Reconsidering Extraversion in the Workplace - No Offense Extroverts!

The impact of personality on business life has long been of interest to both employers and job seekers. While job seekers apply vocational interest tests with the idea that having a profession that best suits their personality will increase the success and satisfaction in that job, employers are trying to determine the personality traits of applicants which are thought to predict the performance of employees in that specific job. However, using personality tests as a selection tool in the process of recruitment has been highly criticized. One of the main concerns is about job relevance in the meaning of whether it is really associated with job requirements (Spector, 1999). This is an important issue to be taken into account since irrelevant measurement tools cause an unfair situation for the candidate and loss of predictive validity of the selection process for the organizations. That’s why it is highly essential to assess specific personality traits whose validity for the job has been supported. However, it is common that personality is put on the table in some way in employee selection processes regardless of whether a scientifically proven association is established or not. 

Without a doubt, the personality traits that are most frequently wanted in today's business world are being sociable, talkative, active, energetic, assertive, ambitious, dominant, in short, traits that can be gathered under the title of extraversion. When we look at the historical development of personality measurements in terms of the science of psychology, the effect of the emergence of Big Five and Five-Factor Model analyses can be seen (Conte & Landy, 2013). However, to examine the rise of the trait of extraversion, it is necessary to take into account the cultural and social changes that come with the industrial revolution. In her bestseller book Quiet, where she assesses society's perception about Introvert and Extrovert, Susan Cain (2013) records the development of the extrovert ideal with these words: “The new economy calls for a new kind of man- a salesman, a social operator, someone with a ready smile, a masterful handshake, and the ability to get along with colleagues while simultaneously outshining them.” (p:20). Media, films, advertisements, self-help books, and business magazines have shown "being visible" as the first condition of success in a competitive society. The concepts of good impression, reputation, self-presentation, attention-grabbing, self-development begin to become increasingly audible (Cain, 2013). This popularity of extroversion has put the other end of the scale, in other words, introverts, in an "insufficient to success" position. When we consider the meanings attributed to these traits by Jung who is the first person to put forward this concept in 1921 and who has referred to them as a continuum rather than restrict categorizations, it can be seen that today's perception of extravert and introvert is how far away from Jung's description. Jung describes extravert as focus on the external world and introverts as a focus on one's inner world (Waude, 2017). From an organizational point of view, Susan Cain (2013) defines a typical introvert as someone preferring to be alone or with a few close friends, to work in solitude on one specific task by avoiding over-stimulation. They are mostly seen as good listeners who present their ideas after a longer thinking process than extroverts do. 

    Is there a scientifically justified reason for the new world business system for forcing introverts to behave like extroverts? In other words, are extroverts really more capable, more creative, more intelligent, and interesting? Is the first condition of being a successful salesman to be extroverted? In short, do they really have higher performance than introverts have? To answer those questions, we need to analyze research made on this issue. 

    Barrick and Mount’s (1991) meta-analytic study of big 5 and job performance is one of the famous studies whose results caused the increase of trust in "personality as a predictor of job performance.” In their groundbreaking study, Barrick and Mount found that extraversion is linked with job performance for sales occupations and they attributed this result to the need for such occupations to be interactive with others (Barrick & Mount, 1991). However, I think this explanation was under the effect of a biased perspective about introversion as in the way that I explained above. Presumably, authors were expecting this result and it caused a quick review of results. In fact, it is also possible to say that many studies investigating the relationship between personality and job performance are influenced by the cultural change that comes with the industrial age. For this reason, when Mount and Barrick said sales requires being "interactive", they referred to only the "active" part of the compound word, by simply passing over the meanings that the "inter" part provides. So, when we think of the extrovert ideal, a person who is assertive, talkative, firm, gregarious comes to mind and these traits are thought to enable him to decorate the product he sells with his outgoing energy. This person was the exact corresponding to an active part in the interaction. But what about the “inter” part of it? It actually was the given opportunity to the other side of the interaction to be active. In terms of organizational language, it was the opportunity given to buyers to explain their needs, preferences, complaints, and wishes. 

Deriving from this missing analysis of the relationship between extroversion and qualified salesman-to-be, 22 years later from Barrick & Mount’s research, Adam Grant (2013) conducted a study with 340 call center employees. The results were challenging for the traditional perspective about the "extrovert ideal of salesmanship". The study showed that the relationship between extraversion and sales performance is not linear but curvilinear. In other words, being extravert from a certain point causes sales performance to decrease. As I mentioned in the previous example, this result is attributed to the possibility that the extrovert sellers will miss the point of view of the buyer by putting himself at the center of attention of the conversation. The extrovert seller suppresses the role of the buyer through excessive domination on the conversation with an impulse to display his own thoughts and ideas (Grant, 2013). I think the nonlinear relationship of the trait was also an important reminder to consider the extraversion-introversion spectrum as a continuum rather than a distinct categorization, as Jung does.

    Another reflection of the extrovert ideal in business life was the spread of working conditions and styles at organizations such as collaborative teamwork, brainstorming groups, open offices which were more suitable for extroverted people (Cain, 2013). Performing well in such organizations made extroverted features essential like being competent and willing in social-interactions and being able to study in an environment with a high number of stimuli. Thus, the introverts who preferred to speak less and work alone in an environment with fewer stimuli started to be considered incompetent. The managers, who did not consider their introverted employee's proper working conditions, forced them to think aloud and present their thoughts immediately in front of others, and to do a lot of work in a limited time in a highly stimulating environment. When they could not do so, they preferred to interpret it as evidence showing that these employees were not creative enough. 

The research by J. H. Jung, Younghwa Lee, and Rex Karsten (2011) has reached the conclusion that the working style preferences of employees need to be taken into account. While, the brainstorming sessions, independently of personalities, have been already reached some criticism because of inhibiting personal performances instead of increasing creativity (Spector, 1999), Jung, Lee and Karsten (2011) research revealed that this situation has a more adverse effect for introverts. In their research, extroverts showed better performance on idea generation than introverts only in the high-stimuli conditions where more than 20 idea stimuli are presented. The reason for this result was attributed to differences in attention focus between the two groups. As Eysenck (1982) said, highly stimulated environments contribute to the activities of extroverts who have a low-level arousal threshold which means that they are better at handling more than one external stimulus. However, it has a negative effect on introverts because they prefer to give deep focus to a single stimulus. Because of the fact that they already have a high level of arousal threshold, high stimuli condition interferes with their thinking processes. Such that, no significant difference was found between idea generation performance of introverts and extroverts in no stimuli or excessive stimuli conditions (Jung, Lee & Karsten, 2012). 

Some research examines the differences in the arousal levels between introverts and extroverts in terms of absenteeism and withdrawal. In Judge, Martocchio and Thoresen's (1997) study with 89 university staff, they found a positive relationship between extraversion and work absenteeism. They emphasized the extroverts' need for new situations and activities as an explanation for this relationship (Judge, Martocchio & Thoresen, 1997). While nowadays most people think that the social skills of extroverts made them more successful in their occupations, this result surprisingly gives a chance to see the empty part of the glass. That is to say while thinking the extroverts' interest in social relationships as a helpful feature in adaptation more easily to the work environment is the full side of the glass; thinking that they may see their work as an obstacle to maintain their private social activities outside of the work becomes the empty side of the glass. This empty side was suggested as the reason for the correlation between work absenteeism and extraversion by Judge, Thoresen, Martocchio. 

    Cooper and Payne's (1967) study investigating the relationship between extraversion and work behavior whose results indicated a positive correlation between extraversion and withdrawal from work was consistent with the results of previous research. The arousal-threshold which is seen as the reason for the difference in creativity in the group-idea generation experiment was here considered as a possible explanation for the withdrawal tendency of extroverts (Jung, Lee & Karsten, 2011; Cooper & Payne, 1967). In other words, because they have lower arousal than introverts, it is emphasized that they may have a higher probability of breaking off from repetitive tasks because they need more and various stimuli as a feature of their extroverted being. Moreover, the same study found that the more extroverted are less well-adjusted especially in repetitive jobs and again this result was attributed to their sensation-seeking behavior (Cooper & Payne, 1967). 

    In the light of all these studies, I think that the widespread idea that being extrovert is a great necessity to be successful in jobs and introverts possibly will fail due to their deficiency to be energetic, active, talkative, etc. should be reconsidered. While it is obvious how all the ideal figures throughout human history have changed over time, we should keep in mind that it may be misleading to accept these impositions as facts. Additionally, it is more insightful to think that humans are too complex to be categorized and therefore their traits tend to fall on a continuum rather than at the extremes. 

    As seen from the studies mentioned, the negative or positive results of personality traits vary according to the conditions. In other words, making a distinction between people by grouping them according to their traits and matching the suitable occupations to these traits is not rational. The only thing to consider is to respect the working styles of the personalities and let them work the way they feel most productive and comfortable. For example, if a person works best on a task alone and feels better and autonomous, he should be given this chance or if someone else is motivated by/with the people around them with a high amount of stimuli, such a setting should be provided to him. Organizations should trust and respect their employees' ways. Because they will show their best performance under these conditions, as seen in the studies. 

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