Anxiety, for instance, can keep you from enjoying life and taking healthy risks. It also keeps you safe and improves your memory. Introversion is similar. Being quieter is definitely a handicap when it comes to standing out in a noisy world -- studies show that just talking a lot leads people to assume you're leadership material -- but as recent Yale research underlines, being an introvert also has big upsides.
Introverted folks, the study found, may not enjoy people as much as extroverts, but they understand them better. The shy and retiring actually have a much more accurate understanding of the psychology of others than those who spend more time socializing.
Introverts are better "natural psychologists"
Psychologists spend huge amounts of energy developing and carrying out studies to better understand the intricacies of human behavior. It turns out they could probably save themselves a lot of time just by asking the wallflower observing everyone from the corner at parties.
First, the Yale team tested nearly a thousand volunteers to see how accurately they could answer questions about well-established psychological truths -- questions like "Do people work harder in groups or individually?" or "Does taking out your frustrations on a pillow or stuffed toy make you feel better when you're angry?" (The research validated answers are "individually" and "no," if you're curious). Then they gave the volunteers a battery of personality tests. The shy and melancholy definitively outperformed the jovial and friendly. READ MORE
