The Gift of Introversion

Luna Lovegood, not the socially awkward Neville Longbottom, Cheek said, putting it
into Harry Potter terms I, for one, am deeply familiar with.
Anxious: Unlike social introverts, anxious introverts may seek out solitude because
they feel awkward and painfully self-conscious around other people, because they're not
very confident in their own social skills. But, often, their anxiety doesn't fade when
they're all alone. This kind of introversion is defined by a tendency to ruminate, to turn
over and over in their minds the things that might or could or already have gone terribly
wrong.
Restrained: Another word for this one is reserved. Restrained introverts sometimes
seem to operate at a slightly slower pace, preferring to think before they speak or act.
They also might take a while to get going — they can't, for instance, wake up and
immediately spring into action. Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About
Running contains a passage that I think neatly illustrates the restrained introverts, when
he discusses how it takes his muscles a while to warm up when he starts to run. "When
I put on my jogging shoes in the morning and set out, my feet are so heavy it feels like
I'll never get them moving," he writes. He says it's the way his mind works, too: slow to
get going. Murakami, I would bet, is a restrained introvert.
So far, Cheek's model of the "four meanings of introversion" is just a working paper. But
many psychologists I spoke to, such as Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of the
Imagination Institute at UPenn's Positive Psychology Center, think it's an important step
forward in expanding the meaning of introversion. "I do think it's best to talk about
different types of introversion rather than lump all of its aspects together under a single
umbrella," he said. Kaufman has written about Cheek's model for Scientific American,
and also used it as part of a basis for a new test measuring introversion for the Quiet
Revolution, a kind of for-introverts/by-introverts website launched earlier this month
by Quiet author Susan Cain. "Even people who do understand introversion still imagine
that it's really just about, Would you rather be on your own or with a close friend?" Cain
told me. "In fact, there's so much more than that."
Instead of working to correct the public's perception of the word, Cheek is essentially
seeking to transform the way personality scientists think of the trait, by expanding the
definition. "Many people do not feel identified or understood just by the
label introversion as it's used in the culture or by psychologists. It doesn't do the job — it
helps a little bit, but it just doesn't get you very far," Cheek said. "It turns out to be more
of a beginning."
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