11 Things All Introverts Should Know

2. Non-psychologists may have their own definitions of “introvert”, too.

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One 1981 paper published in the European Journal of Social Psychology compared “common-sense” ideas about the term to “scientific” ones. One of the findings was that a lot of people believe introverts think often about themselves – they’re introspective, just like in Jung’s original definition. But that criterion doesn’t even appear on the Big 5 scale.

“The problem you have now is that people who define themselves as introspective introverts don’t necessarily score as introverts on the Big 5 extraversion scale,” says Cheek, “and so they’re being told ‘No, you’re not an introvert’.”