Artists | High Sensitivity | Introversion
Some of the most creative people are highly sensitive
Many artists talk about being sensitive, introverted, even shy
“I’m a weird combination of deeply introverted and very daring.” Helen Hunt
“I always felt awkward and shy.” Steven Spielberg
“I’m very sensitive in real life.” Jessica Chastain
A number of actors, musicians, writers and other artists consider themselves introverted, shy or sensitive.
Actor Jessica Chastain once commented about her life as a student, “I’m not the girl at the club on the table. I’m going to be the one in the corner, quiet and so I don’t call attention to myself.”
She also recalls: “I was the girl who cut school to go to the park, and the other kids would be smoking and drinking and I’d be reading Shakespeare.”
Actor and director Helen Hunt said, “I think I’m a weird combination of deeply introverted and very daring. I can feel both those things working.”
Steven Spielberg commented in an interview, “I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends’ lives.”
(Parade Magazine, March 27, 1994.)
The photo is Idris Elba and Jessica Chastain in ‘Molly’s Game’ (2017).
Idris Elba commented in an interview: “I wouldn’t say I have much of an outgoing personality. I’m pretty shy.
“It’s interesting how people describe me because I’m not Mr Life of the Party. I’m a bit of a homebody if I’m honest. But I’m never at home. I have partied. But people get disappointed when they meet me because they expect me to be really confident and exciting and I’m like, ‘nah I’m going home now.’”
And Jessica Chastain has said: “I’m very sensitive in real life. I cannot not cry if someone around me is crying…even if it’s not appropriate.”
This tendency to react more emotionally, such as more easily crying or being tearful, is one of the qualities of highly sensitive people found by Elaine Aron and other researchers.
In her article “The Gifted Introvert,” Lesley Sword (of Gifted and Creative Services Australia) explains that introversion and extraversion (or extroversion) are personality types, and we can experience both, but have a preference for one more than the other.
Introversion and high sensitivity are not shyness
These are separate experiences that may share some qualities, and can overlap and interact for many of us, but they are not the same.
Many people may think of themselves as shy or at least call themselves shy as a convenient label — or they may be characterized that way by other people, including reporters and journalists.
But actually they may be highly sensitive or introverted and therefore feel more emotionally safe and comfortable in less social situations.
Being shy is a form of anxiety, and can be more intense if we also have the personality trait of high sensitivity.
This trait of high sensitivity — technically called sensory processing sensitivity — occurs in about 20 percent of people (and other animals), while introversion is a trait of around 50 percent of people.
Where do you get energy — from outside, or within?
As Lesley Sword and others explain, extroverts tend to get energy from interactions in the outside world, compared with introverts who get energized by time alone.
This is like highly sensitive people who need time in solitude, or with only a few close friends, to be away from crowds or overstimulating environments, so they can recharge.
But again, these traits are on a spectrum — it’s not like eye color, where you are only one type and not another.
Entertainment careers may only seem to be for extraverts.
Video — “Shy or Introverted or Highly Sensitive in the Arts”
Actors and other performers can be extraverted while doing their work, including media interviews — but still find they need more “down time” away from others to recharge.
High sensitivity can include being unusually aware of other people’s moods and judgments, and our own inner feelings in response to others and the environment.
Psychologist Elaine Aron explains more about the trait. She is a researcher and author of a series of books on highly sensitive people, both children and adults.
She has said, “Because HSPs (highly sensitive persons) prefer to look before entering new situations, they are often called ‘shy.’ But shyness is learned, not innate.”
Our parents may have said we were “always shy,” but Aron says, “no one is born shy. Shyness is the fear of social judgment, which is learned.”
And she notes the trait of high sensitivity “has been misnamed as shyness, inhibitedness, neuroticism, or introversion (but 30% of us are extraverts).
“You can be a high sensation seeker and still be highly sensitive — you may work in media, for example. But you are not impulsive and still need extra down time.”
To learn more about the trait, here is one of my many articles on the topic, featuring a quiz and more material by HSP psychotherapist Julie Bjelland, LMFT:
Dr. Aron says the very popular book “Quiet” is actually “more about highly sensitive people than social introverts.”
In that book, author Susan Cain writes that “If we assume that quiet and loud people have roughly the same number of good (and bad) ideas, then we should worry if the louder and more forceful people always carry the day.
“This would mean that an awful lot of bad ideas prevail while good ones get squashed. Yet studies in group dynamics suggest that this is exactly what happens.
“We perceive talkers as smarter than quiet types — even though grade-point averages and SAT and intelligence test scores reveal this perception to be inaccurate.”
She thinks “The mental state of a shy extrovert sitting quietly in a business meeting may be very different from that of a calm introvert — the shy person is afraid to speak up, while the introvert is simply overstimulated — but to the outside world, the two appear to be the same.”
An association with intellectual and artistic achievement
“Neither E = mc2 nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal.”
That is a quote by science journalist Winifred Gallagher, who thinks “The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement.”
Gallagher is quoted by Susan Cain, who declares: “Without introverts, the world would be devoid of: the theory of gravity; the theory of relativity; W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming”; Chopin’s nocturnes; Proust’s In Search of Lost Time; Peter Pan…”
Cain adds that psychologist Carl Jung noted “There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a [person] would be in the lunatic asylum.”
Misconceptions of introversion
Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D. is a researcher and humanistic psychologist, and has taught courses on intelligence, creativity, personal developmentand well-being at Columbia University and elsewhere.
In one of his articles, he writes that introversion is “one of the most misunderstood dimensions of personality.”
He explains the original definition by Carl Jung “is not how the term is used in modern personality psychology.
“Whereas Jung based his definitions of extraversion and introversion on his own theory, experience, and intuition, modern psychology identifies personality dimensions empirically, based on what patterns of behavior tend to go together within individuals.”
Kaufman says “The most common misunderstanding of the extraversion-introversion dimension is that introverts are more introspective than extroverts. In reality, introverts are not necessarily introspective and highly introspective people aren’t necessarily introverted.”
Also, he declares that it is a myth that introverts “are more likely to be creative and imaginative (that’s only the case if introverts also score high in the personality trait openness to experience).”
He has quoted creativity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on three traits of creative people (from a list of ten) that especially relate to performers.
Csikszentmihalyi thinks creative people “have a great deal of physical energy, but they’re also often quiet and at rest…tend to be both extroverted and introverted… [their] openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment.”
Kaufman comments, “These three seeming contradictions — energy/rest, extroversion/introversion, and openness/sensitivity — are not separate phenomena but are intimately related to one another and along with other traits form the core of the creative performer’s personality.”
He thinks this “contrast between onstage boldness and personal shyness was certainly seen in Michael Jackson.”
Like a number of other actors, Sophia Lillis (“It” and “Sharp Objects” and “I Am Not Okay With This” among other movies) has talked about being introverted or shy.
A news article noted she “gets anxious about social interactions” and sees her twin brother, Jake, as being much more sociable.
She asks him to chaperone her to press parties, and says “I feel like with him I can talk freely. I can talk to him, so it looks like I’m socializing, and if there’s someone who actually comes up he can help speak for me.”
Many dynamic and seemingly confident and self-assured actors have have talked about being shy or introverted as children, even still as adults.
Amy Adams commented, “I like not being noticed. It has been a struggle because I love performing, but if I’m in a group of people and someone has a bigger personality I’m like ‘Go ahead, and have fun!’ It looks like a lotta work.”
Nicole Kidman has said, “I am really shy…I don’t like walking into a crowded restaurant by myself; I don’t like going to a party by myself.” She has also talked about being a highly sensitive person.
Taye Diggs, an actor, producer and choreographer, commented in my interview with him (years ago) about learning to be less shy working in such an extroverted field as entertainment:
“I have been acting for as long as I’ve been shy,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say my insecurities and shyness have lessened just because of expressing myself through acting, but what has a role in my becoming more confident is the kind of false sense of adoration you get from the business… Everyone always telling you how great you are…”
He explained, “For the average cat, that might have a bad effect, but for me, because I was so insecure, it gives me a reason to be a little more confident.”
Emma Watson on being introverted
Watson has said,
“The truth is that I’m genuinely a shy, socially awkward, introverted person. At a big party, I’m like Bambi in the headlights.”
She points out that “People say things to me like, ‘It’s really cool that you don’t go out and get drunk all the time and go to clubs,’ and I’m just like, I mean, I appreciate that, but I’m kind of an introverted kind of person just by nature.
“It’s not like a conscious choice that I’m making necessarily. It’s genuinely who I am.”
She refers to the book “Quiet” by Susan Cain, and notes: “It discusses how extraverts in our society are bigged up so much, and if you’re anything other than an extravert you’re made to think there’s something wrong with you.
“That’s like the story of my life.”
But like other dynamic actors and other people, she is not always “shy, socially awkward, introverted” — as a biography.com profile notes: “Even from an early age, people commented Watson was quite outspoken, and her natural assertiveness grew with the character [Hermione].”
Her public speaking, for example as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, is another indication of being both introverted and social.
More on Highly Sensitive People and Creativity
Psychologist Elaine Aron declares, “I know ALL HSPs are creative, by definition. Many have squashed their creativity because of their low self-esteem; many more had it squashed for them, before they could ever know about.
“But we all have it…One of the best ways to make life meaningful for an HSP is to use that creativity.”
But how can this trait help those of us with it be more creative?
One of the prominent “virtues” of high sensitivity is the richness of sensory detail that life provides.
The subtle shades of texture in clothing, and foods when cooking, the sounds of music or even traffic or people talking, and so many other fragrances and colors of nature.
All of these may be more intense for highly sensitive people.
Of course, people are not simply “sensitive” or “not sensitive” — like other qualities and traits, it’s a matter of degree.
To give a personal example: Years ago, I took a color discrimination test to work as a photographic technician, making color prints.
(But I decided I did not want to work all day in a photographic darkroom.)
The interviewer said I’d scored better, with more subtle distinctions between hues in the test charts, than anyone he had evaluated.
That kind of response to color makes visual experience rich and exciting, and can help visual artists and designers be even more excellent.
Well-known artists and their sensitivity
Andre Sólo notes in an article on his site Highly Sensitive Refuge that artists “have had a reputation for being sensitive and emotional since at least as far back as the Renaissance.
“Take Vincent van Gogh who, aside from his strong emotional reactions, was also sensitive to stimuli — a key HSP trait. In fact, his 1890 return to Paris, which he had been looking forward to for months, ended after just a few days; the noise and activity level of the city was simply too much for him.
“Likewise, Bruce Springsteen says his gentle, sensitive nature was enough to make his father hate him as a boy, but it was also a big part of what made him into an accomplished musician.”
Sólo adds,“It’s not hard to find echoes of a similar temperament in creatives as wide-ranging as Yeats, Dickinson, Poe, Kahlo, Dali, or Alanis Morissette, who is openly and proudly an HSP.”
Are you introverted or highly sensitive, and creative? Hopefully, this article gives some helpful perspectives and resources to explore our traits.
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Related articles
Sophia Lillis quotes and image are from article: ‘Sophia Lillis: meet the teenager on the brink of stardom’ by Poppy Noor, The Guardian 9 Apr 2020.
The Gifted Introvert by Lesley Sword.
Scott Barry Kaufman article: Will the Real Introverts Please Stand Up?, Scientific American.
Another of his articles: Can Introverts Be Happy in a World That Can’t Stop Talking?
More quotes by Kaufman, plus Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba are from Performers and Sensitivity, Introversion and Excitabilities.
Emma Watson quotes are from article Growing up exceptional: Emma Watson on being smart and introverted.
Winifred Gallagher, Susan Cain quotes are from article Maybe To Be More Creative, Be An Introvert.
Introverted, Shy or Highly Sensitive in the Arts
How to Thrive as an Introvert — articles, courses and more
Elaine Aron and Alanis Morissette on Being a Highly Sensitive Person.
Shyness and High Sensitivity — On Stage or Off
Highly Sensitive and Living With Social Anxiety
Andre Sólo article: Are Highly Sensitive People Natural Born Creatives?
Also see my collection of videos on High Sensitivity on my Vimeo channel.
Books:
The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron Phd.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain.
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