Several careers ago, when I taught philosophy, a student who came to see me during office hours asked me a personal question. When I simply smiled in reply, she gasped in astonishment. “You really are like that!” she exclaimed.

I gave her a puzzled look.

“In class I always wonder what you’re really thinking,” she continued. “Like ‘Wow, that’s a really dumb thing to say’? Or ‘This is boring, I’d rather be home reading a book’? Or what? I thought this was maybe just a teaching strategy of yours. It’s not.”

I smiled again without comment and filed the incident away.

Introverts are the likeliest personality type to be dubbed “mysterious” or “elusive.” Not because we’re physically slippery, prone to disappearing, but rather due to our communication – or non-communication – style.

We shy away from small talk, away from the never-ending streams of daily gossip and grievances. We’re more comfortable with silence than the average person. Valuing privacy, we don’t readily share personal details with strangers. What’s inner belongs to us, not to our workplace, our neighborhood or the world at large. We tend to hold back our thoughts and feelings until we’re with those we like and trust.

In the whirl of society, that can make us a disturbing blank, or a mirror that magnifies disappointed expectations. It can also make us an alluring enigma. After all, a fictional character with a “strong, silent type” image normally fits the slot of hero or heroine, not that of villain. Others’ fascination often feels better than being regarded as weird, but it can also be annoying. I remember a reserved editor at The Atlantic magazine whom I became friendly with telling me once how much he hated people calling him “cryptic.”

Nevertheless, being viewed as mysterious has several benefits. When you do speak or act, people value that more than the equivalent coming from a non-mysterious person. It’s a bit harder for others to judge you when they feel they don’t know you. You’ll have an aura that distinguishes you from those who are easier to know: the Man (or Woman) of Mystery. And that aura discourages quite a few others from intruding on you, giving you some freedom to roam where you like.

Tolerating or cultivating a mysterious image directly contradicts the advice given in Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. “To be interesting, be interested,” Carnegie counseled. In other words, you should lean outward, initiating social contacts that center the other person. Yet by leaning inward, by going about your business being quietly self-contained and socially somewhat absent, you might generate magnetism that attracts curiosity and respect.

The concepts of Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan illuminate this whole dynamic. A medium is “cool,” he proposed, when it imparts relatively little sensory information, requiring the audience to fill in the gaps. Cool media included grainy early TV, cartoons and the telephone. A “hot” medium, by contrast, offers high definition and rich information for at least one sense, captivating the audience with little or no participation on its part. Hot media included film, radio and photographs.

Applying these concepts to humans, “cool” introverts transmit relatively less information, compelling listeners or viewers to pay attention to interpret their communication, while “hot” extroverts say more and express more bodily, leaving fewer information gaps for others to fill in.

We are naturally cool dudes and dudettes. Compared to extroverts, our communication habits create a vacuum that others interpret as enigmatic. Enhance the effect with dark sunglasses, and enjoy being a riddle that keeps strangers and acquaintances wondering. As a professor I didn’t do this deliberately, but it worked nevertheless.

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