Chris Berry On The Net

Recently I’ve become fascinated observing the way my son interacts with other children. At the age of three, he is developing distinctive personality traits that remind me of myself, and it leaves me wondering whether personality types can be inherited. Thanks to Mr. Mendel and his peas, we have a pretty complete understanding of the heritability of physical characteristics, but many questions persist when it comes to behavioral traits.

Based solely on my own family, I see little evidence to support heritability. My father is the ultimate extrovert, perfectly at ease surrounded by total strangers in unfamiliar settings. My mother had some introverted tendencies, but since she spent most of her life in my father’s orbit, it’s difficult to judge whether she would have ever put herself in the same situations without him. I suspect not, but she was clearly at ease in familiar social settings. My older sister is a purely social creature, and she expends tremendous energy maintaining and cultivating an extensive network of lifelong friends and acquaintances. My younger sister also requires a high level of social interaction, but she tends to operate within the confines of a smaller circle of friends. From this family, I emerged as the only pure introvert. The only other example I am aware of within my extended gene pool was my maternal grandfather, a man so content with his own company that he spent the last 40 years of his life as a virtual hermit.

While I am not a hermit by any means, my wife and I are both classic introverts. We have a very limited social life, and don’t make much of an effort to develop one. Since we have moved several times, our social circles have become increasingly smaller. We both engage in frequent solitary activities, most notably reading, and I find that I even prefer to play golf by myself, rather than with a regular partner or foursome. I view the game as an individual challenge rather than a social activity.

Three year olds are not normally known for their finely honed social skills, but I believe Robert is already displaying evidence of an introverted nature. He clearly enjoys social interactions with familiar adults, but is less enthusiastic when it comes to playing with the majority of his preschool classmates. When we drop him off in the mornings, he will generally seek out an empty table to eat his breakfast, and he is more likely to wander off to play alone than join a group activity. Whenever the kids sit on the floor to sing songs or watch videos, he tends to move to the edge of the group rather than be surrounded by other children.

I spent the majority of my childhood years engaged in daydreaming, and Robert seems to share that tendency. At times he becomes so deeply transfixed that I have to shake him to get his attention. I’m sure that if I were in school today, I would be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, and I am fearful that he will face the same problem. It’s not that I had any problem paying attention, I simply chose not to. Whatever was going on inside my head at any given moment was usually a lot more interesting than what the teacher had to say.

One of the defining characteristics of an introvert is that we are intensely private, and we tend to develop separate personas for public and private situations. Without this adaptive coping mechanism, we would have a very difficult time functioning in a world dominated by extroverts. As I look back on my career, I’m amazed that I was able to maintain this public persona well enough to spend 10 years in sales as a top 1% producer in my industry. As I get older, I find it easier to switch back and forth between my public and private self, but it requires much more energy to remain “on” for extended periods of time. If my son does turn out to be a true introvert, I will do my best to help him understand the importance of developing an appropriate public persona at the earliest possible age.

Since introverts only comprise 25 to 30 percent of the total population, we are frequently misunderstood by the majority of people who do not comprehend our basic need for solitude. People also tend to confuse introversion with shyness. While these two things are quite different in reality, a child who is both shy and introverted will have an even more difficult time relating to his peers. The fact that introversion is frequently misinterpreted as arrogance complicates matters further. I struggled with all of these issues as a child, but while my shyness diminished with age, introversion remains an essential element of my personality. Hopefully this experience will leave me better prepared to relate to my own child.

One interesting statistic I came across this morning suggested that while introverts are a minority of the total population, as measured intelligence within a group increases, so too does the incidence of introversion. Among people with IQ’s of 160 and above, the 70/30 split is reversed. While Jennifer and I are nowhere near the 160 level, we both have IQ’s roughly 2 standard deviations above the mean. Evidence suggests that innate intelligence is a highly heritable trait. If Robert has inherited our introversion, there’s a pretty good chance that he also got some smarts to go along with it. Hopefully that will help him adapt to an extroverted world.