My fear of introversion

I had always been interested solving tests that revealed something about myself. When you are a teenager you go through magazines and try to see what grown-ups are up to. I loved solving the tests in the back of those magazines. It would most often not apply to me, of course, but I loved adding up my scores and finding out answers to questions like “what kind of a friend am I?” or “what kind of style do I have?”. Maybe these tests somehow say something about the human interest in categorizing the world around us.

The first psychological test I took about myself had nothing to do with those tests in the magazines. It was a 500-question personality test that questioned every relationship I had with my close family members and friends. When I was taking it, I felt that I had never thought about the answers to some of the questions that were being asked. I was kind of worried about what the answers I gave could tell about me. Thinking back on it now, we find it easier to categorize people and it makes diagnoses and treatments of psychological disorders somewhat easier but are we also making people worried about the categories they might belong to?

I faced this worry again when I solved my first Big Five Personality Traits test. I had an idea about what I would score on the five dimensions but I had no idea what those would say about me in terms of who I am and how I manage my relationships with other people. From this, someone could come to the conclusion that I am indeed very high on the neuroticism scale. But I was worried about another trait more than neuroticism. I was worried about my introversion.

I learned that Big Five traits are stable across cultures but the values attached to them differ immensely. I am from Turkey, where extraversion is greatly valued. People are very close to their families and friends and cannot live a day without socializing with other people. I always knew I was introverted but always felt that made me a bit of an outcast. I liked spending time by myself in my own time but I found that people were questioning why I preferred to be by myself when I could be out with my friends instead. Introversion was a trait attached to strange, artsy type of people or people who “had a problem”. What helped me the most was learning about how other countries came to value introversion as a trait and how it doesn’t mean that you don’t have the required skills to be a leader or do your job well if you are not extraverted.

Psychological tests can reveal a lot about a person but they can also reveal what they are afraid to learn about themselves. It is important to keep in mind that we are not the categories we belong to.

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