Why Introverts Are Underrated with Susan Cain

- Today is January 13th, 2026, and my guest is author Susan Cain. This is Susan's second appearance on Econ Talk. She was last here in October of 2024, discussing her book Bittersweet. Our topic for today is her 2012 book, quiet The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. Susan, welcome back to E to EconTalk.

- Thank you so much, Russ. It's great to be here. I'm a huge fan.

- I think I'm the last person to read this book. Everyone I know has read it. It made a big splash when it came out, and as I joked with you before we started, I've read it more recently than you have, which gives me a, a certain advantage, but I'm sure you remember a little bit about it. How did you come to write, write the book?

- Well, I had been living this topic all my life because I am an introvert in an extroverted world, and this is something I'd been thinking about since I was four years old. You know, I, I didn't have a vocabulary for talking about it or thinking about it when I was a kid, but I think that every introverted kid is hyper aware of how their preferences of how they like to spend their time and how many people they like to spend their time with is completely different from what is mandated for them by social norms. So I'd been thinking about it all my life, but I think it was really when I start, you know, I I, I was a corporate lawyer for about a decade before I became a writer, and during that time, I, I again started to think in a new way about how so much of the way that people showed up as lawyers was dictated by whether they're more introverted or extroverted. And yet there was no language for talking about that. We would talk about gender, we would talk about nationality, we would talk about all different things, but no one would ever talk about this most fundamental of personality types that some psychologists call the north and south of human temperament. And you know, in the last 10 years, it's become pretty commonplace to talk about it, but at that point, the words introvert and extrovert were almost never used.

- Yeah. It was a, in that sense it was, I think of an, not just an interesting book, a book people learned a lot from. But I think an important book, one of the themes of the book, which, and I don't know what I am, I think I'm a little bit of both, maybe we'll talk about that later.

- Yeah. - But one of the themes of the book is that introversion is seen as a character flaw and that extroversion is the ideal. And I, I think that's true. I think that is the cultural, those are the cultural norms. But before we get into that, let's try to talk with some definitions about how you would define an introvert versus an extrovert.

- Yeah. And so this is a question that we could spend the whole hour on if we wanted to,

- And we might, because I think it's very confusing to many people when you, so go ahead.

- Yeah. There's so much to, to say here. I'll give you first the kind of pop culture definition, which I actually like and was the definition that first spoke to me when I heard it back when I was in, I guess, my twenties. And, and that is the question of where do you get your energy from? So do you feel more energetic when you're kind of out and about out in the world interacting with a lot of people? Or do you feel more energetic when you're alone or in a quieter setting? And I often say to people with this one, you know, imagine that you are at a party that you're truly enjoying with company who you truly love. And then think about how you feel after you've been there for about an hour and a half or two hours. So if you're an extrovert, it's as if the internal battery that you have has been charged up by this experience. And so now you're full of energy and you're looking for more. And if you're an introvert, no matter how socially skilled you might be, and no matter how much you love all those people at the party, your battery has been drained by this experience. And so now you're kind of wishing that you could just press the button and be immediately whisked home. And that idea of, of the internal battery that we all have, I think is an incredibly useful metaphor, but also important to understand that it is just a metaphor for what's happening neurobiologically. And there's a lot we can get into with that. But just to give you kind of one, one kind of crack at it in general, you could say that introverts have nervous systems that react more to all different kinds of stimulation. So we tend to think about the stimulation of that party, or the stimulation of going to a big meeting at work, but there's also just the, the day-to-day stimulation. Yeah, it could be like bright lights for some people. It could be a, a lot of noise from a construction site, it could be anything. And introverts have nervous systems that tend to react and respond more to that stimulation. So that for, for us introverts, we're at our best, most creative feel in our best state of equilibrium when things are a little more mellow around us. And for extroverts who have nervous systems that react less to stimulation, the sweet spot there is when there's more happening. Because if you find yourself in an under stimulating environment, you start to feel kind of listless and unhappy and checked out. And I think it's really useful to understand these personality types through this lens, because it's just very helpful in thinking, okay, what, what do I need and how do I need to structure my day so that I make sure I'm in my sweet spot for as much of the time as possible? You know, so what, what activities leave me feeling under stimulated? And I know I should call my best friend who always makes me laugh at that moment. Or when do I feel overstimulated? So I know I need to take a solo walk around the block. And if you think about it in those terms, I think you also feel more, more entitled, for lack of a better word, it's not the word I want, but, but, but better able to, to make the adjustments that you need so that you're showing up as your best self.

- You know, I think there's a simpler point to make that it's true of many, many aspects of the, of personality and our, our nature. But you know, for me, one of the power, one of the powerful parts of your book and the public conversation that, that I observed with that before I read your book and before we had this conversation, and this sounds so trite, but it's quite deep, and it's that other people are not just like me. That is very hard for human beings to, to understand. And when I see someone who's not like me, of course my first thought is one is that there's something wrong with them. Two, I just need to explain to them this is the wrong way to be. You need to, you know, don't be so sensitive to that noise. Why are you, you know, why are you sensitive to it? Just forget about it. Don't think about it. And the idea that, that we have some fundamental differences along those lines is, is kind of shocking. You know, there was that movie with George Clooney, I think it was called, I wanna say it was called Up in the Air, where he was this corporate guy who ran around and fired people, and he fired people the way he wanted to be fired. Chick Chuck, get it over with, I don't wanna hear all that fake emotion. You feel bad for me, and just, you're fired. Go clean out your office. You have half an hour. And I think there are people like that. They don't want any empathy. In fact, they, they dislike it and they view it as fake, because for them, if they were delivering the message, they'd have to fake it. 'cause not particularly empathetic people. Maybe the idea that there are people who want that message to be delivered in a different way than they would like to receive it is a shocking realization. And I don't think it's obvious to most people. And it's this distinction of stimulus versus, and also where you get your energy. People are different. And you know, you talk about a couple in the book, one who's extroverted, one who's introverted, and they, you know, one of them wants to throw a, a dinner party once a week. And the other one, they're very much doesn't want to be it in that setting. It's like, well, what's wrong with you? Why would, why would you not enjoy a, it's a perfectly reasonable thought, but it shows a lack of understanding of the human condition.

- Yeah. And I don't know what it is about us humans that I think it makes it easier for us to understand our differences and be empathetic to someone who's different from us. If we, if we know why it is, you know, especially if we know that it's biologically rooted, there's something about that that makes it easier for us to process it. But even just giving a name to it makes it easier. And that, that is something I see with couples all the time. And in fact, I will say for my husband and me, 'cause my husband's much more extroverted than I am, we had had for years, just this ongoing, I don't know if the right word is squabble, but you know, when we're driving in the car long distances, he would always turn the radio dial louder to, to make the music louder. And I would always turn it back down. And it was years into my researching this book, and we were talking about the book all the time before we realized that this was just, we, we were just being classic, you know, overstimulation under stimulation. And we still, we still squabble over the radio dial, but there's something about understanding it that makes the whole thing depersonalized. You know? It, it's, no, there, there's nothing fraud about it at that point. It's, it's just purely where do we compromise it out.

- So I really like the title of the book. Was that Hard to Choose? Do you remember that? Because it, you, when I asked you how you came to write the book, you immediately started talking about introverts and extroverts as if people would know, well, the book's called Quiet. Obviously it's about introverts versus extroverts. But you could have called it Introverts versus Extroverts or Outgoing and something else, but you didn't,

- Oh, so are you asking about the title or the subtitle? The title? Okay.

- Well, either one.

- Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I'll, I'll tell you why I asked that question. So the title, I thought the word quiet was just right, because first of all, it expresses the poetic sense of being more introverted. The, the sense of quiet, the sense of still waters run deep. I, I felt all were captured in that word. But it also captures the pejorative that many introverts hear all their lives. You know, introverted kids from the time they're very young, are told by their teachers, you know, Sally is too quiet and must learn to speak up in class. That's the, that word quiet is used in that context all the time. So that was why I chose that title. And for the subtitle, which is The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, I owe the credit for that to my glorious agent, Richard Pine, who came up with it when we sent out the book proposal to prospective editors. And it stuck.

- And, you know, that's when you said you were gonna start with the socially, the pop culture definition of introvert versus extrovert. I actually think that the one you gave, which is where you get your energy from, is actually a subtle, sophisticated version. I think if you ask most people, they would say, introverts are, excuse me, extroverts are outgoing and introverts are shy. That's the difference. And, and that's why it's it shyness, which, you know, can be quite charming, but is often considered a handicap in the business world. Or that's why, you know, a a teacher might wanna socialize a student to be more verbal or more active. And obviously we make snap judgements about people based on, you know, what they say and how they say it. And quiet people have a little bit of a disadvantage in many, many settings. And you, you write about visiting the Harvard Business School and quiet people being uneasy and worried that their careers will be hampered by the fact that they aren't this charismatic Tony Robbins figure, someone you also discussed in the book having attended one of his seminars. So just talk about that generally, just this talking part and why, how that interacts with these definitions.

- Well, it's funny that you mentioned the term shyness. 'cause you may have seen me scribbling something down in a minute ago. And, and the word I wrote was shyness. 'cause I wanted to make sure to talk about that because introversion and shyness are not the same thing, but they're both really important to understand. So introversion is about this preference for quieter, less stimulating environments and modes of interaction. Shyness is much more about the fear of social judgment. So it happens in situations where you feel like you could be socially evaluated, and it's different for different people. So when person might feel shy when they have to give a speech for someone else, it might be a job interview or going on a date, or it could be some combination of, of all those things. But in general, shy people, they, they're more sensitive to being socially evaluated and they're also more likely to read in negative evaluation into a neutral facial facial expression because of that sensitivity. So I, I, I, I say so, so first of all, I'm in, in my book and in my work, I'm talking both about introverted people and shy, although you could be introverted without being shy and you could be shy without being introverted. The classic cases of Barbara Streisand, who is a very larger than life extroverted personality, but she stopped performing for, I think it was decades because of her stage fright. So I say the following thing as a constitutionally shy person, which is, I, there isn't that much for, to recommend shyness itself. It's not a pleasant experience pretty much ever. However it goes along with a whole constellation of personality traits that we do value. And, and I think that's important to understand. So shyness and conscientiousness are extremely well linked. And the reason has to do with so much of the way human beings come to acquire a conscience in the first place from a very young age. They start to understand when they've done something right or wrong. And shy children are just feel those kinds of, that kind of feedback all the more intensely. And so they tend to develop a very strong conscience. Yeah, a strong conscience. Shyness is complicated though, and it's, it's also important to understand, I mean, there's lots of situations where you could start out as shy in situation X, but you learn over time how to handle situation X. And the shyness mostly melts away. So it's not as much of a fixed state in situ speaking situationally, but most people who let's say were shy as children, will tell you that they still retain a kind of core of that sensation that stays with them through their lives.

- And let's talk about solitude and contemplation, which is also embodied in the title, the word quiet. Having the ability to be alone and to be contemplative, I think are superpowers there, particularly out of fashion in today's world, of course, with the ubiquitousness of the cell phone and, and social media. Part of your book is that I would call it a lawyer's brief. It it's an attempt to make the case for the pluses of, of introversion. Not just that it's okay, but rather that it's sometimes quite powerful. So talk about the role of, of solitude in general and, and the ability to work on one's own.

- Well, who was it who said Earnest Hemingway? I can't remember who it was. Who, who talked about the biggest problem being someone who can't be in a room by themselves. You know, the, the core of a, of a, of a loving self, of a self that can, can love itself and love the people around them is the ability to be comfortable with oneself, which generally starts in a room by yourself. Can you be comfortable with that kind of solitude? Yeah. And, and I worry a lot that, especially nowadays, kids are not trained in this core art, which I think is part of why we've seen the explosion over the past decades of practices like yoga and meditation. I, I, I think these were a response to the lack of solitude in our lives. That everybody craves it, extroverts crave it also. We all need it. And, and I think we see this also in all our religious traditions. You know, you, you almost always see the, the moment of profound revelation for many of our religious figures, whether it's Moses or or, or Jesus or Muhammad, they Buddha, they go off, they go off into the wilderness, they go off into solitude. And that is the place where they have the revelation that they then bring back to the community. So there, there's always a kind of dynamic between going off into solitude and then being together with whoever your community is. But that piece, that, that solitary peace is incredibly important. And this is partly because we're such social beings, we're constructed to be socially porous. So when there are other people around us, we're, we're kind of incapable of knowing what we truly think and what are the ideas that are truly original to us. So for example, the, the designer, Philippe Stark said that during the, the, the time of his year when he would be most creative, he would go off by himself for several months. And during that time, he wouldn't even pick up a magazine, wouldn't turn on the TV, wouldn't do anything because he knew that to take in inputs from other people would be to weaken his own sense of originality. So, so solitude's just an incredibly important piece of knowing ourselves and being creative.

- And you talk about the obsession in the modern workplace, and it's emphasized in, in our educational system of collaboration, of working in groups, the importance of working in groups. And of course for an introvert that can be unpleasant, alien and unproductive, and you're critical of it in general. And I think about, I, I think the power of solitude in doing great work is crucial. The idea that I would, and sometimes it's helpful to brainstorm or share an idea, a one-on-one conversation can be very powerful. But the idea of all great ideas coming out of teams say is implausible to me. But it is something of a modern idol. It seems to be something that, that the workplace in schools really push. What do you think of that?

- Oh, I, I, I think it's absolutely maddening. So as you say, introverts know how ridiculous it is just by virtue of their, their own experience. But then you start to look at the research literature on brainstorming, which finds in study after study that, that people produce more ideas and better ideas when they're on their own. Which is not to say that there isn't a role for people coming together to share those ideas. Of course there is, but we very much need a kind of dynamic between the solitary process and the coming together process. So the best, the best ideas are really where you have that kind of dynamic and people can go off by themselves before they come together to share those ideas. One example of that, at, at Amazon, apparently Jeff Bezos or Bezos, I always forget how to say his name,

- I don't know.

- Okay. However we say his name. He apparently begins every meeting at Amazon by having the person who has called the meeting first write a long memo, I think like a three page single space memo outlining that, which is gonna be talked about at the meeting. And then everybody sits there in silence for the first half an hour reading this memo and thinking about it quietly before they start talking. And the idea is that you get thoughts that are a lot less half baked when you go through that kind of a process. And yet, as you say in the modern world, that that's incredibly unusual. And one of the things I was most struck by when I was researching the book, I decided that I would start visiting schools. And this was before I had had kids myself. So I hadn't been in a school in a really long time at that, at that point. And I, I didn't even know what I was looking for. I just kind of was popping in to just see what the experience was of introverted and extroverted kids. But I was shocked to see how much education had changed during the years since I had been a student, which is to say I remembered going to school as involving a lot of solitary effort where you would sit and think deeply, write a paper, do your math or whatever. But nowadays, so much of school life, it, it's done in groups. You know, the, it's

- A pep rally.

- It's a pep rally, and all, all the desks are smooshed together. Yeah. Even when they're doing math, it's like, it's, it's a big group project. You're not allowed to ask the teacher a question until you've asked your peers the question. And some of that just strikes me as kinda a waste of time.

- Yeah. That, that Amazon practice is kind of shocking. I wonder if that's true for every meeting. Half an hour is a very long time.

- Yeah. - I would wanna reserve that for certain kinds of, of topics, but, but it is a very, it's a fascinating question of, you know, one's own productivity. I I, I want to tie it into something you write about that, that I think is really important. I, I was talking to someone about your book, turns out I'm not the last person not to have read it. He hasn't read it either. There, there were two of us. And he said, well, you know, I'm not an introvert because he said, I like, I like to socialize. And I said, in what kind of settings? He goes, well, I don't like a big crowded event where I, you know, people are holding court and, and showing off. You know, I like to socialize with one other person. And I thought, you're an introvert. Exactly. So, so you say, and the way you write it, the book is, there's a temptation to call extroverts pro-social and introverts antisocial. And, and I have to, you know, reference my father who, you know, until I read your book, I never, I always thought of him as an extrovert. He was not an extrovert at all. He often had a, a public persona of playing a clown adjuster, a person who amused people. And he was a very charming man. But he would always tell me when I was growing up that what he liked to do when they would have people over for dinner, and I think he sometimes actually did this, was excuse himself and go upstairs and read a book because he'd had enough. And I always took that to be a form of not liking people, but that's not what it was. He did like people, he didn't like them in large, loud doses. And I think that's a DA very important difference I learned from your book. The way you say it in the book is you say they're, it's not that they're one's pro-social and one's anti-social, it's that they're differently social. So explain,

- Well, I think you just explained it beautifully. Yeah. People do. I I I I've had the same experience that you just recounted of somebody assuming that they're not an introvert because they actually like people. And yeah, it has much more to do with a different form of socializing. And it, it comes back to what we were saying at the beginning about introverts preferring situations that are less overstimulating. So therefore you would usually rather go have a glass of wine with a close friend as opposed to being in a loud party full of strangers where not only is it loud, but you're also decoding lots of social signals all at once, which is in and of itself an overstimulating thing to do. So that's a really important one for understanding oneself and the people around you because, you know, especially for parents or whoever it is, you, you can look at a child who doesn't love to hang out with a big group of kids after school and think, oh my gosh, there's something wrong with this child. They don't like the other kids in their school, or the other kids don't like them. And that might be a complete misreading of what's happening. I I, I'm actually thinking here of a friend of mine who I interviewed for the book, who she, herself is a really, really strong extrovert, hyper extroverted person. And she had a more introverted daughter, and her daughter had lots of friends at school, was very happy. But after school, when the, the moms would come to pick up, her daughter would be off by herself shooting baskets, basketball court while all the other girls were in, in a big gaggle together. And, and my friend for a a while was really distraught about this. Like, she, she thought there was something deeply wrong, and it was only once she understood about introversion extroversion and started having frank and open discussions with her daughter about what her daughter was actually feeling, that was when she realized it was okay. But she said, until then, doing pickup was incredibly painful for her. But it, so it was only once she understood the interior experience, what her daughter was feeling, and not feeling that, that her mom had been kind of misattributing to her, that she started feeling okay.

- And I, I'm curious what you think about intimacy. So a group of, it's, I always think about a beer ad, you know, there's a group of guys in a bar, they're watching a sports game together. There's five or six of them. It's not, it's not three or four, it's a crowd. And everybody's loud. The place is loud. I, it could be, maybe beer is only marketed to extroverts, but, but that kind of scene is, if, if I'll pick up your, your cudgel for a minute, there, there's something superficial about it. It, it can be great fun and people might insult each other across the table because they're rooting for different teams or make jokes about their personality traits that, that they've been making fun of for the last 10 years as old friends and, and ribbing each other would be the, you know, the verb and contrast that, so the friend I was talking about doesn't like that. I don't think What he likes is a one-on-one conversation. Right. And in a one-on-one conversation, you can banter and there can be chitchat and there can be ribbing, but in general it has a potential for intimacy, for going deeper, for forming a, an a, a, a more profound connection with the other person that you can't have in a group almost by definition. And I, I wanna just see how the categories we've been talking about overlay those two differences, if at all. So the, the big group, some people are comfortable, they're not 'cause they like the banter and the noise and the stimulus, but because they don't like intimacy, it is threatening to them it is, it's frightening. It's not, it's sort of the opposite of being shy, right? That these are people who are, you see them in this setting in the sports bar and they're, they're loud and, and interacting and there's nothing shy about them, but perhaps they are afraid of intimacy. And, and the flip side of that are, are the two people talking in the corner booth, not watching the game and having a, a, a different kind of connection? Is that an introvert extrovert thing? What, what is, what does, does intimacy and that kind of human connection that comes from that part of this distinction?

- You know, that's a tricky one. I don't know that that's introversion extroversion per se. And, and I'm glad you're asking the question to give me the chance to make the broader point that while on the one hand I do believe introversion, extroversion are it the, the north and south of human temperament, you know, that they're incredibly profound in terms of how they shape the way we, we show up in the world. That's true on the one hand. And on the other hand, we're human beings and we're incredibly complicated. And so we can't reduce everything to these two, albeit for sure gigantic and profound categories. So having said that, yeah, I, I think in the way in which we seek intimacy is its own category. And for introverts who are looking for the less stimulating form of socializing, that is going to have a way of honing their skill at a more intimate style of socializing. So they're probably gonna get better at it over time. But I don't know that it comes from the seeking of intimacy per se, if, if you see what I'm saying.

- Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I just, I never thought about it. I, I, I've mentioned it before in the program, you know, in the course of my life, it's embarrassing. I'm 71 years old. I've had only a handful of conversations that in the middle of them. And afterwards I were exhilarating because of a connection I made. And I'm not, I'm not talking about with friends and and loved ones or my wife or children or, you know, I'm not talking my kids, my, my parents. I'm talking about an encounter with someone I'm not close to. It could be a total stranger. It could be somebody who, who makes a confession unexpectedly and is desperate to make a connection either because they're under duress or trauma of some kind. The aftermath of trauma and those encounters were unforgettable for me. I don't know whether there was a time in my life I would've run away from it. I would've said that too much. I I, I can't handle this. You know, it'd be the, the same thing would be true of, you know, going to visiting someone in the hospital or going to a funeral when I was younger. I found them very difficult. They were too, I ran away from them. Maybe this is just aging and now I find them very powerful. I, they, they, for they force me to confront things I wanna confront rather than things I wanna run away from. And I, I, I agree with you. I don't think this is a introversion, extroversion thing, but there might be something there.

- Yeah. And you know, there's also of course a huge gender component. I, I have two boys, two teenage boys. And you know, I, I always joke with them about how the way they socialize with their friends is just so completely different from the way I socialize with my friends. You know, that they and their friends, they hang out together all the time, but they know so little about details of each other's lives. That to me would be like, of course you would know that. And my, my older son has a girlfriend and I often joke with them that I have to get all the social drama from his girlfriend. Like, she'll come over and I'll know more about what's going on after seven minutes of sitting down and chatting with her than, than I had heard all year.

- So, yeah.

- Yeah,

- Many

- Different factors. Living in Jerusalem, we get a lot of visitors. People are passing through, making a trip. Often old friends we haven't seen maybe in a year, but it might be, haven't seen in five years or 10 years. And my wife will, I'll come back from a coffee with one of these folks and my wife will say, well, what's happening with their kids? And I'll say, I have no idea. Exactly. We didn't, we didn't talk about that. And usually that's maybe the first thing that she would talk about if it was the woman equivalent of that meeting. And that's just, I mean, that's just a fascinating thing, that difference. But I, I don't think it has anything to do with introversion and extroversion. But there is a, there is a, a difference between men and women on this, I think. Oh yeah,

- Absolutely.

- So you said people are complicated. Obviously there are people at the extremes of these personality traits. Do you have any feel for what proportion of us are just a mix or more comp, you know, just not identifiably one or the other?

- Oh yeah. And I wondered about that. 'cause you said you weren't sure kind of where you fit in. So there's a, a term that psychologists have coined I called ambivert, which is for people who really feel they're kind of in the middle of this whole thing. And I don't know, I haven't seen really good data on how many people are ambiverts. Especially because the word can be so messy. So some people feel they're kind of almost always a mix. Some people will call themselves an ambivert because they're very introverted in situation A, but very extroverted in situation B. And I'm not sure that's actually true ambi diversion as opposed to maybe an introvert who's like super engaged when they get into situation B 'cause it's their favorite topic or something like that. So I don't have good data, but I will say plenty, a a lot of people will raise their hands when you give them that option of being an ambivert.

- This question of of where you get your energy outside of that. And, and obviously there are introverts can handle, some introverts can easily handle a, a social gathering, but maybe not two in a row on lunch and dinner. And, and extroverts can, can go off with a close friend and talk quietly in a, in, in a, in a corner. Do we have an easy way to self-diagnose ourselves? Other than that, if I wanted to think about this for my own person, you know, I said I don't know which I am. 'cause I've never taken a, a Myers-Briggs personality test, which is purports to try to identify these things among others, a few other traits. How do I, how would I, how should I think about this?

- Well, I, I gave you at the beginning of the rubric of how do you feel when you're at that party with the people who you truly like? And I, I think that's a good question to ask yourself. But another question you can ask is, if you imagine that you have a weekend or week where you truly have no social or professional obligations of any kind, how would you choose to spend that time? How many people would be in the picture? How loud or quiet a scene would it be? That, that question is very helpful for people because e especially for introverts who have all their lives been training themselves to operate in a more extroverted way to the point where they sometimes lose touch with what their true preferences are. But if you suddenly imagine total freedom, how do you feel that freedom? That can be very telling,

- But isn't part of that just, you know what else I've been doing lately? So, and you're asking me by the way, for, by myself, not with my wife. Say for example, right. What's the ideal vacation if I'm off alone? Or am I taking my wife with me?

- Oh, I mean, you have to kind of adapt this, this question to your own life, I would say. But yeah, I mean, if, if you would choose to be mostly in the company of your wife, let's say, as opposed to, Hey, let's go and then have all our friends over for dinner. Let, let's go take a big group vacation. Like tho those, those choices that you instinctively make can tell you a lot about what your preferences are. And I, I do take your point that a lot of it has to do with, well what were you just overloaded on

- Yeah.

- The week before? And like, what are you just doing as a, as a reaction to that overload so you can extend it out. Imagine that you've got a year, imagine that you're about to retire. How, how do you wanna fill that time for real?

- There's a really interesting part in the beginning of your book, which is just fascinating to me about the evolution of self-help books in America. Yeah. And I don't remember if you mentioned it or not, but you know, Benjamin Franklin was probably the first, one of the earlier self-help. There was a couple before him who were religious folks I think, but Benjamin Franklin was in his writings, tried to tell people the road to virtue and how to be a better person sometimes had to be a more productive person, but also how to be a good person. And that got replaced, I think you say it comes in the 1920s with books that emphasized how to, how to give yourself a better personality, which is an insane transition to start with. Because on the surface, they're not just different, they're kind almost orthogonal or opposite, right? You go from how do I serve my fellow human beings or my deity if you're a religious to how do I make myself really fantastic? And it's, it's kind of a shocking thing. And I don't think I, I I'm gonna put a footnote to this in a minute, but I'll let you re elaborate on it. So I think that's a, a really fascinating insight. It's still here, right? We haven't changed, we're not a lot of books about how to be a better, how to be virtuous.

- It's true. And when I came across that research, to me, the most shocking part was that it had ever been different. Like I found that fascinating. So you're talking about research by a guy named Warren Sussman, and he literally like went, he, he sat and he compared the self-help books of the 19th century with those of the 20th century and counted the words and counted the, the, the, the attributes that they were trying to teach the reader. Yeah. And the, in the 19th century, the books were trying to teach the reader how to have integrity, how to have character, how to be resolute. And then all of a sudden in the 20th century it changed to how, how can you be magnetic? How can you be charismatic? How can you be dominant? And cultural historians attribute this shift. It's not just the self-help books, it's an entire culture that shifted from one, what they call the culture of character in the 19th century to the culture of personality in the 20th century. And this happened because in the 19th century and before that, we had lived in small, more tribal communities alongside people. We had known all our lives. And people would come to know who you really were and could they rely on you? You know, were, were you a standup person? But then all of a sudden in the 20th century, people start leaving those small communities. They're moving out to the city. They now have to make their living not through agriculture, but through sales effectively. And so it starts becoming really important. How do you show up at a job interview? Do you, do you seem very likable? Are you charismatic? Can, can you make that sale? And then around that same time was when we had the growth of cinema. So at the, at the very same time that people were showing up thinking how, okay, how do I do my best at a job interview on the weekends? They're going and seeing larger than life images of movie stars who are emblems of being likable and charismatic. So everything became focused on that. And as you say, we, we are, we're pretty much still living in that world today. When Quiet first came out, which was 2012, I had been thinking briefly that the age of tech was giving us a bit of a reprieve from that because it seemed as if you could go online and it was a place where you could interact with people without having to be quite so presentational. But that was before everything became video.

- Yeah. - And I would say now with the age of video and social media and all the rest, we're, we're right back with the culture of personality on steroids.

- Yeah. I think, I dunno if I wrote this as my own note or whether I got it from your book, but this idea that, you know, you're, you're a brand and you have to always be selling and, and your success in life comes from convincing other people to buy what you have, whether it's your talents in a job or your skills attractiveness as a, as a romantic partner. And that is the dominant culture of, of, of our world. It's certainly the dominant culture of most MBA programs. You, you pick on Harvard, but that's easy in, in its day. And I, I suspect it hasn't changed much. You know, it's one of the funny things about living in a culture as a non-native speaker. So when Israelis speak to me in English, I'm getting a very warped impression of their personalities often because their English is something like my Hebrew, it's halting sometimes or it's, they're very quiet because they don't wanna expose the fact that their English is not very good. And then I see them interacting with another Israeli and I think, oh my gosh, who is this person? This is a totally different human being. And this idea that you should have a a particular kind of out I'll use outgoing, extroverted personality to make a good first impression and then succeed is very, I think very much in our culture and hasn't changed much. Not sure it will change.

- Yeah, no, I think that's right. And at the same time, you know, one, one of the things that I do in the book is show or give examples and show all the different people who contribute so much to the culture. Not despite having quiet personalities, but really because, because of those quiet personalities. And I think that's really important to understand that there, there is a channel for using your talents and your, your your predilections as a quiet person and really making them sing. And, you know, I I was just talking about technology. You look at, you look at the world of technology, so many of the people who have become leaders in tech are people who were just kids who loved technology, became like, gained incredible expertise at it, then build networks through shared passions with other people who had the same expertise and they eventually like grow up into leadership positions through that kind of a process. And you see that in every field.

- Yeah. Something interesting for me about performing, you, you talk about a, a, a Harvard psych professor who's a great, a brilliant performer on stage as a teacher, a lecturer I would call it. But also ha is an introvert, it turns out, and he's, he's performing not just in the sense that he's entertaining his students, but he's putting on a personality that isn't his preferred per whatever you wanna call it, his essence. And I just, you know, as you point out in the book, introverts can up their energy level in a social setting, even what makes them uncomfortable. You write up very eloquently about your own ability to overcome your fear of public speaking and being an effective presenter. It's just interesting to me how much emphasis people put on charisma in those settings. And yet how misleading he'd be. I'll just to pick an example, and it's a bit of an unfair one, but, you know, Steve Jobs is a brilliant performer, was a brilliant performer, and his, his Apple presentations were spectacular. Tim Cook is not a brilliant performer. Tim Cook, his, his successor is, I assume something of an introvert. And you know, it, you can debate, you know, people make lots of silly claims about Apple's performance since then, whether it's good or bad, I'm, I'm not gonna weigh in on that 'cause it's not relevant for what we're talking about. But what I think is relevant is that when you see Tim Cook on stage, you just assume he is not gonna be a good CEO because he's not this flamboyant superstar. And it is easy to overvalue and overrate those charismatic folks. And I, I say that as someone who likes to perform as a speaker, I love to be, I'm not a quiet, calm speaker. In fact, you know, people who come see me in a public talk will say, you know, who's that guy? You know, the, the host of EconTalk? He's so, he's quiet and I tell them I have to, I have to put my quiet hat on when I'm the host because I have a, that other side. And I try to not excuse it. I do occasionally, but in general I don't. Anyway, it's a fascinating question of how leadership is often correlated, perhaps mistakenly with charisma.

- Yeah. I mean, people have that assumption. And in fact, as, as you were saying this, I was thinking of a friend of mine who is in private equity and one of the things he has to do is go and evaluate early stage companies and the, the CEOs are making presentations and, and he says he's always amazed by the extent to which his colleagues will be swayed by somebody who's a razzle dazzle presenter. You know, they're an amazing presenter. They just assume that the company is great. And he tries to really, he's somebody, he's, he's, this is actually the same person who told me to go to Harvard Business School, which he called the spiritual capital of extroversion. And, and he felt that going to HBS helped him kinda disaggregate being a great presenter from actually having the solid fundamentals. So I do think that's an important thing. But I would also say that at the same time that we absolutely have a bias that the person who's a great presenter will have an edge as a CEO. We do have many examples of CEOs like the Tim Cook who don't fit that model and, and data showing that those CEOs will deliver results that are as good as, or better than in some cases, those of a more extroverted CEO. So I, I do wanna emphasize there, there is another channel there. I do think that as human beings, again, because we're such social creatures, we are unconsciously picking up on signals, thousands of different signals from the people around us in ways that we're, we're not even aware of. And so we're not only picking up on the signals of charisma and presentation style, we're also picking up on signals of is this person trustworthy? Does this person know what they're doing? And therefore the leader who is trustworthy and knows what they're doing and has a more introverted style, they have a channel to walk that can be incredibly successful.

- Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't wanna downplay the importance of say, communication. I think leadership often involves communication and communicating in ways that are entertaining or eloquent matter. It's not irrelevant. But when I, the thing I often think about in, in leadership as important is decision making. And decision making is not about snap judgments, it's about quiet judgments. It's about contemplation. And you know, I, I often, I'm sure it drives my colleagues crazy, but I'll often say I'm gonna sleep on that. And of course, some of our best thinking takes place while we're asleep. Our brain does things that, that we don't control as you, as you point out. And I don't always make the same decision in the morning, but I often do that. It was my snap judgment, but I feel much about it having slept on it. And I, I don't know if that's a little, you know, a little taste of intro or a little way of getting a taste of introversion. I, I do wanna just add Yep.

- Can I just Yeah, sure. Add to that, that, yeah. You know, that insight that you just made is making me think of an interview I did with General Stanley McChrystal who defines himself as an introvert. And he talks about, partly because of being an introvert, when it was time to make decisions, important decisions in the field. He said, despite there being a culture of needing to make those decisions incredibly quickly, he would always try to go off by himself to think about what he really thought was right. And only then would he have the courage of his convictions to come back and act on that decision. And that's a very introverted way of doing things.

- You don't have to go overnight, of course, you can go away for five minutes. Exactly. You can just say, let me chew on that. Come back in five minutes to tell me why I'm, why I'm wrong. I'm happy to hear why I'm wrong. I, in fact, I desperately want to hear why I'm wrong. 'cause if I make a mistake, I don't, I'd rather not, I'd rather avoid that. So it's a very interesting, it's a very interesting question. So this book came out in 2012. There were some subsidiary pieces books that came out and I we're not, we're, we're not gonna talk about them, but there's we're a lot of practical things in this book about how to cope with your introversion or how to overcome some of the challenges that arise when you are a, when you're swimming against the cultural stream as many introverts do. But I'm curious how this book changed your life. 'cause I I'm sure it did. It, it was, it did make a very large splash. I'm sure writing it helped you think about yourself in many ways. But I'm also curious about the last 13, 14, now years of having written a book like this. People must tell you things that the book did for them. They must sometimes argue with you about what they disagree. Talk about that whole experience.

- Oh my gosh, yeah. It's, it's been quite the journey. You know, there's so much to say. I guess the first thing that happened, you know, the great irony is I wrote this book at the same time I gave a Ted Talk about it. That went very viral. And as a result, I ever since have been asked to come and speak all over the world at companies and schools and organizations about how to harness the talents of the introverted half of the population. And so this is a huge irony because as you alluded to, I used to be afraid of public speaking. And when I gave that Ted talk, it was by far the hardest thing I have ever done or will ever do in my life. Because at the time I was still completely terrified of the stage. But I did learn over time, and maybe we can talk separately about how to overcome any fear. 'cause I now know and it's really doable. But I, so I did overcome that. So I have spent the last 13 years traveling the world and speaking. So that alone has been kind of crazy. Never would I would, would, I would've imagined for myself. Incredibly gratifying to see how many companies and organizations are receptive to these ideas and actually eager to implement them. Because why wouldn't you be, if you have half your workforce who you're probably wasting to some degree, their talents and energies, why wouldn't you wanna try to fix that? So that's incredibly cool. The other thing that you also alluded to that is amazing is I now attend a lot of conferences, right? As, as a speaker or just to see what's going on. And especially when I attend a conference and I've given a talk at the beginning of it about introversion, I will then walk around the whole rest of the conference. I never have to deal with small talk again because everybody comes up to me and tells me their stories. And a lot of, a lot of times those stories have to do with introversion, but not always. I think there's just something about if you're, if you're out there on stage talking about any topic that has to do with psychology or about being vulnerable, other people will then feel safe to come and tell you

- Yeah,

- What's going on for them. And that, that's just incredibly moving and gratifying to be able to connect with people on that kind of a level instantly without having to wade through any small talk first. We're just like right in the deep stuff right away.

- So I was, I'll let you give your pointers. Tell the story first about my own issues on this. I remember, I, I've, I think I've told my audience that when I was in seventh grade, I was in Midsummer night Stream and I played bottom and pyramids, same character, which was easy for me. I had no, it was easy. And then in eighth grade, I was Henry Higgins and my Fair lady, I sang, I had memorized a zillion lines. I was ne I was never nervous. And I thought, well, this is a great thing. I'm never have to worry about this. And then somewhere in high school, I think it was 10th grade, I had to recite a poem. The poem was olac, LAC, by I think er if I remember correctly. And I got up there and feeling very confident. And as I'm standing there, I realize that my legs are shaking violently. And I have this, I have two impulses at the same time, neither which work at the same time. One is to look down at and see whether the anybody else could see them, which is a bad thing 'cause it calls attention to the problem. But the second thing was to say to my legs, stop. Obviously if your legs are shaking, you should just stop shaking them. It is not helpful. But I couldn't stop them. And I, that made me afraid of, of public speaking for some, for some time. It doesn't scare me anymore. I somehow got over it. And the, you know, the standard argument, which you referenced in your book is to imagine the audience in its underwear, which does not help at all for me. Never has, but I'm, so tell us some of the things that helped you.

- Oh yeah. Well the key, and this applies to any fear, not just the fear of public speaking, is the miracle of desensitization. Which means that you can desensitize yourself to something you're afraid of by exposing yourself to it in very small, manageable doses. So you can't start off by giving a ted talk. You, you wanna start off like exactly the opposite. I went to a seminar for people with public speaking anxiety, and on the first day, all we had, I think I wrote about this in the book, all we had to do was stand up and say our name and then sit back down and we were finished. And that was the victory for the day. And then you'd come back the next week and the exercise would just be ever so slightly more challenging. You know, like stand up and answer some questions about where do you grow up, where do you go to school? Really easy stuff. Sit back down, you're finished. And you do that little by little by little and you're basically retraining your brain. If you're afraid of public speaking or snakes or anything, what's happening is your, the amygdala in your brain is responding as if this event is just as threatening as a saber tooth tiger. And when you have these small, repeated experiences, again and again, you're, you're teaching your brain that it's not actually a saber tooth ti tiger. And it's actually something pretty manageable. So the butterflies don't go away a hundred percent, but like they can go away up to 97, 90 8%, which is pretty good. Yeah, I would never want them, it's, it's almost

- Miraculous. I, I wouldn't want them to go away to a hundred. I, I'm still nervous before and he can talk, interview your guest number 1030 something. I dunno what the count is lately, but I have a modest amount of anxiety before every episode, even though I have a, a large amount of data that says it's gonna be okay. It's not a rational, can't talk yourself out of it is the, I think the interesting, the interesting point. Just like you can't stop, tell your knees just to quit shaking. Right.

- And that's interesting. Do you ever, like, does the anxiety ever Oh, outweigh the pleasure of doing it

- With EconTalk?

- Yeah. Or, or other similar things?

- No, you know, sometimes I, I always, I always enjoy it. And, and I, it's interesting that that's not enough to help me not worry about it. I actually kind of think it's probably okay to worry about it. You know, I've told the story in here before of Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics, maybe the greatest basketball player of all time. He's, you know, somewhat forgotten now. But he was an extraordinary performer. And supposedly he threw up before every game. Maybe it's only every playoff game. But, you know, he had nothing to be worried about. So, but I think for him, if you had told him, I've got a trick for you that you won't have that level of anxiety, he would say, I don't wanna know that trick because I need that to pump myself up. So I think I'd be worried if I went to give a speech and I didn't have some un unease. You know, sometimes the unease is about the content. It's not about the, the performance.

- Just the fact of being looked at.

- Yeah. No, it's not. I'm saying it's not that.

- Right, right. No, I understand.

- Yeah, that's small. That's, I don't mind that at all. It's that what if they don't think I'm smart? What if they think I'm an idiot? What if they don't understand what I'm talking about? And afterwards they come up to me and say, what was that? That's what the an I think that's the anxiety, but it's all tied together. Of course. And it's you like as you,

- Yeah. And it has, and it has to be at the right levels. Like the, the level of anxiety I used to experience was not performance enhancing. It was detracting. And, and so like, if, if you're listening to this, you know, excuse me, which category you're in.

- Yeah.

- So if you're in the, in the place where it's detracting, I would say like, sign up for your local Toastmasters. 'cause wherever you are in the world, there is a local Toastmasters near you, and they're full of people who usually start out kind of terrified of public speaking, and that's why they're there. So it's a place where you can practice where the stakes are really low. Doesn't matter if you screw up and people

- Will be supportive. There are many things in the book. Let's close with this. There's many things in the book that you, I would call 'em suggestions, advice, things to help people cope with their personality that they've been pretty much given. Do you think this changes over time, both either because of life experiences or working at it? So are, has your, do you feel that, that your personality is relatively fixed and what we're talking about here are just ways of coping with it? Or do you think you've actually molded yourself in a way that is, that's a little different than say you were before you wrote the book, or even 12 years ago, 13 years ago?

- No, I think that for most people, your underlying preferences and traits stay the same, more or less. But we all have so many new experiences all the time, and acquire new skills, which is what we were just talking about a minute ago. If we're talking about public speaking, that's acquiring a new skill. And it's, that's a new skill that changes your life in profound ways. But I don't feel that my underlying self is different or my underlying preferences. Like, it's still the case for me that, excuse me, my favorite day is one where I'm hanging out with my family, maybe a close friend or two. I'm in a cafe with my laptop. I'm playing tennis. You know, it's a pretty, it's a pretty quiet day. And that I, I believe that will always be my favorite day, even though I can go out and make speeches on the next Tuesday.

- My guest today has been Susan Cain. Her book is Quiet. Susan, thanks for being part of EconTalk.

- Thank you so much for having me, Russ.