Quiet by Susan Cain

Rating: 4/5, good

I saw Susan Cain’s TED talk way back when it came out in 2012. I bought the book in 2013 but didn’t read it until this year. I don’t know why I procrastinated so hard on reading this book… the subject was right up my alley, but somehow it just didn’t pique my interest that much. I think the reason is that this isn’t so much a book for introverts to learn how to fit into society as an argument as to why society should change to accept introverts.

This book is divided into 4 parts:

1. “The Extrovert Ideal” This chapter explains how society switched from an agrarian society that valued character to a business society that valued personality.
2. “Your Biology, Your Self?” talks about the role of biology in introversion, for example that introverts have faster heartbeats and their brains tend to be more highly reactive to stimulation.
3. “Do All Cultures Have an Extrovert Ideal?” This one was somewhat controversial, as it contrasts introverted Asian cultures with extroverted American cultures. It sounds plausible but it’s probably best to take everything in here with a grain of salt since she might be exoticizing a bit.
4. “How to Love, How to Work” is the most self-helpy chapter. If you’re just looking for tips on how to be a quiet person in a loud world, you could skip to here for a lot of good advice. There’s also advice for parents and teachers on how to help introverted kids, for extroverted partners to understand their introverted partners, and for bosses to help get the most out of introverted employees.

In part 2, she talks about high reactivity. Jerome Kagan studied children and found that high reactive babies (ones who would get more visibly excited over stimuli like mobiles) were more likely to become introverted teenagers.

“The more reactive a child’s amygdala, the higher his heart rate is likely to be, the more widely dilated his eyes, the tighter his vocal cords, the more cortisol (a stress horomone) in his saliva—the more jangled he’s likely to feel when he confronts something new and stimulating.”

I thought this bit was interesting and it helped me understand myself a little bit more. I’ve often felt like some people have much better ability to function in highly stimulating environments than I do and I’ve always felt a little bit jealous of them for it. I wish I could just be cool no matter what’s going on around me, but when I walk into a new space where I’m not familiar with even just the items in the room or the people or the music it leaves me feeling jangled, like she said, and it’s not that easy to just shake it off and relax.

“High-reactive kids also tend to think and feel deeply about what they’ve noticed, and to bring an extra degree of nuance to everyday experiences.”

I do notice things a lot and people usually tell me I have a meditative vibe, but this is not always a good quality. Often it takes me so long to just absorb/deeply comprehend/empathize with what they just said that they get bored and move on before I’m ready to respond. Although I am changing a little bit and now I get very anxious when there’s nothing being said because I’m used to other people behaving that way and I’ve internalized that once it’s quiet the conversation is over… which is sad, because it puts so much pressure on the interaction. Maybe we should get more comfortable with pauses, even in conversations with new people?

There’s always this tension between acting extroverted and staying in our comfort zones, and Susan Cain has some good tools for conceptualizing that, including the Rubber Band Theory of Personality:

”We are like rubber bands at rest. We are elastic and can stretch ourselves, but only so much.”

We can control our stress responses to some degree with deep breathing and self-calming thoughts, but that will only work for so long before we need some solitude to decompress.

Another really good concept is the sweet spot of stimulation. Cain talks about how we work best when we’re not over or under stimulated.

“Your sweet spot is the place where you’re optimally stimulated. You probably seek it out already without being aware that you’re doing so. Imagine that you’re lying contentedly in a hammock reading a great novel. This is a sweet spot. But after half an hour you realize that you’ve read the same sentence five times; now you’re understimulated. So you call a friend and go out for brunch—in other words, you ratchet up your stimulation level—and as you laugh and gossip over blueberry pancakes, you’re back, thank goodness, inside your sweet spot. But this agreeable state lasts only until your friend—an extrovert who needs much more stimulation than you do—persuades you to accompany her to a block party, where you’re now confronted by loud music and a sea of strangers.”

So we go through our days adjusting our levels of stimulation and trying to be comfortable—not too bored and not overwhelmed. Once you understand this need, you can stop forcing yourself to do too many solitary or too many social activities and start to find a balance.

Susan Cain surveys research from the field of personality psychology, including Brian Little’s idea of Free Trait Agreements – negotiating with others about how much you will act against your socialization comfort level, like making an agreement with your spouse that you’ll go out this weekend if you can stay home next weekend, or asking for accommodations at work if you need more space and solitude. “A Free Trait Agreement acknowledges that we’ll each act out of character some of the time—in exchange for being ourselves the rest of the time.”

“According to Little, our lives are dramatically enhanced when we’re involved in core personal projects that we consider meaningful, manageable, and not unduly stressful, and that are supported by others.”

In the last part, Cain suggests that the key to being able to function in an extroverted society is to find something you’re passionate enough about to motivate you to overcome your fear of socializing or public speaking. She says that acting extroverted to achieve a goal you genuinely care about works better and is less tiring than putting on an extroverted face for something you don’t care about. The genuine caring beneath makes challenging yourself to act more extroverted feel less fake and gives you energy to avoid burnout.

She also talks to financial psychiatrist Janice Dorn about the undervaluing of risk averse behavior. Extroverted people can be too easily tempted into big risks for high rewards, especially when investing on the stock market: “Dorn has observed that her extroverted clients are more likely to be highly reward-sensitive, while the introverts are more likely to pay attention to warning signals.” In this case, holding back can save someone from financial ruin.

Susan Cain notes that shy kids often thrive when they grow up and are able to structure their own lives. She writes:

“The school environment can be highly unnatural, especially from the perspective of an introverted child who loves to work intensely on projects he cares about, and hang out with one or two friends at a time. In the morning, the door to the bus opens and discharges its occupants in a noisy, jostling mass. Academic classes are dominated by group discussions in which a teacher prods him to speak up. He eats lunch in the cacophonous din of the cafeteria, where he has to jockey for a place at a crowded table. Worst of all, there’s little time to think or create. The structure of the day is almost guaranteed to sap his energy rather than stimulate it.”

Here’s a tip from a socialite named Edgar Cain interviewed: “All through college, and recently even, before I ever went to a dinner or cocktail party, I would have an index card with three to five relevant, amusing anecdotes.”

Sorry if this has been kind of badly organized, I just wanted to share my notes and highlights for future reference. 😊

I don’t have much negative to say about this book, but I have two nitpicks in that it’s a little too broad and a little too introvert-positive. I know it’s a book about the value of introversion and that’s the point but I feel like this speaks more to people whose introversion doesn’t cause them a lot of problems in life than to people who really struggle with it. She does make it clear that’s she’s talking about introversion and not shyness or social anxiety or autism, but people looking for help with those more severe problems might want to look elsewhere for guidance.

However, this is a really good book for extroverts who want to understand introverts better and introverts who want to understand themselves better. It’s also a strong argument for society to change to fit introverts better. Maybe the real problem is that society needs to change, but for now, I’m still looking out for a book that’ll help me adapt to society as it currently exists. I picked up The Social Skills Guidebook by Chris McLeod, and I’m hoping that will offer a little more practical advice.