Understanding your peers(Introverted vs Extroverted)
Friendships are important to most teenagers. Social groups are important to almost all human beings but at times understanding your peers at a higher level is something not most of us do. It is true you don’t have to understand behavioral psychology for you to have friends or maintain relationships, but I believe it can give you a better way to deal with social situations that as per now, may seem to be “difficult”.
I have researched on behavioral science and psychology for long enough now and I decided, why not make it easier for others to understand each other at a higher level? So I decided to come up with a simplified version of the Myers Briggs classification system.
There are different types of people. Am not going to generalize people into certain groups. Instead I’m going to give you ways to understand those close to you better and in a deeper way. Maybe not as deep as someone who has read behavioral psychology deeply, but deep enough to deal with situations in friendship.
The first qualities, these are pretty obvious, are Introversion/Extroversion. There are different ways to deal with these two types of people. Introversion is the more rare type of these two and so am going to dwell on it more.
First, How do you identify an Introvert?. This is quite simple, I will tell you some questions you need to ask yourself before you make a decision. How does he/she behave in social gatherings? This is a quite simple one for you to find out. Is he/she the person who goes around laughing at jokes and greeting people while making new friends or does he/she always stay close to you and follow you around? Does she share his/her feelings openly or he/she lets you ask first? If she is always afraid of letting you know what he/she feels then that may be an indication that he/she is introverted. How many friends do you know that he/she has apart from you? Is she always online on social media? The issue of being online on social media is quite complex. Being online could be a sign of introversion in other instances and extroversion in other instances depending on circumstance.
Introverts prefer quiet time “alone”. I put alone in quotes for a reason. Alone doesn’t necessarily mean without anyone around. It only means, a small circle of friends. If you are a friend of an introvert and he/she agrees to hang out with you, don’t expose him/her to the pressure of having to be around many people, meeting random people(this sucks) or greeting every single person on the street(am not saying don’t greet everyone at all). Just have your hang out with him/her then after that, you could go hang out with other people.
Maybe some of you will say, “But I usually ask him first and he agrees”. That’s never the case. I mean, you are hanging out with him, did you expect him to say, “No, I don’t want to meet your other friends”? They would feel uncomfortable but as they are used to, they will keep it to themselves.
Then comes the question, “How do you deal with an extrovert if you are an introvert?”. Well, this is the difficult side of it now. Extroverts as we all know are outgoing people. My advice is, don’t be selfish. That’s all. It’s true that as an introvert that extrovert may be your only friend, but that doesn’t mean you make him/her sit alone with you long hours all the time. Hang out together but don’t go too much because you have different personalities and they are going to clash(well, this seems a heavy word but i didn’t have another).
Then we have the Ambiverts. These are neither introverts nor extroverts. They fall in the center. They have both introvert and extrovert qualities and these are actually the easiest people to deal with, mainly because they are highly adaptable to circumstances. They easily empathize with people and most of them end up being “life coaches”. This kind of people get along naturally with just everyone and are highly approachable.These are usually the glue that hold social groups together and solve disputes.
