Transcriber: Leonardo Silva
Reviewer: Mile Živković Good morning. What an intriguing group
of individuals you are! To a psychologist.
(Laughter) I've had the opportunity,
in the last forty-six minutes, to listen in on some
of your conversations -- inadvertantly, of course -- and to observe you
interacting with each other, and I think it's fair to say, already, that there are nineteen people, in this audience, at this moment, showing psychological symptoms I'd like to discuss this morning.
(Laughter) And I thought you might like
to know who you are. But instead of pointing at you, which would be gratuitous and intrusive, I thought what I would do
is give you a simple fact. Did you know
that it is virtually impossible for adults to lick the outside
of their own elbows? And did you know... (Laughter) that how you responded and acted
upon that piece of information probably gives us a piece of information about your personality? For example, some of you
have already tried to lick your elbows. (Laughter) And I'm afraid some of you
may have dislocated something in the process. Some of you have demurred. Some of you have strongly demurred. And some of you have not only tried
to lick your own elbow; you've successfully licked the elbow of the person
sitting next to you. (Laughter) What gives rise to these
wonderful differences in personality? That's what we study in our field
with personality psychology, or, more broadly considered,
personality science. And within that field, one very influential stream of thought suggests that these arise
out of big five traits. And the big five traits that have been discovered in research over the last couple of decades, can be thought of
in terms of an acronym, OCEAN, where "O" stands for "Openness", "C" for "Conscientiousness", "E" for "Extroversion", "A" for "Agreeableness" and "N" for "Neuroticism". And I'm not going to focus
upon neuroticism. So, don't worry. I am going to focus, however,
upon extroversion. This has received a great deal of buzz in the last couple of years. I'm sure many of you are familiar
with Susan Cain's TEDTalk and with her book "Quiet". And the first confession
I wish to make today is that, in chapter seven
of Cain's book, Quiet, she alludes to this
strange little Canadian professor, who had lectured at Harvard, who was seen by his students
as extremely extroverted, but, in fact, was known to hide from them in the men's room, after lectures. And I must confess
that his name was incredibly, serendipitously, the same as mine,
(Laughter) Brian Little. Let me explain a little bit about
the dimension of extroversion. And to do that,
I'm just going to take advantage of one diagram that I will animate and ask you a question about, in a minute. When we became mammals, we developed a part of the brain known as the neocortex --
"neo" means "new" and "cortex" means "roof". So, the neocortex
is the "new roof" of the brain, accreted to, or added on
to the paleocortex, or the "old roof" of the brain. And one of the functions of the neocortex is to allow us to think before acting, to prognosticate before engaging
in mere behavior. But, in order for the neocortex
to function properly, it needs to be aroused or activated up to an optimal level of arousal. Now, too high a level of arousal means that you're just revving too high. And it's dysfunctional
in terms of carrying out our everyday projects and tasks. In fact, I might even be able
to highlight this here. Up here is not really
the best place to be, in terms of your arousal level. Nor is down there. Here, you're soaring unduly. Here, you're at risk for snoring. You're under the optimal level. Now, let me ask you: who do you think is most at risk in this audience, in the Cambridge Union, at this moment, of falling asleep? It may surprise you to know that it is, in fact, the extroverts,
because, chronically, extroverts are under
the optimal level of arousal necessary to carry out their tasks
and projects effectively. And, consequently,
they need to extrovert themselves, they need to seek stimulation, they need to engage with people. And that is why they will act
the way they do, and we can spot it
in their everyday behavior. I'll give you some examples in a moment. Introverts, contrastingly, are over that optimal level of arousal. They need to get their stimulation level down,
less stimulating, in order to carry out
their tasks effectively. And there is an optimal level of arousal
right in between. So, some of you who are ambiverts will be more or less
at that optimal level. Let me give you
some very practical examples. I want you to imagine a car containing one extrovert
and one introvert, driving to the Cambridge Union. Typically, it's the extrovert
who's driving, even if it's the introvert's car.
(Laughter) And the reason is, to get here, you get here much more quickly
with an extrovert driving. They actually accrue
a larger number of traffic tickets. (Laughter) And they need stimulation. So, when they're driving,
you can spot them on the motorway. They move around a lot, they look at other extroverts, driving introverts away from Cambridge, and they do not have a smartphone. Extroverts have three smartphones!
(Laughter) And you can see them! They're talking,
they're answering a text message they just sent themselves, (Laughter) and, generally, they act in such a way as to get their level of stimulation up, whereas the introverts
sitting next to them are hoping grimly
to get to Cambridge in one piece. Now, that's not a zero-sum game. What is a zero-sum game, though, is a negotiation of the radio on the car. There's a probabilistic drift,
as we call it, a tendency only, for extroverts, when they get in the car, to turn the radio up
to about 110 decibels! This is near the pain threshold!
(Laughter) So, you'll have 110 decibels of Yo-Yo Ma or Miley Cyrus booming
through the sound system, or perhaps a mash of the two with Miley twerking the cello.
(Laughter) And that's great for the extroverts, because it gets them up to where they can carry out their driving and their conversational task effectively. The introverts, not so much. So, you see the seeds of conflict here. Now, let me just give you another example. We interact in different ways. Extroverts, to be comfortable
in interaction, like to stand close, like to have a lot of body contact, a lot of gaze or mutual gaze. We've found in some researches
that extroverts use more diminutive names,
when they meet somebody. The person you're meeting is Charles; it rapidly becomes Charlie, and then Chuck,
and then Chuckles-baby, (Laughter) whereas for introverts
it remains Charles, until you're given a pass
to a more intimate level. The interactions between them can therefore be a little bit strained. Also, in effect, it can give rise
to a vector resolution problem, because the extrovert,
to be polite, moves forward; the introvert, to be polite,
moves backwards. And they end up, again, at one of these impasses caused
by differences in personality. We speak differently. And now I have to betray
something to you. This is a confession. I am, as my students know -- after I tell them -- an extreme introvert! Off the bottom of the scale. And many of you are like me. We act out of character. We become passionate about projects that really matter to us, which takes us out
of our basic personality styles. Let me give you an example
of communication. You need to know that to appreciate this. I had a consulting contract
I shared with a colleague, who was as different from me
as two people can be. First, his name is Tom, and mine isn't. Secondly, he is 6 foot 5, and I have a tendency not to be.
(Laughter) And thirdly,
he's a card-carrying extrovert; I'm certifiably introverted. You need to know that extroverts
prefer black and white, concrete, simple language. Introverts prefer parenthetical, contextually complex, contingent,
weasel-worded sentences. More or less... as it were. (Laughter) When we communicate, we have problems. For example, this particular project
that we're involved in had seconded to it a person
from a finance department. I'll call him Michael, because that was his name.
(Laughter) And Michael just about
brought the whole thing to a crashing halt. And the person who seconded him
asked Tom and me, both, what we thought of Michael. And Tom responded
in classic "extropertise" -- I'll tell you what he said
in a minute -- and then they said to me: "Brian,
what do you think of Michael?" This is how we sound to extroverted ears. And so, I said, "Well,
Michael has a tendency, at times, of behaving in a way that some of us might see as, perhaps, more assertive than is normally
called for." (Laughter) Tom just rolled his eyes and said, "Brian, that's what I said!
He's an asshole!" (Laughter) Now, as an introvert,
I might gently allude to certain "assholic" qualities
in this man's behaviour, (Laughter) but I'm not going to lunge
really "a-word". But an extrovert says
if he walks like one, if he talks like one, I call him one, and we end up passing each other
in the night. And we must. We must. Is this all we are, then? Are we simply a group of fixed traits? I don't think so. I'd like to invoke what I call
free traits as explanations. Why do we act out of character? Free traits are when you invoke
a social script to advance a core project in your life that means the world to you. For example,
I am passionate about professing. I love my students, I love my subject and I can't wait to tell them about what is exciting me. But it means that,
in order to convey that, I act extrovertedly in my lectures. I don't have to,
but it's entrained to the project, acting like this. I can't wait to convey information to you. Can you do that for a period of time? Of course you can! It's called professionalism. It's also called love. You can act out of character.
I'm a pseudo-extrovert. You may have acted out of character for some years in your life. You may be a naturally extroverted person, but you have acted
more introvertedly for years, because you love Michael. Can we do this? Can we protractedly act out of character for a long period of time, without incurring costs? I don't think we can. I think there are limits to our capacity
to act out of character. And I want to give you a couple -- well, I want to give you
one example in particular, and a couple of allusions to it. Imagine a mom at a birthday party. And, at her birthday party,
her core project is to give an awesome party
for her daughter. And so, she acts extrovertedly when they're playing
"pin-the-tail on the mommy", and she acts in such a way, as to get progress on the project of putting on
an awesome party for Melinda. But, after the party's over, she's likely to repair
to what I call a restorative niche, where she can become under-aroused, get that level of arousal down a bit. Whereas a true extrovert
at her daughter's birthday party, when the parents
come to pick up the child, they have another party
in the kitchen! (Laughter) And that's how these
individual differences become more complex
than simple types of people. Relatively fixed traits
and free traits intermingle to make us more complex than I think we often
regard ourselves as being. One example: I used to go down to talk
to a group of senior military officers about the delights of human personality. And I would, in doing this,
give them a number of topics. One seemed to be
of particular interest to them which was this, which went to
the whole business of arousal, the extroverted arousal, the need for stimulation and so on. And it has to do with sexual intercourse. So, I think if we could keep this screen from children in the audience, or from those watching on video -- I shall tell you
some answers to the question: how frequently do males and females of introverted and extroverted orientation engage in the act? So how many times,
per minute -- (Laughter) -- sorry, that's the rats study,
sorry. (Laughter) How many times per month
do introverted males engage in the act? Three. Extroverted males? More or less? More! Yes, by quite a bit. Now, for any introverted males here, could I just point out
that we also know a lot about what we call quality-quantity trade-off? (Laughter) (Applause) No more need be said on that.
(Laughter) Introverted women, 3.1; extroverted women --
frankly speaking, as an introverted male, they are heroic! 7.5.
(Laughter) They not only handle
all the male extroverts. They pick up a few introverts as well. (Laughter) So, I was telling them about this, and at that point, the military officers wanted me to go the officers' mess. I would have been a mess if I'd gone, because I'm overloaded,
all of those eyes looking at me. And so, I would ask if I beg off
and walk by the river that ran by the campus. And I would do that, each time I went down,
and that worked out very well. But the campus moved
and the river stayed where it was. So, I had to find another
restorative niche for myself, and there's one 62 paces from this stage, which I will avail myself of
in a few moments. And it is the men's room. The loo. The john. The can. Whatever you wish to label it. And I remember one day in particular -- oh, this is a picture of it, right here. You're looking down, it's a plan view.
At the top are the cubicles. Oh, here. At the top are the cubicles. On the side are the urinals. It was a busy urinal day.
Lots of extroverts. (Laughter) I went where any
self-respecting introvert would go, just as far away as possible, and began to lower my level of arousal. But we're always alert to the sounds
of encroaching, real extroverts! Extrovert alert! Extrovert alert! They have a way of walking
and humming that is discernible. (Humming) (Laughter) So, my heart's going, "bum-bum-bum". And I hear his feet moving toward me. (Humming) He must have seen and recognized my feet, because I'm looking underneath
at his. (Laughter) (Humming louder) Now, my heart's going,
"bum-bum-bum-bum-bum" And then, I hear -- how to put this
felicitously various? -- evacuatory noises,
utterly unmuffled. (Laughter) We don't like that.
We don't even like our own. That's why we flush during,
as well as after. (Laughter) And then, I hear this gravelly voice say, "Hey, is that Dr. Little?" (Laughter) If anything is guaranteed to constipate --
(Laughter) an introvert for six months...
(Laughter) it's talking on the john. So, what I do now, as a pseudo-extrovert trying to muddle through life
and it's vicissitudes, when I go to the washroom
as a restorative niche for acting out of character, as a pseudo-extrovert,
like many of you might do, I put my feet up. (Laughter) And I swear one of these days, a real extrovert, at a TED conference, is going to say, "Got you!" And that will be the day I die.
(Laughter) Thank you. (Applause) (Cheers)
