Harvard Law School alumna and author Susan Cain visited the Harvard Bookstore on Feb. 7 to promote her book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.” Published in 2012, “Quiet” explores and questions contemporary views on introversion. FM sat down with Cain before she headed home to New York.

Fifteen Minutes: “Quiet” argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and that we lose a lot in doing so. How did you get the idea to write about this topic?

Susan Cain: Well, I think in many ways I’ve had the idea all my life; since I was a young child I’ve been aware of these dynamics,  although I never had a language for it. I studied here and went off to become a lawyer in New York, and had the idea that to be a good lawyer you had to be a bold, gregarious, swashbuckling kind of person and I knew I wasn’t, so I thought I was at a big disadvantage. But then when I got to the practice of law, I looked around and I realized that many of my colleagues who were best at what they did were introverts. They were quiet and reflective and they were using those traits well.  I thought we needed to have a language for talking about that.

FM: Speaking of this language, how would you define the word “introvert”? What are the biggest misconceptions about introverts?

SC: You know you’re an introvert if you find yourself needing to recharge your batteries on your own. Imagine that you’ve been at a party for two hours and you’ve had a really good time. At the end of those two hours, do you feel like you’re craving more and you want to stay all night? That’s how extroverts tend to feel. Or do you start to feel depleted? No matter how good a time you’ve had, you might feel depleted, drained of energy. And you get your energy from being in a quieter setting. The misconceptions about introverts are that they’re antisocial, unfriendly, uncaring, and in fact they’re really not—they just want to socialize in quieter ways.

FM: How would you differentiate between introversion and shyness, two often associated words?

SC: They’re really not the same, because shyness is about the fear of social judgment. So you could be the kind of person I was describing before—someone who gets their energy from being on their own and needs to recharge that way—without being especially fearful about other people’s opinions. So there’s some overlap, but not completely.

FM: Can you explain some of the research surrounding introversion and how science is helping us to better understand introverts?

SC: There’s really interesting research on babies being born with different levels of reactivity to stimulation, and the babies who are most reactive to stimulation are the ones who grow up to be introverts because they feel more of the things that are coming at them from the minute they’re born. If you give them sugar water to suck on, they suck on it more dramatically than other kids do. And those same kids, when they’re presented with a new social situation, react more strongly to it.

FM: Do you think it’s possible to be a little bit of both—a little introverted and a little extroverted—or to be different in different situations, or is everyone one or the other?

SC: I think everybody’s a mix of both. And even Carl Jung, the psychologist who first popularized these terms in the 1920s, said there’s no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert. He said such a man would be in a lunatic asylum.

Tags

Fifteen Questions, Retrospection