The Resiliency of Introverts

Do extroverts and introverts differ in how well we bounce back from adversity? And if so, how?

When back-to-back hurricanes devastated parts of Florida and the Southeast in the last month, I wondered whether individuals’ personality profile played into how well they coped with being flooded, losing one’s home or being displaced.  Do coping ability and resiliency line up with differences between extroverts and introverts?

When disaster strikes, some people get mired in woe-is-me hopelessness, seeing themselves as passive victims of fate.  Others ease into problem-solving mode, looking for practical ways to reverse setbacks.  And of course, many of us simply freeze in shock or sadness for a while before moving in either of those directions.  Undoubtedly personal circumstances prior to the disaster, such as finances, physical health and social connectedness, also play into the ability to respond and cope.

One factor in resilience is one’s general way of thinking about problems and challenges.  Ask yourself this question: Who or what is most responsible for your degree of happiness and success?  You – or external factors like money, hardships, privileges, luck or social forces?  If you give the former answer, you probably have what psychologists call an internal locus of control.  If you attribute happiness and success to elements outside of yourself, you have an external locus of control.

Objectively, hurricanes and storm damage are external events.  But when it comes to responding to such events, locus of control comes into play.  When you feel you’re responsible for how your life turns out, you’re more likely to get busy contacting your insurance company or other resources, clearing out what debris you can and thinking about long-term decisions such as whether you want to leave the area or stay and rebuild.  These actions, in turn, affect how well you recover, both psychologically and practically.  And according to many observers, introverts tend to have an internal locus of control. 

A habit of introspection, another characteristic of introverts, can help with decision making in unanticipated situations.  Instead of acting impulsively or becoming overwhelmed to the point of paralysis, introspective people reach into their inner resources to come up with a plan and later, to put their distress behind them.  Introverts’ focus on inner life also fits with the idea that it’s up to oneself to engineer a positive outcome from negative circumstances.

In one experiment, if initial efforts to overcome a challenge didn’t work, the introverts in the study were more likely to persist than the extroverts.  Whether or not one easily gets discouraged surely relates to one’s degree of resiliency, particularly when an adverse situation from something like a natural disaster goes on and on.

On the other hand, because extroverts gain energy through social interactions, they may be better disposed than introverts to mobilize and use neighborhood relationships to recover from a disaster.  The person who rallies friends and strangers to cooperate in rescues and community reconstruction is probably an extrovert.  In addition, some studies I looked at stated that extroverts tended to have a more upbeat attitude toward life, which boosts their resilience.

Whatever one’s personality, natural disasters are no picnic.  A friend who lives very near the San Andreas Fault in Point Reyes, California once told me they’ve been warned they need to be prepared to cope on their own for at least a week.  Being prepared has both psychological and practical components. 

For more perspective, I recommend these disaster-recovery tips from the American Psychological Society.

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