Introversion (vs. ?) Autism

[Jumpback]

I do believe that there might be some exceptions, that there might be extroverted autistics, but you seem to be an introvert to me. That's because you prefer one-on-one, deep and meaningful conversations. Being an introvert does not mean that the person is isolated in their house. Introversion is about comfort and how brains respond to socialization, and not about how people behave. I think that the true personality type would be more accurately assessed in children, because they are still discovering the social norm; they behave more naturally than us adults.

Edit: or maybe I am wrong, I dunno, just mentioning things from personal experience that might be true or might not be

I like a lot of what you say, but I do suspect that @Giraffes is just an extrovert. Your stated age is 20. You are very smart and have great instincts, but some things just come with experience. Introverts, when writing, have almost this schizoid thing about them where they just ignore the external world unless some external input makes perfect sense to them after they have some thought about things. A large percentage of the great writers in history are introverts and they just almost ignore the external world completely to create internal stories or something. But extroverts actually take external input seriously, which is why they are better able to stay in the moment conversation wise better than introverts and why extroverts are better at being emotionally supportive than introverts. I had this extroverted roommate and I swear that he had this ability to just feel what I was feeling and be upset for me in the moment better than I could. Introverts somehow just can’t be in the moment like this.

Like introverts talking to each other seems kind of like two people sharing strongly held internalizations, then going home later and wondering if they should take what the other person said seriously. I am definitely an introvert, but what I can make of extroverts talking is that they seem to take each other’s ideas seriously on the fly while they are talking.

Or something

Just my instinct is that @Giraffes is an extrovert

 

[Jumpback]

As for the claim that someone “can not revert from introversion to extroversion or vice versa,” it is because I refer to introversion as a result of the differences in the brain structure. The differences make the brain respond differently to the same situations than an extroverted brain’s response. High-reactivity is probably the main response that makes an introvert an introvert. A change in the way a brain responds to something necessitates a change in the brain itself, which, unless someone has had a trauma that damaged their brain, does not normally happen. If you are referring to introversion as merely refrain from socialization, then I understand what you meant by that you have become an extrovert. But that’s not how I use the words

No one really understands why beavers get hell bent on building these huge damns that can change the entire ecology of areas, they just use fancy words to describe and their fancy education degrees to back up that they must be right, but people don’t actually know. Personality theories and the DSM must be stupidly simplistic categorization and naive, overconfident simpleton categorizations compared to how the brain actually functions.

 

[Matthias]

You may very well be a natural extrovert or maybe dividing people into simple extroverts and introverts doesn’t exactly make sense, but there really are differences.

What does it mean to be a naturally extroverted introvert?

You're right that everyone can't be divided into two rigid categories (that's black and white thinking). Many people are ambiverts who fall somewhere in the middle.

From an article on ambiverts:
"I’m sure you’ve been asked many times whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert. For some people, it’s an easy choice, but for most of us, it’s difficult to choose one way or the other.

It’s hard to choose because the introvert/extrovert dichotomy reflects a tired and outdated view of personality. Personality traits exist along a continuum, and the vast majority of us aren’t introverts or extroverts—we fall somewhere in the middle." 9 Signs That You're An Ambivert

The real answer seems to be be in brain imaging

Are the Brains of Introverts and Extroverts Actually Different?
“
For one thing, a 2012 study

by Harvard psychologist Randy Buckner found that people who identify as introverts tend to have larger and thicker gray matter in certain areas of the prefrontal cortex, a highly complex brain region associated with abstract thought and decision-making. People who identify as strongly extroverted, on the other hand, tend to have thinner gray matter in those same prefrontal areas---which hints that introverts tend to devote more neural resources to abstract pondering, while extroverts tend to live in the moment. A 2013 study

These brain scans aren't evidence of anything because the differences be caused by psychological factors. Brain scans are also different in people with depression, anxiety, and other conditions that people can recover from fully.

 

[risootser]

These brain scans aren't evidence of anything because the differences be caused by psychological factors. Brain scans are also different in people with depression, anxiety, and other conditions that people can recover from fully.

I can not understand you at all. Life is not an acting session. You do not play a role if you want to be true. A person who is completely captive of acting has lost him/herself to required persona by exterior requirements. You become your own mask.

Ask yourself this: Do you want to submit or optimize yourself?

Why are we acting like this? Are we controlled by divine forces? Maybe just maybe someone else has set the loose standards. We are supposed to as humans to shake off those shackles and become who we are. Yes, I believe that even a submissive person can be truly submissive if he/she has find a fit in submission.

 

[Matthias]

I can not understand you at all. Life is not an acting session. You do not play a role if you want to be true. A person who is completely captive of acting has lost him/herself to required persona by exterior requirements. You become your own mask.

My point is just because there are slight brain differences between two groups of people being studied doesn't mean those differences cause anything. For example, if a study looked at 50 introverted and 50 extroverted people and found a brain region that was 3% smaller on average for the introverted group, it wouldn't mean that it was 3% smaller for everyone who was introverted or that it caused them to be introverted. There would likely be introverts in that study where that brain region was the same size or larger than many extroverts. Also, follow up studies often contradict the earlier studies. One study may find that a brain region is 3% smaller in introverts on average while another study may find it's 2% larger on average. This happens all the time with autism studies that look at brain scans or genes. I wish researchers would stop conducting these studies because they're mostly meaningless.

 

[Darwin]

No one really understands why beavers get hell bent on building these huge damns that can change the entire ecology of areas, they just use fancy words to describe and their fancy education degrees to back up that they must be right, but people don’t actually know. Personality theories and the DSM must be stupidly simplistic categorization and naive, overconfident simpleton categorizations compared to how the brain actually functions.

DSM is concerned with determining who needs medical attention in order to function better in life. I assume that’s the main difference between a personality type and a personality disorder. So, I don’t think we should include DSM in this.
The introversion-extroversion scale is simple, but is very important. It’s true that most of us lie somewhere in the middle but not exactly at the middle. If extroversion is on the left side of the 0 point (the middle point), and introversion is on the right side, most people lie on the left side of the 0 point with varying “distances” from the 0 point (or different negative values). (But some countries might actually have more introverts than extroverts.) Those are extroverts, but they are not identical to each other; however, they share more qualities with each other than they do with those who lie on the right side of the 0 point, introverts.
That’s how I imagine it. It includes ambiverts and the varying degrees of extroversion and introversion. It also implies that introverts are different than each other, but are more different than extroverts, and the same applies to extroverts.

Even a more complicated personality assessment such as Myers-Briggs does not include all personality types. (I read that in an article, but I don’t remember where exactly.)

But I still think it is very useful because defining someone as an introvert tells a lot about them. Not everything, but a lot.

 

[Finder]

Someone did postulate that introversion was not the opposite of extroversion, but the non-clinical end of autism: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...ry-about-introversion-extroversion-and-autism

I remember on my search to figure myself out, I did first come to introversion as the reason for my behavior, but it did not quite fit. A year or so later, I stumbled onto autism, which explained a lot more.