Do Words Speak Louder for Introverts?
Do introverts have a different relationship to words than extroverts do? Scientific research offers a few tempting hints.
Earlier this month, I published an essay about my lifelong love of words. Noting the mention of Introvert UpThink in my bio, a reader asked whether a fondness for words is an introvert characteristic. Here’s what I found when I went looking for studies on this question.
Spontaneity
Commentators on personality differences agree that extroverts, with their higher social orientation, discover what they think by speaking, while introverts, with their proclivity for reflection, prefer to think before they speak. People who often pause before they speak, ask for extra time to think things over and carefully choose words usually turn out to be introverts.
Much of this stems from physiological differences discovered by brain researchers between the two ends of the extrovert/introvert spectrum, including:
· Extroverts need high amounts of the neurotransmitter dopamine to feel good, while introverts need a good rest after that amount of dopamine
· Introverts feel best with high amounts of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which calms and relaxes the nervous system
· For introverts, incoming information takes longer to travel in the brain before a response is generated
· When they speak, extroverts rely more on short-term memory, introverts on long-term memory
As a writing coach in decades past, I saw again and again that people who said they expressed themselves more easily and eloquently by speaking than by writing were extroverts. Introverts normally prefer that high-stakes or contentious communications take place by email, rather than by phone or Zoom. That way, they can think through and revise what to say before pressing the button for “Send.”
This fits with findings from scientists at Johns Hopkins who studied stroke victims and concluded that writing and speaking appear to take place differently in the brain. Among the stroke victims in their study, several could speak but not write certain sentences, while one could write but not speak them. “It’s as though there were two quasi-independent language systems in the brain,” commented Johns Hopkins professor Brenda Rapp.
Nitpickiness
Linguists at the University of Michigan discovered that introverts are more likely than extroverts to get annoyed by typos and grammar mistakes. Robin Queen, one of the researchers, guessed that this difference stems from extroverts’ greater openness to variability. Variation from what’s expected increases the level of stimulation, and for physiological reasons introverts prefer a low level of stimulation. Excess stimulation irks introverts. It’s no surprise, then, that the Internet offers many blog posts trumpeting proofreading as a perfect job for introverts.
Someone whose speech comes off as a somewhat incoherent “word salad” or who waves it off when told he or she used an incorrect or offensive word is characteristically an extrovert. For instance, President George W. Bush, an extrovert, often said things like “They misunderestimated me,” “This Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport” and “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.” In line with the previous point, those who found these linguistic slip-ups alarming probably were introverts.
All the same, keep in mind that apart from scenarios where people have paid to have mistakes corrected, nitpickiness isn’t usually welcome. The quietest kid in my family, I might reflexively pipe up when someone misused or mispronounced a word at our dinner table only to be shushed and scolded by my less introverted siblings.
As for why people nitpick, I came across the following answer on Quora: Because the nitpickers “have a serious egotistical personality disorder in which they have uncontrolled aggression intermixed with uncontrolled self-righteousness.” Naturally I disagree, but still, wow.
Precision
A widely discussed study by Dutch researchers revealed that compared with extroverts, introverts use more concrete, specific language and make more careful distinctions. When asked to describe what they saw in photographs, extroverts were more casual, abstract and vague, even including things not direct visible in the pictures. By being more precise and on-point, the introverts would be perceived as more trustworthy, the researchers added.
This vague/specific divergence makes sense of experiences I had years ago when attending meetings of the National Speakers Association. Occasionally there’d be a speech that got much of the audience onto their feet, applauding fervently, while I would turn to someone next to me who also sat unmoved and ask, “But what did he say?” The nebulous, pulling-on-heartstrings storytelling did not meet my introverted need for a clear communication takeaway.
An Example from Fiction
We can see personality differences regarding writing in an early scene in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. (And here you get a sneak preview of a book coming up for discussion in the Introvert Book Club for February 2023!)
Several of the book’s characters are in a drawing room, where Mr. Darcy, an introvert, is writing a letter. Miss Bingley, an extrovert, is looking over Mr. Darcy’s shoulder at his letter and tossing comments about it every which way. Out of nine fatuous exclamations Miss Bingley makes, Mr. Darcy gives curt, minimally polite replies to seven, while he says nothing at all in response to two of them. Like a typical introvert, he needs concentration to do justice to this letter. Expressing himself carefully in his letter outweighs his social obligation to participate in the ongoing banter.
Mr. Charles Bingley, the brother of Miss Bingley and like her an extrovert, jumps into the conversation as the talk turns to how his approach to letter writing differs from that of his good friend, Mr. Darcy.
“Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable,” observes Miss Bingley. “He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest.”
Mr. Bingley agrees, adding, “My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them; by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.”
After quite a bit more drawing-room repartee flies by around him, Mr. Darcy finishes his letter. Although this never comes up in the scene, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Bingley, the extrovert, let half of the letters he started to write go unfinished.