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Comment by MillenialMan | Hacker News Reader

Is there any evidence people are actually wired this way? Because as far as I can tell people mostly gain/lose energy based on whether they like the people they're interacting with, and everyone likes some time alone. Extroversion strikes me as liking the average person over anything else, and extroverts stop being extroverts when they're interacting with people they find objectionable. A person who exclusively gains energy from being alone is likely schizoid, which is an outright disorder (and relatively rare).

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As a mostly introvert I can say that I lose energy from interacting with a group, and gain it back when I can be alone. But at the same time being social relieves stress. So it's a push/pull.

I actually really like most people. But I like them one on one when I can have a real conversation. I hate party chit chat because I'm terrible at it.

I have a couple friends whom I'd call extreme extroverts. One big difference between them and me is if they try to initiate talking to a stranger (at say a bar or some other reasonable location) and get rebuffed or otherwise have a bad experience, they instantly forgot about it and move on - whereas I'm still thinking about it years later.

So yeah maybe introversion is just social anxiety.

Social anxiety (and selectiveness) in general seem like better descriptions to me. The introvert/extrovert framing seems off to me, I feel like it's misdiagnosing the problem.

>whether they like the people they're interacting with

It's very common for introverts to still need time away from people they otherwise love.

Everyone needs time away from people they love.

>Because as far as I can tell people mostly gain/lose energy based on whether they like the people they're interacting with

I was responding to this comment, which seemed to imply that introverts don't have a problem spending time with people they like. Or, at least, they don't have a problem with it any more than non-introverts.

I'm saying that's not the case (but it's possible I misunderstood what you were saying to begin with).

I think introverts both gain energy from interactions with loved ones, and gain energy from being alone, and I think that's the same for extroverts. It's different types of "energy." I just don't buy that the simplified dichotomy is a good way of categorising, even if it's in some sense a spectrum. It misrepresents how human psychology works.

Yeah, and that makes sense if you know neither Myers nor Briggs was a psychologist.

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