Thoughts on Introverts and Ambition
Do extroverts and introverts differ in how they show ambition? I offer an educated guess.
According to scholar William Casey King in his book Ambition: A History, the ancient Romans defined ambition negatively, as an immoderate desire for advancement. The most popular Bible of Shakespeare’s day presented ambition as the sin of preferring one’s own glory to that of God, as shown in the stories of Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel. Among Shakespeare’s own works, Julius Caesar and Macbeth stand out as portraying ambition as a powerfully destructive force.
In Western societies today, however, the adjective “ambitious” is likely to function as a compliment, signifying someone with a praiseworthy drive to succeed. The realm of success might be sports, business, politics or the arts. The ambitious person strives to rise above others in a way that results in rewards and recognition. An unambitious person, by contrast, doesn’t mind being average and can contentedly enjoy life’s daily pleasures, like family, hobbies and friends.
On the one hand, we now see ambition in a positive light as a motivational motor for achievement. After winning three gold medals for Team USA at the Paris Olympics, for example, runner Gabby Thomas commented, “I just love chasing goals.” Ambitious people often discover or invent things that benefit the world. Without ambition, strivers might be more likely to give up when obstacles occur or setbacks crop up.
On the other hand, we also recognize that too much ambition – especially fiercely self-centered ambition – can produce social and personal disasters. Think of all the cheating athletes who wanted the glory of winning so badly, they broke the rules and thereby disgraced themselves and their sport. Or the corporate climbers, set on getting ahead at any cost, who leave broken friendships and fractured families in their wake.
Where do introverts fit in all this?
Some experts theorize that extroverts, who feel most energized when interacting with others, feel a greater need than introverts to impress others. When other people are one’s fundamental reference point, a socially recognized bump in status from ambition might feel more valuable than otherwise. Introverts who seem to be running the same races for wealth, power or position may not have the same understanding of “winning.”
In my Introvert UpThink biographical profiles of renowned introverts I discovered an interesting pattern. High achievers Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie and Barbara McClintock all cared about receiving public credit for the pathbreaking work they did in the sense that they did not want their discoveries attributed to others. Yet they didn’t care much about – or downright shied away from – public acclaim for their brilliance. They wanted it to be known that such and such had emerged from their efforts, but they didn’t want to bask in the applause of an adoring audience.
In other posts I noted that introverts lean more on intrinsic motivation than on external rewards. That is, we pursue our interests because we desperately want to understand or to manifest what exists in our imagination. Or because we love the music, the movement, the culinary art, the social change for its own sake. We don’t go to all that trouble day after day, year after year because we’re trying to come out first, outdo everyone else or win some sort of prize. Ambition thus would have a different cast for us. It has to do with obsessive immersion in a task because we love the task and we long for excellence in it.
We might say that instead of chasing glory in the eyes of others, introverts tend to pursue the glory we find in knowledge, in creativity, in mastery and in joy itself. Let’s see what further research shows about how these two takes on ambition map onto extroverts’ and introverts’ approach to life.