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ambivert
The large gray area between introvert and extrovert: the ambivert
Karolien Koolhof •
At work and in magazines, we often hear the same story: there are supposedly two types of people. On the one hand, you have the introvert, who loves peace and quiet and enjoys reading a book. On the other hand, you have the extrovert. They are loud, love to talk, and prefer to be the center of attention. But the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung warned us about this a hundred years ago. He said: "There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum." So what does that gray middle ground look like?
If we look at science, we see that Jung was right. People aren't a simple on-or-off switch. Personality is like a bell curve. Very few people are on the far left of the curve (extremely introverted). Likewise, very few people are on the far right (extremely extroverted). The vast majority of people simply sit in the broad middle of that curve. A whopping 68 percent of all people don't fit into an extreme box. A name has been coined for this large middle group as well: the ambivert.
Stimuli
To understand what an ambivert is, we have to look at the brain. It's all about external stimuli and how your brain reacts to them. An extreme extrovert needs a lot of stimuli to feel good. That person has a high need for action. An extreme introvert, on the other hand, gets overstimulated very quickly. For them, a busy open-plan office is soon too much of a good thing.
The ambivert sits exactly in between. Their brain doesn't get overstimulated super fast, but they also don't need constant action. As a result, they are very flexible. They adapt easily. In 2013, researcher Adam Grant conducted a well-known study on this. He looked at 340 salespeople. You would think that the loudest talkers—the extroverted salespeople—would sell the most. But that wasn't the case. The ambiverts sold the most: they generated up to 24 percent more revenue.
Grant called this the advantage of the ambivert. Why are they so good? Because they sit right in the middle. They speak loudly enough to convince you of their idea. But they can also keep their mouths shut and truly listen to what you need. They sense the mood in a room well and adapt their behavior accordingly. Like a kind of chameleon.
No Rest
That sounds like the perfect employee, of course. But there is also a major downside. Being such a chameleon takes a lot of mental energy. Someone who is very introverted knows exactly how to rest: being alone with a book or taking a walk in nature. Someone who is very extroverted knows this too: going to a party or meeting up with a large group of friends. That's how they recharge their batteries.
The ambivert doesn't have such a fixed way to recharge. Sometimes they need rest, and other times they need people around them. A whole weekend alone on the couch quickly feels lonely and boring to them. But a whole weekend at a crowded festival causes headaches and stress. It is a constant search for the right balance. That is exhausting. It is very easy for an ambivert to accidentally overstep their own boundaries, precisely because they are always adapting to the group.
Reservations
So far, a clear story. But there is also a lot wrong with this label. Because where does that number of 68 percent come from? It comes from personality tests. These are questionnaires that you have to fill out yourself. You have to indicate what suits you on a scale from 1 to 5. What turns out to be the case? People don't like to be extreme. We almost always choose safe answers in the middle (a 3 or a 4). We also want to appear normal and flexible. That is socially desirable. If the test says you are an 'ambivert', that is often not how your brain truly works. It is simply the ideal image you have filled in of yourself.
In psychology, a label is only useful if it is specific and can predict behavior. The definition of an ambivert is roughly: "Depending on the situation, I sometimes like to be alone, and sometimes I like to be with others." Psychologically speaking, this is not a personality trait. This is the description of every healthy and normally functioning human being. It resembles a horoscope: the text is written so broadly and generally that everyone recognizes a bit of themselves in it. A label that sticks to 70 percent of humanity no longer has any predictive value.
Often, the ambivert is praised for their natural flexibility. But clinical psychologists now look at this differently. What looks like 'natural switching' at the office is often a survival strategy. An introverted person senses that the office culture rewards loud and extroverted behavior. To keep up, they pretend to be extroverted. This is called masking. It is not a built-in, natural balance, but hard acting. So, the exhaustion that ambiverts often feel doesn't happen because they "don't have a fixed resting state". It comes from the immense mental effort it takes to constantly play a role that doesn't naturally suit them.
Crisis
There are clear examples where the middle ground doesn't work at all. Imagine you have to invent a life-saving drug. Or write complex computer code. You need deep focus for that. You have to be able to work for weeks, alone and cut off from the world. An extreme introvert can do that. An ambivert gets distracted too easily because they want people around them.
Or consider a crisis. The building is on fire, or the company is about to go bankrupt. There is no time to 'sense the mood in the room'. Someone has to stand up right now and firmly state what we are going to do. You need the extreme extrovert for that. The ambivert often wants to do right by everyone and starts to doubt as a result. The chameleon always survives, but the chameleon doesn't change the world.
It is tempting to call ourselves ambiverts. But we humans are not fixed labels. How we behave depends much more often on where we are, who we are with, and what we are doing at that moment. In modern work and organizational psychology, the focus is therefore increasingly shifting from fixed personality characteristics (traits) to situational behavior (states). In practice, human behavior turns out to be driven much more by the demands of the environment and the task at hand than by a fixed label we stick on ourselves.
About the author
- Karolien Koolhof is a coach voor introverts and gifted individuals
- Author of the book Introvert Leadership
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