Introverts vs Extraverts. Who does better?

July 11, 2006 2:45 AM

Has there been any respected comprehensive research about whether extraverts are more successful in life than introverts or vice versa? Financially? What about in terms of life satisfaction, suicide rates, number of marriages etc?

Also is there any research on how this varies with the degree of introversion/extraversion ? What about ratio of world and/or business leaders?

This is something I have thought about for many years and was brought up to believe that extraverts do better in life. Anything relevant in terms of serious research/surveys would be interesting.

posted by zaebiz to human relations (7 comments total)

Well for the introvert side of things there is this and this. Funnily enough, it appears they are quite successful at producing saliva.
posted by Serial Killer Slumber Party at 2:58 AM on July 11, 2006 [1 favorite]

There must be something in the air. Last night I did a search on introversion at the ACM Digital Library whilst making a futile search for an article I remember reading somewhere about differences in job interview performance based on personality types (was going to post about it in the nerdly IT goddess thread) (dangit, I wish I could find that article).

Anyhoo, articles from the search relevent to your question (at least with respect to job success in computer science):

Programmer paranoia revisted from the abstract: " ... The results of these studies indicated that there is a subtle relationship between emotional adjustment and vocational behavior and the individual's resultant relative feeling of well-being."

Who should work with whom?: building effective software project teams. The abstract is boring, so no quote for you! Basically, they do a Myers-Briggs type of analysis of different software development teams and examin performance for each type of task/role for each of the scales.

As to the methodology for these two articles... I'd say take with a grain of salt, or in mefi idiom, +0.5 meh.

aside: I didn't know you could say ?:. Learn something new.

Rescoping my response, the acm search reveals just one facet of success for a very specific measure. Even if you wanted to stick to job success, it would be interesting to try and find studies of personality types and heterogenity vs. homogenity of teams in jobs that require teamwork. I wonder if the results would often come out the same as for the software development teams?

We've had discussions on the interview process at work, and I've tried to describe how I think the interview process seems slated towards picking people of the same personality type--which seems boring to me. I think I'd rather work with many different types. But maybe I'm mistaken in thinking that has anything to do with success. Maybe it is actually counter-productive in my field (I'm a software developer).

But maybe it's not counter-productive in other fields. What about a research group of mathematicians? We could probably sneak an anthropologist into the math department to get an assay of the group and then pick some arbitrary measure of success, say, number of (interesting?) articles published.
posted by bleary at 5:57 AM on July 11, 2006

oh good lord. that was wordy. I usually try to avoid long replies like that.
posted by bleary at 5:58 AM on July 11, 2006

I am not in a position to determine if these citations are serious or not, but this book has an extensive bibliography related to your question. Most appear to be books, but a few are from journals.

The Introvert Advantage

Sorry, I know this doesn't answer your exact question, but maybe it gives you an avenue for further exploration.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 8:53 AM on July 11, 2006

Actually, to be clear, that sentence should read: "...this book is related to your question, and has an extensive bibliography."

must...get...more...coffee
posted by SuperSquirrel at 8:56 AM on July 11, 2006

I'm guessing zaebiz is familiar with Marti Laney's work, and is looking for more like it. But my impression is, her book is groundbreaking (and if the Amazon link leaves you wanting more info, check her web site).
posted by Rash at 10:12 AM on July 11, 2006

When I was in sales I noticed that I (an introvert) did just as well as the extroverts.

I looked into it and found an article about how sales are 50/50 between introverts and extroverts. 50% of people respond well to an introverted salesman. (sorry I can't remember where I read this)

It is supposed to be common knowledge in the sales world although that's kind of hard to verify because sales people move around a lot - hard to pin them down.

But my boss understood the concept and was not biased towards extroverts. He would hire anyone and just see how they do.

I suggest Googling introvert and sales or retail.
posted by cda at 10:33 AM on July 11, 2006