Psychology
by Susan Cain
Why do the quiet ones get missed?
A third to a half of Americans are introverts, Susan Cain writes, yet schools and offices are built for talkers. Cain, a former corporate lawyer and an introvert herself, asks what we lose when we treat a quiet temperament as something to fix.
Hear a sample · read by Laura
This is Cain's name for the belief that the ideal person is sociable and at ease in the spotlight. She traces it to the early 1900s, when America moved from a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality, and Dale Carnegie taught people to sell themselves.
This is Cain's term for the belief that creativity comes from teams, open-plan offices and group brainstorming. The research she cites points the other way. People brainstorming alone tend to come up with more and better ideas than groups do. Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I working alone.
Psychologist Jerome Kagan showed four-month-old babies new sights, sounds and smells. The ones who thrashed and cried, whom he called high-reactive, were more likely to grow into careful, serious teenagers. Cain argues that introversion is partly a matter of a sensitive nervous system, and that sensitivity has its uses.
Psychologist Brian Little is an introvert and a famously lively lecturer. His theory is that we can act out of character for core personal projects, the things we care about deeply. It costs energy, though, so we need a restorative niche afterwards, somewhere to be ourselves again.
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was soft-spoken and shy, and her quiet refusal changed American history.
Extrovert Ideal
Modern culture prizes the bold talker and often overlooks quiet people.
Recharging
Introverts tend to recharge alone, while extroverts get energy from being around people.
New Groupthink
Group brainstorming usually produces fewer good ideas than people thinking on their own first.
Solitude
Much serious skill-building happens alone, practising the hard parts over and over.
A story from the book
Cain opens with Rosa Parks, remembered as soft-spoken and shy. In 1955 she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, setting off the boycott that Martin Luther King Jr led with his speeches. The movement, Cain argues, needed both of them.
One thing to try
Find the most draining stretch of your week, like a day of back-to-back meetings or a big family lunch. Plan a small escape straight after it, a walk alone or twenty minutes with the door shut. Cain says that's how introverts keep going when they act out of character.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. Quiet comes with a Your Move story to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appWhy do the quiet ones get missed? A third to a half of Americans are introverts, Susan Cain writes, yet schools and offices are built for talkers. Cain, a former corporate lawyer and an introvert herself, asks what we lose when we treat a quiet temperament as something to fix.
The Extrovert Ideal; The New Groupthink; Born high-reactive; Free Trait Theory.
Find the most draining stretch of your week, like a day of back-to-back meetings or a big family lunch. Plan a small escape straight after it, a walk alone or twenty minutes with the door shut. Cain says that's how introverts keep going when they act out of character.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from Quiet in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Your Move story to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
