Is Introversion Learned or Is It Something You’re Born With?
When I was growing up, my sisters, 7 and 8 years older than me, shared a bedroom, which was something I was very jealous of. I would hang out in there with them all night, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on their TV and listening to them talk about their friend’s dating lives. When they went to bed, I would begrudgingly go back to my own room, where I would lay awake at night convinced that something bad was going to happen to me in my sleep.
As I got older – and less afraid of the dark – I started to learn little rituals that made me not just like having my own bedroom, but exceedingly addicted to being alone. In my room, no one was watching me, and I could do whatever I wanted. I could watch whatever I wanted on TV late into the night, shove candy wrappers under my bed, or do a bunch of sit-ups without seeming like I was doing it to say, “Hey, look at me! I’m fit!” The idea of negotiating with someone else when to turn out the lights, and how much you are supposed to talk in the dark, began to seem horrifying.
This makes me wonder, do kids that have their own bedrooms learn to be introverted, and kids that have to share a bedroom learn to be extroverted? In other words, are introversion and extraversion traits that we develop out of necessity, so that we can be happy in our own social circumstances? Historically, many kids did not grow up with their own room, and many families have lived in one room alone. How much of those traits are switched on and off so that we can be sane in our surroundings?
Carl Jung thought that most people had introverted and extroverted sides, with one being more dominant than the other. This makes sense for me – my Meyers-Briggs score indicated that I was just a bit more introverted than extroverted. Certain things flip the introversion on (like living alone, it turns out), and certain things flip it off (like water parks).
It’s more likely that growing up having to share a bedroom teaches introverts how to cope, rather than shapes people into extroverts. I think, like many traits, introversion is more innate to your personality than a result of your environment. If my own family can be considered a mini experiment in this, it would support that conclusion. One of my sisters grew up extroverted, and the other grew up to be even more introverted than I am. Probably because no amount of communal TV enjoyment can make introverts lose their passion for being alone.
Photo by Michael Inscoe