selling IBM. What a glori ous feeling, the world is our friend." The ditty built to a stirring close: "We're always in trim, we work with a vim. We're selling, just selling, IBM." > > Then they went off to pay their sales calls, proving that the admissions people at Harvard and Yale were probably right: only a certain type of fellow could possibly have been interested in kicking off his mornings this way. > > The rest of the organization men would have to manage as best they could. And if the history of pharmaceutical consumption is any indication, many buckled under such pressures. In 1955 a drug company named Carter-Wallace released the anti-anxiety drug Miltown, reframing anxiety as the natural product of a society that was both dog-eat-dog and relentlessly social. Miltown was marketed to men and immediately became the fastest-selling pharmaceutical in American history, according to the social historian Andrea Tone. By 1956 one of every twenty Americans had tried it; by 1960 a third of all prescriptions from U.S. doctors were for Miltown or a similar drug called Equanil. "ANXIETY AND TENSION ARE THE COMMONPLACE OF THE AGE," read the Equanil ad. The 1960s tranquilizer Serentil followed with an ad campaign even more direct in its appeal to improve social performance. "FOR THE ANXIETY THAT COMES FROM NOT FITTING IN," it empathized. (Page 27) *** > Early Americans revered action and were suspicious of intellect, associating the life of the mind with the languid, ineffectual European aristocracy they had left behind. The 1828 presidential campaign pitted a former Harvard professor, [[John Quincy Adams]], against [[Andrew Jackson]], a forceful military hero. A Jackson campaign slogan tellingly distinguished the two: "John Quincy Adams who can write / And Andrew Jackson who can fight." > > The victor of that campaign? The fighter beat the writer, as the cultural historian Neal Gabler puts it. (John Quincy Adams, incidentally, is considered by political psychologists to be one of the few introverts in presidential history.) (Page 30) *** > The most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSMIV), the psychiatrist's bible of mental disorders, considers the fear of public speaking to be a -not an annoyance, not a disadvantage, but a disease—if it inpathologyterferes with the sufferer's job performance. "It's not enough," one senior manager at Eastman Kodak told the author Daniel Goleman, "to be able to sit at your computer excited about a fantastic regression analysis if you're squeamish about presenting those results to an executive group.” (Page 31) *** > "Socializing here is an extreme sport," one of Don's friends tells me. "People go out all the time. If you don't go out one night, the next day people will ask, 'Where were you?' I go out at night like it's my job." Don has noticed that the people who organize social events-happy hours, dinners, drinking fests-are at the top of the social hierarchy. "The professors tell us that our classmates are the people who will go to our weddings," says Don. "If you leave [[HBS]] without having built an extensive social network, it's like you failed your HBS experience." > > By the time Don falls into bed at night, he's exhausted. And sometimes he wonders why, exactly, he should have to work so hard at being outgoing. Don is Chinese-American, and recently he worked a summer job in China. He was struck by how different the social norms were, and how much more comfortable he felt. In China there was more emphasis on listening, on asking questions rather than holding forth, on putting others' needs first. In the United States, he feels, conversation is about how effective you are at turning your experiences into stories, whereas a Chinese person might be concerned with taking up too much of the other person's time with inconsequential information. > > "That summer, I said to myself, 'Now I know why these are my people,'" he says. > > But that was China, this is Cambridge, Massachusetts. And if one judges HBS by how well it prepares students for the "real world," it seems to be doing an excellent job. After all, Don Chen will graduate into a business culture in which verbal fluency and sociability are the two most important predictors of success, according to a Stanford Business School study. (Page 47) *** > Ericsson and his cohorts found similar effects of solitude when they studied other kinds of expert performers. "Serious study alone" is the strongest predictor of skill for tournament-rated chess players, for example; grandmasters typically spend a whopping five thousand hours almost five times as many hours as intermediate-level players-studying the game by themselves during their first ten years of learning to play. College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups. Even elite athletes in team sports often spend unusual amounts of time in solitary practice. > > What's so magical about solitude? In many fields, Ericsson told me, it's only when you're alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful—they're counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them. > > [[Deliberate Practice]] is best conducted alone for several reasons. It takes intense concentration, and other people can be distracting. It requires deep motivation, often self-generated. But most important, it involves working on the task that's most challenging to you personally. Only when you're alone, Ericsson told me, can you "go directly to the part that's challenging to you. If you want to improve what you're doing, you have to be the one who generates the move. Imagine a group classyou're the one generating the move only a small percentage of the time”. (Page 81) *** > A mountain of recent data on open-plan offices from many different industries corroborates the results of the games. Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They're associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure. Open-plan workers are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and elevated stress levels and to get the flu; they argue more with their colleagues; they worry about coworkers eavesdropping on their phone calls and spying on their computer screens. They have fewer personal and confidential conversations with colleagues. They're often subject to loud and uncontrollable noise, which raises heart rates; releases cortisol, the body's fight-or-flight "stress" hormone; and makes people socially distant, quick to anger, aggressive, and slow to help others. (Page 84) *** > Between 1951 and 1956, just as Osborn was promoting the power of group brainstorming, a psychologist named Solomon Asch conducted a series of now-famous experiments on the dangers of group influence. Asch gathered student volunteers into groups and had them take a vision test. He showed them a picture of three lines of varying lengths and asked questions about how the lines compared with one another: which was longer, which one matched the length of a fourth line, and so on. His questions were so simple that 95 percent of students answered every question correctly. > > But when Asch planted actors in the groups, and the actors confidently volunteered the same incorrect answer, the number of students who gave all correct answers plunged to 25 percent. That is, a staggering 75 percent of the participants went along with the group's wrong answer to at least one question. > > The Asch experiments demonstrated the power of conformity at exactly the time that Osborn was trying to release us from its chains. What they didn't tell us was why we were so prone to conform. What was going on in the minds of the kowtowers? Had their perception of the lines' lengths been altered by peer pressure, or did they knowingly give wrong answers for fear of being the odd one out? For decades, psychologists puzzled over this question. > > Today, with the help of brain-scanning technology, we may be getting closer to the answer. In 2005 an Emory University neuroscientist named Gregory Berns decided to conduct an updated version of Asch's experiments. Berns and his team recruited thirty-two volunteers, men and women between the ages of nineteen and forty-one. The volunteers played a game in which each group member was shown two different three-dimensional objects on a computer screen and asked to decide whether the first object could be rotated to match the second. The experimenters used an fMRI scanner to take snapshots of the volunteers' brains as they conformed to or broke with group opinion. > > The results were both disturbing and illuminating. First, they corroborated Asch's findings. When the volunteers played the game on their own, they gave the wrong answer only 13.8 percent of the time. > > But when they played with a group whose members gave unanimously wrong answers, they agreed with the group 41 percent of the time. But Berns's study also shed light on exactly why we're such conformists. When the volunteers played alone, the brain scans showed activity in a network of brain regions including the occipital cortex and parietal cortex, which are associated with visual and spatial perception, and in the frontal cortex, which is associated with conscious decision-making. But when they went along with their group's wrong answer, their brain activity revealed something very different. > > Remember, what Asch wanted to know was whether people conformed despite knowing that the group was wrong, or whether their perceptions had been altered by the group. If the former was true, Berns and his team reasoned, then they should see more brain activity in the decision-making prefrontal cortex. That is, the brain scans would pick up the volunteers deciding consciously to abandon their own beliefs to fit in with the group. But if the brain scans showed heightened activity in regions associated with visual and spatial perception, this would suggest that the group had somehow managed to change the individual's perceptions. > > That was exactly what happened-the conformists showed less brain activity in the frontal, decision-making regions and more in the areas of the brain associated with perception. Peer pressure, in other words, is not only unpleasant, but can actually change your view of a problem. > > These early findings suggest that groups are like mind-altering substances. If the group thinks the answer is A, you're much more likely to believe that A is correct, too. It's not that you're saying consciously, "Hmm, I'm not sure, but they all think the answer's A, so I'll go with that." Nor are you saying, "I want them to like me, so I'll just pretend that the answer's A." No, you are doing something much more unexpected-and dangerous. Most of Berns's volunteers reported having gone along with the group because "they thought that they had arrived serendipitously at the same correct answer." They were utterly blind, in other words, to how much their peers had influenced them. > > What does this have to do with social fear? Well, remember that the volunteers in the Asch and Berns studies didn't always conform. Sometimes they picked the right answer despite their peers' influence. And Berns and his team found something very interesting about these moments. They were linked to heightened activation in the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with upsetting emotions such as the fear of rejection. > > Berns refers to this as "the pain of independence," and it has serious implications. Many of our most important civic institutions, from elections to jury trials to the very idea of majority rule, depend on dissenting voices. But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think. (Page 90) *** > In another famous study, introverts and extroverts were asked to play a challenging word game in which they had to learn, through trial and error, the governing principle of the game. While playing, they wore headphones that emitted random bursts of noise. They were asked to adjust the volume of their headsets up or down to the level that was "just right." On average, the extroverts chose a noise level of 72 decibels, while the introverts selected only 55 decibels. When working at the volume that they had selected-loud for the extroverts, quiet for the introverts-the two types were about equally aroused (as measured by their heart rates and other indicators). They also played equally well. > > When the introverts were asked to work at the noise level preferred by the extroverts, and vice versa, everything changed. Not only were the introverts over-aroused by the loud noise, but they also underperformed-taking an average of 9.1 trials rather than 5.8 to learn the game. The opposite was true for the extroverts-they were under-aroused (and possibly bored) by the quieter conditions, and took an average of 7.3 trials, compared with the 5.4 they'd averaged under noisier conditions. (Page 124) *** > First Aron interviewed thirty-nine people who described themselves as being either introverted or easily overwhelmed by stimulation. She asked them about the movies they liked, their first memories, relationships with parents, friendships, love lives, creative activities, philosophical and religious views. Based on these interviews, she created a voluminous questionnaire that she gave to several large groups of people. Then she boiled their responses down to a constellation of twenty-seven attributes. She named the people who embodied these attributes "highly sensitive.'" > > Some of these twenty-seven attributes were familiar from Kagan and others' work. For example, highly sensitive people tend to be keen observers who look before they leap. They arrange their lives in ways that limit surprises. They're often sensitive to sights, sounds, smells, pain, coffee. They have difficulty when being observed (at work, say, or performing at a music recital) or judged for general worthiness (dating, job interviews). > > But there were also new insights. The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive (just as Aron's husband had described her). They dream vividly, and can often recall their dreams the next day. They love music, nature, art, physical beauty. They feel exceptionally strong emotions sometimes acute bouts of joy, but also sorrow, melancholy, and fear. > > Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments-both physical and emotional-unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others missanother person's shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly. (Page 136) *** > Human extroverts have more sex partners than introverts do-a boon to any species wanting to reproduce itself—but they commit more adultery and divorce more frequently, which is not a good thing for the children of all those couplings. Extroverts exercise more, but introverts suffer fewer accidents and traumatic injuries. Extroverts enjoy wider networks of social support, but commit more crimes. (Page 148) *** > It's not that there's no small talk, observes Strickland, the leader of the gathering. It's that it comes not at the beginning of conversations but at the end. In most settings, people use small talk as a way of relaxing into a new relationship, and only once they're comfortable do they connect more seriously. Sensitive people seem to do the reverse. They "enjoy small talk only after they've gone deep," says Strickland. "When sensitive people are in environments that nurture their authenticity, they laugh and chitchat just as much as anyone else." (Page 152) *** > Boykin Curry, a managing director of the investment firm Eagle Capital, who had front-row seats to the [[2007–2008 Financial Crisis]]. Too much power was concentrated in the hands of aggressive risk-takers. "For twenty years, the DNA of nearly every financial institution... morphed dangerously," he told Newsweek magazine at the height of the crash. "Each time someone at the table pressed for more leverage and more risk, the next few years proved them 'right.' These people were emboldened, they were promoted and they gained control of ever more capital. Meanwhile, anyone in power who hesitated, who argued for caution, was proved 'wrong.' The cautious types were increasingly intimidated, passed over for promotion. They lost their hold on capital. This happened every day in almost every financial institution, over and over, until we ended up with a very specific kind of person running things." (Page 168) *** > “I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.” — [[Gandhi]] *** > The key is to expose your child gradually to new situations and people-taking care to respect his limits, even when they seem extreme. This produces more-confident kids than either overprotection or pushing too hard. Let him know that his feelings are normal and natural, but also that there's nothing to be afraid of: "I know it can feel funny to play with someone you've never met, but I bet that boy would love to play trucks with you if you asked him." Go at your child's pace; don't rush him. If he's young, make the initial introductions with the other little boy if you have to. And stick around in the background or, when he's really little, with a gentle, supportive hand on his back-for as long as he seems to benefit from your presence. When he takes social risks, let him know you admire his efforts: "I saw you go up to those new kids yesterday. I know that can be difficult, and I'm proud of you.'" > > The same goes for new situations. Imagine a child who's more afraid of the ocean than are other kids the same age. Thoughtful parents recognize that this fear is natural and even wise; the ocean is indeed dangerous. But they don't allow her to spend the summer on the safety of the dunes, and neither do they drop her in the water and expect her to swim. Instead they signal that they understand her unease, while urging her to take small steps. Maybe they play in the sand for a few days with the ocean waves crashing at a safe distance. Then one day they approach the water's edge, perhaps with the child riding on a parent's shoulders. They wait for calm weather, or low tide, to immerse a toe, then a foot, then a knee. They don't rush; every small step is a giant stride in a child's world. When ultimately she learns to swim like a fish, she has reached a crucial turning point in her relationship not only with water but also with fear. > > Slowly your child will see that it's worth punching through her wall of discomfort to get to the fun on the other side. She'll learn how to do the punching by herself. As Dr. Kenneth Rubin, the director of the Center for Children, Relationships and Culture at the University of Maryland, writes, "If you're consistent in helping your young child learn to regulate his or her emotions and behaviors in soothing and supportive ways, something rather magical will begin to happen: in time, you might watch your daughter seem to be silently reassuring herself: 'Those kids are having fun, I can go over there.' He or she is learning to self-regulate fearfulness and wariness." > > If you want your child to learn these skills, don't let her hear you call her "shy": she'll believe the label and experience her nervousness as a fixed trait rather than an emotion she can control. She also knows full well that "shy" is a negative word in our society. Above all, do not shame her for her shyness. > > If you can, it's best to teach your child self-coaxing skills while he's still very young, when there's less stigma associated with social hesitancy. Be a role model by greeting strangers in a calm and friendly way, and by getting together with your own friends. Similarly, invite some of his classmates to your house. Let him know gently that when you're together with others, it's not OK to whisper or tug at your pants leg to communicate his needs; he needs to speak up. Make sure that his social encounters are pleasant by selecting kids who aren't overly aggressive and playgroups that have a friendly feel to them. Have your child play with younger kids if this gives him confidence, older kids if they inspire him. > > If he's not clicking with a particular child, don't force it; you want most of his early social experiences to be positive. Arrange for him to enter new social situations as gradually as possible. When you're going to a birthday party, for example, talk in advance about what the party will be like and how the child might greet her peers ("First I'll say 'Happy birthday, Joey,' and then I'll say 'Hi, Sabrina.'). And make sure to get there early. It's much easier to be one of the earlier guests, so your child feels as if other people are joining him in a space that he "owns," rather than having to break into a preexisting group. > > Similarly, if your child is nervous before school starts for the year, bring him to see his classroom and, ideally, to meet the teacher one-on-one, as well as other friendly-looking adults, such as principals and guidance counselors, janitors and cafeteria workers. You can be subtle about this: "I've never seen your new classroom, why don't we drive by and take look?" Figure out together where the bathroom is, what the policy is for going there, the route from the classroom to the cafeteria, and where the school bus will pick him up at day's end. Arrange playdates during the summer with compatible kids from his class. > > a You can also teach your child simple social strategies to get him through uncomfortable moments. Encourage him to look confident even if he's not feeling it. Three simple reminders go a long way: smile, stand up straight, and make eye contact. Teach him to look for friendly faces in a crowd. Bobby, a three-year-old, didn't like going to his city preschool because at recess the class left the safe confines of the classroom and played on the roof with the bigger kids in the older classes. He felt so intimidated that he wanted to go to school only on rainy days when there was no roof time. His parents helped him figure out which kids he felt comfortable playing with, and to understand that a noisy group of older boys didn't have to spoil his fun. > > If you think that you're not up to all this, or that your child could use extra practice, ask a pediatrician for help locating a social skills workshop in your area. These workshops teach kids how to enter groups, introduce themselves to new peers, and read body language and facial expressions. And they can help your child navigate what for many introverted kids is the trickiest part of their social lives: the school day. (Page 248) ## Index - [[Aaron, brother of Moses]], 61 - [[John Quincy Adams]], 30 - [[Alfred Adler]], 40 - Understanding Human Nature, 26 - adolescence, and self-esteem, 263 - studies of adolescent girls, 112-13 - Advanced International Benchmark, 200-201 - [[Advertising]] - early print, 24-25 - modern, 48-49 - [[Bradley Agle]], 53 - agreeableness, 227, 304 - alert attention, 103 - [[Gordon Allport]], 26, 281 - [[ambivert]], 14 - [[Amygdala]] - and emotions, 92, 101-2, 138 - and high reactivity, 102 - and [[limbic system]], 118, 158 - and personality, 116, 117, 142, 159 - and reward system, 160 - [[Marian Anderson]], 130-31, 139 - animal personalities, 146-47 - anxiety, 12, 29, 110, 270 - [[AOL-Time Warner merger]] and reward sensitivity, 157, 161 - [[ARAS (ascending reticular activating system)]], 123 - [[Dan Ariely]], 90 - [[Aristotle]], 270 - [[Elaine Aron]] - and balance, 154 - and conscience, 141 - and empathy, 137, 138 - and inner behavior, 136 - and parent-child fit, 247-48 - and responsiveness to beauty, 137 - and sensitivity, 133-38, 145-46, 148, 150, 151-52, 270 - and survival, 146, 148 - optimal levels of arousal, 125 - [[Solomon Asch]], 90-92 - [[Asian cultural styles]], 187-97, 200-202 - Asians, and Israelis, 231-32 - [[Jens Aspendorf]], 227 - autonomic nervous system, 223 - [[Brenda Barnes]], 53 - [[J. M. Barrie]], 5n - [[Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn (BBDO)]], 87 - responsiveness to beauty, 137 - behavioral leakage, 212 - [[Jay Belsky]], 111-12, 13 - [[Warren Bennis]], Organizing Genius, 75 - [[Jon Berghoff]], 237-38, 239-40 - [[Gregory Berns]], 91-92 - Iconoclast, 52 - Character, Culture of, 21, 22, 25, 30 - Big Five school of personality, 10, 269, 304 - character guides, nineteenth century, 32 - Chautauqua movement, 19-20, 284 - Big Five personality traits, 227 - [[Frédéric Chopin]], 5 - blank slate, 106 - [[Bill Clinton]], 35, 118 - [[Priscilla Blinco]], 201 - Coding War Games, 83-85 - blushing, 143-45 - collaboration, 78-79 - face-to-face, 92-94 - online, 89 - brain: - [[amygdala]], 92, 101-2, 116, 117, 118, 138, 142, 158, 159, 160 - cortical arousal levels, 122-24 - [[limbic system]], 118, 158 - [[neocortex]], 118, 159 - [[nucleus accumbens]], 158, 160 - [[orbitofrontal cortex]], 160 - pleasure center, 158-59 - [[brainstorming]], 87-92 - and evaluation apprehension, 89 - failure of, 89-92 - online, 89 - and production blocking, 89 - rules of, 87, 90 - and social loafing, 89 - [[John Brebner]], 166 - [[Paul Buck]], 28 - [[Warren Buffett]], 6, 175-76 - [[Jill Burruss]], 253 - [[Michael Burry]], 175 - "Bus to Abilene," 52 - [[David Buss]], 226 - buzz, 160, 161-62, 165, 167, 170-71, 314 - career transition, 218, 219-20 - [[Dale Carnegie]], 19-23, 41, 44, 284 - How to Win Friends and Influence People, 32, 3 - Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business, 20-21 - [[Lewis Carroll]], 266 - [[Peter Cashmore]], 63 - catharsis hypothesis, 233 - Collier's, 26-27, 282 - [[Jim Collins]] - Good to Great, 54-55 - and "Level 5 Leaders," 54 - conformity, 90-92 - conscience, 151 - development of, 110 - and sensitivity, 140-41 - conscientiousness, 227, 270 - [[Chris Cooper]], 166 - [[James Copeland]], 53 - core personal projects, identification of, 218, 219 - cortical arousal, 122-24 - [[cortisol]], 102 - [[Daniel Coyle]], The Talent Code, 80 - [[Craigslist]], 62 - creativity: - and brainstorming, 87-89 - nature of, 74-75 - and shyness, 73, 74 - and solitude, 74, 75, 82-83, 86, 266 - and teamwork, 75-79 - [[Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi]], 82, 115, 172-73 - Cupertino, California, 182-84, 186, 191, 193, 194, 202 - [[Marie Curie]], 78 - [[Boykin Curry]], 164, 173, 174, 175 - [[Dalai Lama]], 144 - [[Dale Carnegie Institute]], 20 - [[Charles Darwin]], 78, 83, 130 - [[Matt Davis]], 94 - Deliberate Practice, 81-83, 256 - [[Tom DeMarco]], 83-84 - [[Richard Depue]], 160 - desensitization, 126-29 - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), 31 - [[Corine Dijk]], 143-44 - divorce: - and extroverts, 148 - and orchid children, 113-14 - [[Dorothy Dix]], 25 - [[David Dobbs]], 111, 12 - [[dopamine]], 160, 171 - dopamine-regulating gene (DRD4), 162 - [[Janice Dorn]], 155-57, 158-59, 165 - [[dot-com bubble]] ([[2000]]), 176-77 - down time, need for, 15 - [[Peter Drucker]], 53 - [[Marvin Dunnette]], 8 - [[Albert Einstein]], 5n, 71, 169 - [[T. S. Eliot]], 101 - "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," 31 - "The Waste Land," 12 - [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], 2 - emotional brain, 92, 101-2, 138 - emotional stability, 227 - empathy, 137, 138, 141, 247, 304 - [[Enron]], 4, 164-65 - environment-gene interaction, 109 - [[Equanil]], 29 - [[Anders Ericsson]], 80-82, 256 - evaluation apprehension, 89 - evangelical churches, 64-70 - and empathy, 304 - and the evangelical church, 65-69 - and leadership, 55-58, 65, 78 - and low-reactivity, 99-100, 142 - and optimal level of stimulation, 122-25 - gene linked to, 148 - reward-sensitivity theory of, 158-60, 166, 171 - Extrovert Ideal, 4-5, 21-22, 29-30, 35, 69, 151, 190-91, 193 - extrovert-introvert spectrum, 12-14, 227 - extroverts, 102 - and adultery, 148 - anxious (or impulsive), 12, 16 - archetypal, 4, 1 - blindness to danger, 161-62 - and "buzz," 160-61 - calm, 12 - and competition, 230-34 - and [[divorce]], 148 - dopamine pathways of, 160 - and exercise, 148 - in history, 29-30 - and multitasking, 168, 237 - and outside stimulation, 1 - overconfidence of, 162 - as parents, 243-63 - performance in school of, 167 - pretending to be, 4, 6, 48, 173, 196, 205-223, 246, 255, 265, 266, 268 - and problem-solving, 167-69 - in relationship to introverts, 224-63 - and restorative niches, 220 - and sex partners, 148 - shy, 13 - uses of term, 10, 269-71 - [[Hans Eysenck]], 74, 122-24 - [[evolution]], 145 - and "hawks" and "doves," 149 - and natural selection, 147 - and survival, 146, 148-49 - trade-off theory of, 146, 147, 148 - [[Exodus]], story of, 61 - extravert, use of term, 271 - [[extroversion]]: - definition, 10-11 - [[James Farmer]], 131 - Janet Farrall, and Leonie Kronborg, Leadership Development for the Gifted and Talented, 78, 79 - fear: - of failure, 261 - of public humiliation, 90 - of public speaking, 31, 126-29 - fear conditioning, 118-19 - [[financial crash (2008)]], 162-65, 173, 174-75 - financial risk, genetic tendency to, 162-65 - [[state of flow]], 172-73 - [[MRI]] machine, 115-16, 206 - [[E. M. Forster]], 12 - Free Trait Agreement, 220-23 - Free Trait Theory, 209-10, 215, 21 - [[free will]], 105, 118, 207 - [[Sigmund Freud]], 233 - [[Jason Fried]], 85-86 - FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), 164, 165, 174-75 - [[David Funder]], 123 - [[Adrian Furnham]], 89 - [[Galen]], 270 - [[Winifred Gallagher]], 5, 103 - [[Mohandas K. Gandhi (Mahatma)]], 6, 59, 144, 181, 197-200, 202 - [[Bill Gates]], 12, 53, 118 - [[Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)]], 5n, 86 - gene-environment interaction, 109 - [[Lou Gerstner]], 54 - [[Francesca Gino]], 56, 57 - [[Malcolm Gladwell]], 75 - The Tipping Point, 61-62 - [[John Glenn]], 143 - [[Erving Goffman]], The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 207 - [[Al Gore]], 6, 149-51 - An Inconvenient Truth, 150-51 - and conscience, 151 - [[Adam Grant]], 55-58, 169 - [[William Graziano]], 227, 230-31 - [[Great Awakening]]: - First, 30, 284-85 - Second, 285 - Great Recession (2008), 162-65, 173-74, 175 - [[Judith Grob]], 223 - groups: - brainstorming, 87-92 - conformity in, 90-92 - peer pressure, 86, 92 - [[Peter Gzowski]], 209 - [[Harvard Business School]] (HBS), 42-51, 53, 64, 70 - and Subarctic Survival Situation role-playing game, 49-50, 63 - teaching methods of, 45-47 - [[Heejung Kim]], 186 - [[Heinrich Heine]], 271 - [[Laurie Helgoe]], 5 - high reactivity: - alert attention in, 103 - and [[amygdala]], 102 - and [[anxiety]], 270 - and inhibition, 120, 133 - and low reactivity, 100 - and nature-nurture debate, 106, 109 - and orchid hypothesis, 111 - and physionomy, 104 - research on rhesus monkeys, 112 - and sensitivity, 135, 137 - and [[social anxiety disorder]], 111 - and stimulation, 124-26 - and twin studies, 108-9 - [[Hippocrates]], 206, 270 - [[hive mind]], 78 - [[David Hofman]], 56 - [[Richard Hofstadter]], 155 - [[Homebrew Computer Club]], 71-73, 81 - [[Roger Horchow]], 62 - [[Richard Howard]], 161, 168 - hyperthymic temperament, 38 - iatrogenic problem, 242-43 - [[IBM]], 28, 54, 62 - independence, pain of, 92 - independent work, 74, 75 - infants: - alert attention of, 103 - research on behavior of, 99-101 - [[inferiority complex]] (IC), 26 - inhibition, 120, 133 - innovation, 74, 75 - insightful problem solving, 168 - [[Interactionism]], 207 - Internet, as driver of the new Groupthink, 78, 79 - intimacy, need for, 226 - introvert-extrovert pairs: - couples, 224-36, 240 - parent-child fit, 242-50 - research on, 236-37 - introvert-extrovert spectrum, 12-14, 227 - introvert-extrovert students, 250-58 - Introvert Retreat, 7 - introverts: - ability to decode social cues, 236-37 - achievements of, 5-6 - anxious, 12 - Asian American, 181-202 - bias against, 5 - calm, 12 - [[CEO]]s who are, 53 - and complex problem-solving, 167-69 - creative advantage of, 74-75 - [[delayed gratification]] by, 163 - and evangelical church, 64-70 - and high reactivity, 99-114, 142 - and inner life, 26 - and the Internet, 62-63, 79-80 - and leadership, 55-58, 62, 78, 164 - and novelty, 248-49 - optimal level of stimulation for, 11, 122-26, 135 - pretending to be extroverts, 4, 6, 48, 173, 196, 205-223, 246, 255, 265, 266, 268 - in relationship to extroverts, 224-63 - and reward sensitivity, 158-61, 165-67, 171-72 - in school, 250-59 - sensitive, 15, 136-38, 145-46 - and shyness, 12-13 - uses of term, 10-15, 269-71 - working style of, 11, 73-74 - inventors, shyness of, 73-74 - Israelis, and Asians, 231-32 - [[Andrew Jackson]], 30 - [[Jadzia Jagiellowicz]], 137 - [[William James]], 205 - [[Jesus of Nazareth]], 67, 285 - [[Steve Jobs]], 72 - [[LouAnne Johnson]], 254 - [[Roger Johnson]], 256 - [[Carl Gustav Jung]], 26, 100, 148, 206, 224, 269 - Psychological Types, 10, 11, 13 - "Just Do It," 49 - [[Lisa Kaenzig]], 253 - [[Franz Kafka]], 86 - [[Jerome Kagan]], 99-108 - Galen's Prophecy, 100, 105 - and high reactivity, 100, 102-3, 104, 106, 108-9, 111-12, 120, 124, 133, 135, 137, 146, 270 - on inhibition, 120 - on introverts/extroverts, 99-105, 109, 111 - longitudinal studies of personality, 116-17, 136, 150 - and low reactivity, 100 - on nature-nurture debate, 106, 109 - on physionomy of high-reactives, 104 - and relaxation, 142 - [[Vincent Kaminski]], 164-65 - [[Kamo No Chomei]], 188 - [[Guy Kawasaki]], 63 - [[Dacher Keltner]], Born to Be Good, 144 - [[Dan McAdams]], 263 - [[Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.]], 2, 3, 60 - [[James McCroskey]], 256 - [[Adam McHugh]], 65-69 - [[Seth Klarman]], 174 - [[Brian Knutson]], 170 - Introverts in the Church, 67 - [[Grazyna Kochanska]], 140, 141 - [[Robert McRae]], 186-87 - [[Camelia Kuhnen]], 162, 170 - [[Mike Mika]], 85 - [[Kenneth Kwong]], 115 - [[Emily Miller]], 246, 260 - [[Lao Zi]], 188 - [[Jim Lavoie]], 52-53 - leadership, 44-64 - [[Charlie Ledley]], 175 - [[Nicholas Lemann]], 194 - [[Madeleine L'Engle]], 83 - [[Tiffany Liao]], 184, 201-2 - [[Matthew Lieberman]], 236, 237 - [[lie detector]]s, 142 - [[limbic system]], 118, 158 - [[Abraham Lincoln]], 22, 26, 42 - [[Richard Lippa]], 212 - [[Timothy Lister]], 83-84 - [[Brian Little]], 143, 205-10, 211, 214-15, 219, 220, 222-23, 254 - and Free Trait Theory, 209-10, 220, 222-23 - and reputational confusion, 222-23, 254 - and self-monitoring, 214-15 - loss avoidance system, 311-12 - low reactivity, 100 - [[David Lykken]], 109, 110 - [[Jamie Mai]], 175 - [[Eric Malpass]], 141 - managers, tips for, 265-66 - [[Roland Marchand]], 2 - Orison Swett Marden: - Character: The Grandest Thing in the World, 2, 32 - Masterful Personality, 23 - [[Joe Marino]], 52-53 - [[Jerry Miller]], 110, 241-43 - [[Lydia Millet]], 190 - [[Quinn Mills]], 50-51, 53-54 - [[John Milton]], 206, 271 - Miltown, 29 - [[Walter Mischel]], Personality and Assessment, 206, 207 - Monta Vista High School, Cupertino, 182-83 - [[Frederick Morgeson]], 76 - [[Moses]], 60-61 - multitasking, 85, 168, 237, 240 - [[Myers-Briggs]] personality test, 10 - [[natural selection]], 147 - nature-nurture debate, 106, 109 - Nazi [[eugenics]], 106 - neocortex, 118, 159 - [[Daniel Nettle]], 159-60, 161 - neuroticism, 171, 270, 297 - neurotransmitters, 160 - New Groupthink, 75-80, 89, 26 - and the Internet, 78, 79 - and Linux, 78-80, 89 - in open office plans, 76, 78-79 - in schools, 77-78 - teamwork in, 75-76 - [[Joseph Newman]], 165-67, 168 - [[Craig Newmark]], 62 - [[Sir Isaac Newton]], 5n, 75 - [[Preston Ni]], 195-97, 200 - [[Anaïs Nin]], 264 - nucleus accumbens, 158, 160 - [[Barack Obama]], 41, 64, 228-29 - [[Kenneth Olson]], 29 - openness to experience, 227, 270 - open office plans, disadvantages of, 76, 78-79, 84, 85, 94 - optimal levels of arousal, 125 - orbitofrontal cortex, 160 - orchid hypothesis, 111 - [[George Orwell]], 5 - [[Alex Osborn]], 86-88, 89-90 - overarousal, 126, 260 - [[Larry Page]], 5n - pain of independence, 92 - parent-child fit, 242-50 - parenting: - creative expression encouraged by, 262-63 - and divorce, 113-14, 148 - pseudo-extrovert, 246 - and self-esteem, 246-47, 259-60 - teaching social skills, 249-50 - tips for, 256-59, 265 - [[Rosa Parks]], 1-2, 3, 6, 58-60, 61 - passive resistance, 59, 199-200 - [[Paxil]], 49 - peer pressure, 86, 92 - persistence, 169, 200, 201 - personality: - and [[amygdala]], 116, 117, 142, 159 - and conflict resolution, 230 - evolution of the word, 21 - temperament vs., 101, 106 - Personality, Culture of, 21, 22-23, 25-26, 30, 31, 32, 42, 65 - personality types, 13-14 - person-situation debate, 206 - [[Pilgrim's Progress, The]], 2 - [[Pixar Animation Studios]], 94 - [[Plato]], The Republic, 241 - polygraphs, 142 - [[Chuck Prince]], 173 - production blocking, 89 - [[Marcel Proust]], 5, 68-69 - [[Ptahhotep]], 188 - public humiliation, fear of, 90 - public speaking: - and [[Elaine Aron]], 138 - and [[Dale Carnegie]], 20-21 - and desensitization, 126 - and high reactivity, 99, 107, 108 - and optimal levels of stimulation, 126 - and [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], 138 - and [[E. O. Wilson]], 107, 108 - quiz: introvert-extrovert spectrum, 12-14 - Raven Standard Progressive Matrices, 169 - redemptive life story, 263 - [[Reebok International]], 85 - reflective, use of term, 297-98 - reputational confusion, 222-23, 254 - restorative niches, 219-20 - reward-oriented, 171 - reward sensitivity, 157, 158, 159-60, 162 - reward-sensitivity theory of extroversion, 171 - reward system, 160-61 - rhesus monkeys, research on, 112, 138 - risk-taking, 162-65 - [[Tony Robbins]], 34-42, 68, 70 - Awaken the Giant Within, 40 - [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], 6, 60, 130-32, 138 - and [[Marian Anderson]], 130-31, 139 - and social welfare issues, 139 - [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], 131-32, 138-40 - [[Theodore Roosevelt]], 26, 131 - [[J. K. Rowling]], 5n - [[Kenneth Rubin]], 249 - [[Robert Rubin]], 97, 219 - Saddleback Church, 64-70 - satyagraha (firmness in pursuit of truth), 199, 202 - schools: - admissions decisions of, 256 - group work in, 77-78 - interests developed in, 261-63 - introvert-extrovert students in, 250-58 - popularity in, 258 - tips for parents, 256-59 - tips for teachers, 255-56, 265 - unnatural environment of, 253-54 - [[Arthur Schopenhauer]], 206, 271 - [[Charles Schultz]], 5n - [[Charles Schwab]], 53 - [[Carl Schwartz]], 115-18, 119 - self-coaxing skills, 249 - self-help tradition, 22-24 - self-monitoring, 212-15, 217-18 - Self-Monitoring Scale, 212-14 - self-presentation, 24, 212, 215-17 - sensitivity: - and [[Elaine Aron]], 133-38, 145-46, 148, 150, 151-52, 270 - and conscience, 140-41 - and empathy, 137, 138, 141 - high, 136, 145-46 - and high reactivity, 135, 137 - reward, 157, 158, 159-60, 162 - and survival, 146, 148-49 - and the thin-skinned, 141-42 - [[Serentil]], 29 - [[serotonin]], 112, 312 - serotonin-transporter (SERT) gene, 112-13 - [[Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)]], 5n, 86 - [[William Shakespeare]], 26, 210 - [[Clay Shirky]], 75-76 - Here Comes Everybody, 76 - shyness, 27, 31, 49 - and creativity, 73, 74 - and deference, 12 - introversion vs., 12-13 - label of, 249 - and social anxiety disorder, 111 - and submissiveness, 12 - silence, value of, 67, 86, 94, 186, 190, 200 - Silicon Valley SpeakUp Association, 195-97 - [[Curtis Sittenfeld]], 143 - situationism, 206-7 - skin conductance tests, 142, 206 - sleep deprivation, 125-26 - [[Darwin Smith]], 54-55 - [[Mark Snyder]]: - Public Appearances, Private Realities, 212 - Self-Monitoring Scale, 212, 213-14, 215 - social anxiety disorder, 1, 190, 286 - social cues, 236 - socialization, 27 - social loafing, 89 - social media, 62-63, 66-67 - social skills, 249-50, 258-59 - soft power, 197, 200, 202 - solitude: - communication in, 69 - and creativity, 74, 75, 82-83, 86, 266 - and Deliberate Practice, 81 - and performance, 84 - in quiet zones, 94 - [[Steven Spielberg]], 5n - stimulation, optimal level of, 122-26 - strangers, greeting, 118-19 - [[Barbra Streisand]], 12 - [[Jacquelyn Strickland]], 133, 134, 152 - submissiveness, 12, 199 - [[Stephen Suomi]], 112 - [[Warren Susman]], 21, 23 - sweet spot, 125-26 - [[Taijin kyofusho]], 190 - [[Carol Tavris]], Anger, 232-33 - teachers, tips for, 255-56, 265 - teamwork, 75-79, 231 - temperament vs. personality, 101, 106 - [[Mother Teresa]], 35, 197 - [[Philip Tetlock]], 52 - thin-skinned, 141-42 - [[37signals]], 85-86 - [[Henry David Thoreau]], 31 - [[Avril Thorne]], 238-39 - Time Warner, 157, 161 - TIMSS exam (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), 200-201 - [[Toastmasters]], 32 - [[Alexis de Tocqueville]], 15 - [[Leo Tolstoy]], 59 - trade-off theory of evolution, 146, 147 - Trinidadian guppies, 147 - [[Ted Turner]], 158, 161, 166-67 - [[Mark Twain]], 241 - twin studies, 105, 108 - [[C. A. Valentine]], 270 - [[Vincent van Gogh]], 5 - Walker Creek Ranch, 133-34 - [[Rebecca Wallace-Segall]], 260 - [[Rick Warren]], 68 - The Purpose Driven Life, 64 - [[Larry Watson]], 167-68 - [[Mike Wei]], 181-82, 191-93, 202 - [[David Weiss]], 261-63 - [[Jack Welch]], 173, 207 - [[Patrick White]], 78 - [[George Whitefield]], 285 - [[Alfred North Whitehead]], 101 - [[William Whyte]], 28, 34 - The Organization Man, 27 - [[Bruce Williams]], 77 - [[Susanne Wilpers]], 227 - [[David Sloan Wilson]], 146-47 - [[E. O. Wilson]], 107 - [[Winner's curse]], 51, 157 - [[David Winter]], 1 - [[Katarina Witt]], 260 - [[Uwe Wolfradt]], 292 - [[William Wordsworth]], 31, 75 - [[World Wide Web]], 78, 79 - [[Stephen Wozniak]], 72-73, 81-82, 94 - [[Writopia Lab]], 260 - [[Chuck Yeager]], 109 - [[W. B. Yeats]], 5