There seems to have been something of a renaissance of introversion in the past decade, the best example of which is probably the work of Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which I should probably read this summer. In the meantime, though, I found this article written by Laurie Helgoe titled “Revenge of the Introvert,” which was the cover story of the September 2010 issue of Psychology Today. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the article is Helgoe’s assertion that introverts just aren’t as interested in happiness as their extroverted counterparts: “Introverts are not driven to seek big hits of positive emotional arousal – they’d rather find meaning than bliss – making them relatively immune to the search for happiness that permeates contemporary American culture.”
Helgoe draws on a number of sources in reaching this conclusion, including a study in which researchers gave subjects a difficult task – like taking a test, giving a speech, or working out a logic problem – and then observed that the extraverts in the group would conjure up happy feelings to help themselves accomplish the task, whereas introverts “preferred to maintain a neutral emotional state” because further excitement would constitute a distraction. As Helgoe conceives of it, happiness is an external reward associated with all manner of human activities, but it is one that introverts, because of their “higher resting state of arousal,” have less use for. Perhaps the most novel idea here is that American introverts might not even want to be as happy as the rest of the culture seems to think they should be, because being happy could be an impediment to doing meaningful work.
WHAT IS HAPPINESS? 