If you’re a suffering introvert, take drugs!

Good news for all you oppressed introverts.

According to a study Glenn linked, there may be a drug to make you extraverted:

Montreal — First dates, job interviews or Christmas cocktail parties can be stressors for some people. Such social rites of passage have no doubt made shy or introverted individuals wish for a magic potion that could make them feel like socialites, yet the answer might actually come from a nasal spray.

New research from Concordia University, published in the journal Psychopharmacology, has found that an intranasal form of oxytocin can improve self-perception in social situations. Oxytocin, a hormone naturally released following childbirth or during social bonding periods, has recently been investigated for its impact on social behaviors.

“Our study shows oxytocin can change how people see themselves, which could in turn make people more sociable,” says senior author Mark Ellenbogen, Canada Research Chair in Developmental Psychopathology at Concordia University and a member of the Centre for Research in Human Development. “Under the effects of oxytocin, a person can perceive themselves as more extroverted, more open to new ideas and more trusting.”

Hey, if a drug can make a person perceive himself as “themselves,” I’m interested. It would be fun for me to see myself as selves.

The problem I have is that even though I am introverted, I have detestable social skills which only get me into trouble, as the extraverts think I’m like them and make unreasonable demands on me which wear me out.

It may be that I am being discriminated against by biased extraverts who enforce extraverted values!

It’s no secret that western society values extraversion over introversion.  Not many people hope their kids won’t be social adepts who flourish around other people.  The typical process of obtaining employment also favours those with a natural ease in the social arena, and as such, a lot of the advice you’ll read about looking for work will encourage strategies that extraverts will have a lot easier time putting into practice, because they require a lot of social interaction.

So what do I mean by extravert and introvert anyway?  For the sake of time and space I’ll make an oversimplification and simply state that extraverts are people who tend to be energized by extensive social interaction, and introverts are people who tend to be tired out by extensive social interaction.  If you think of people as batteries, going to a large social interaction of some kind is like being plugged in to an electrical socket for an extravert, while more focused one on one or individual undertakings will tend to drain their charge.

Introvert batteries on the other hand lose their charge during large social interactions and are recharged by smaller, one on one or individual things like coffee with a couple of friends or spending time alone reading.  Introversion does not necessarily equal shyness, though in my own case I can say that I used to be a very shy child, and that might be typical of those on the introverted side of things (personality traits tend to emerge in early childhood and are usually pretty stable throughout life).

And (as I have argued before) if politics favors extraverts, then extraverts rule over introverts! That might be bad, especially if introverts were to unite and overthrow the extraverts.

Too bad we can’t work together. What really sucks is that when introverts become adept at the horrid social skills that enable them behave like extraverts, the extraverts turn right around and think that the introverts are actually enjoying their suffering.

What could be worse than to be suffering while people think that what you are doing is having fun? (And while you’re having fun, don’t miss the 7 year old comment from the one and only Steven Malcolm Anderson.)