The idea that human personalities and behaviors can be sorted into two simplistic piles or even a scale between two piles is just silly.

There’s no predictive value to it- you can’t objectively classify\quantify people’s ‘vertion’ and then predict behaviors or outcomes based on those classifications, not even statistically from a large sample set because it’s meaninglessly subjective.

People are complex. Someone might appear ‘introverted’ in a social situation they’re unfamiliar with, but in a different setting my appear ‘extroverted’ because they’re very comfortable.

And some will say “social interactions give energy to extro and take it from intro” but what the hell does ‘energy’ mean in that context anyway? If I go to a small party with close friends all talking about sci-fi I’ll enjoy myself all night and feel refreshed, but I’d be exhausted after 30 minutes at a rave and need a week to recover.

And do people migrate between intro-extro throughout their life? In my 20’s I felt compelled to meet and experience new people all the time but now in my mid-40’s I don’t really care and tend to stick to the people I know. Does that mean I turned more introverted at some point? That’s why even as a personality scale it’s nonsense.

It’s all just Myers-Briggs for dummies, which is already for dummies.

The only way it makes sense is as a description of immediate behavior, not of a personality. Someone may be ‘behaving in an introverted way’ but saying that makes them an ‘introvert’ is nonsense because they may go somewhere else and behave in an extroverted way an hour later.

  • HubertManne
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    47 months ago

    classification is needed for any discussion about anything. sure. we are all individuals and no two are exactly alike. There are reasons though we have clicks and clubs and groups and conventions. extrovert/introvert is just a classification. if you really want to get annoyed go look at disc which is basically introvert/extrovert combined with alpha/beta :)

    • @[email protected]OP
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      27 months ago

      My point is that it’s only useful as a classification of behavior, not personality or ‘what kind of person you are’. It’s verb not a noun kind of thing.

      DISC… yeah that looks like Myers-Briggs corporate astrology stuff. Fortunately I don’t hear a lot of people spitting out their DISC or MB ratings so I only get annoyed by that whenever HR gets a wild hare about it.

      • HubertManne
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        37 months ago

        lol. i have had it in my corpo email sig because I smile and nod and collect my chexs. I mean I do my job but otherwise don’t make waves and blend in. ish.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        DISC is just to understand different methods of communicating and how to engage with them or how to avoid miscommunication.

        This is loosely related to the classification of any customer of a service or product into categories of what they want to get out it and how to cater to them.