The Power of the Silent Ones

Misses Schreiber, would you describe yourself as an introvert?

I prefer to use the term ‘inward-looking person’. The word ‘introverted’ carries too many connotations that simply aren’t true – particularly the association with shyness. Yet shyness has much more to do with neuroticism, with inner tension and the fear of being judged by others. The introvert avoids groups because their focus lies elsewhere. The shy person avoids them because they fear being judged.

How would you characterise an ‘inward-looking person’?

To me, an ‘inward-looking person’ is someone who experiences the world from the inside out: in other words, they first look within and consider what is essential to them before turning outwards. They tend to seek meaning, are reflective, possess a creative stillness and require few external stimuli, because they draw their energy from within rather than from external stimuli. This is the main difference between them and extroverts, who prefer dynamism, variety and plenty of social interaction.

A fine example is Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite: very introverted, very shy, completely absorbed in his own world – his 355 patents made him so wealthy that he was able to endow the Nobel Prize, ‘for the greatest benefit to humankind’.

Can introverts also be rebellious, even though they don’t appear outspoken on the surface?

Absolutely. They are less influenced by the mainstream, are significantly less susceptible to peer pressure and are therefore autonomous in the original sense of the word – that is, ‘a law unto themselves’. I’m thinking of the famous experiment by the psychologist Solomon Asch: test subjects were shown a picture of a line. They were then asked to select, from a choice of three lines of different lengths, the one that was the same length. As long as they had to solve the task on their own, they managed it well. However, when they had to make the choice in a group where all the other participants were deliberately giving the wrong answer, the majority of the test subjects also gave the wrong answer. It is likely that peer pressure even altered their actual perception. This shows that ‘swarm intelligence’ does not arise all that often. Introverts are often more immune to this peer pressure because they tend to avoid groups and prefer to stick to their own thoughts.

Could one say that both of your books deal with the question of how to stay true to oneself in a world of constant expectations and overstimulation?

Exactly. Essentially, it’s about how to reconnect with yourself in a world that constantly distracts you. I believe that’s the main problem of our time: we’re always distracted. The solution is to spend more time on your own – not all the time, but now and then – and to step away from the constant scrolling. Often you think, ‘Now I finally have some time to myself,’ and then reach for your smartphone the very next moment. Mentally, you’re back in the outside world again. In the long run, this pattern isn’t good for us.

Archimedes, for example, was so lost in thought that he was completely oblivious to the siege of his home city, Syracuse, and was killed after saying: ‘Do not disturb my circles.’ Or Alan Turing, who – by a conservative estimate – saved the lives of fourteen million people during the Second World War by cracking the Nazis’ Enigma code, yet was a very introverted, shy man. We value such people today, but during their lifetimes they often received little recognition. I think we are doing many people an injustice.

Should we, as a society, be more accommodating towards introverts, rather than simply demanding that they come out of their shells more?

That is exactly what I would hope for. One might ask: does the loudest person really always have to take centre stage? Instead, we could look more often to see who else has something to say. Self-assurance is a key concept here, because introverts can be very self-assured, they just aren’t constantly loud.

Do you have to be an extrovert to be successful?

Unfortunately, it often helps to come across as an extrovert. In a sense, the extrovert is the winner of our time. You can show that, given the same level of performance, introverts ( … )

→ Read the full interview in the upcoming issue of rampstyle #39. Subscribe to the magazine now so you don’t miss a single issue.