Extroverts are extremely specialized and well adapted to the standards of their society. They are so attached to their ways that encountering other customs and world views is extremely uncomfortable for them.
To see a Western extrovert in a foreign country reveals an important principle:
An expert in one society is hopelessly inept in another. When their main area of expertise becomes useless, they are crippled. Their reaction is usually one of frustration and denial.
In college, I studied abroad for a time in South America. I was one of a group of fellow Americans. We each were assigned to a family but attended all the same classes and a number of mandatory activities.
For most of them, the trip was fraught with social difficulties. Their usual assertive behavior made for tough relations with their host families. Some of them quickly got changed to another family which they didn’t like any better than the last. They complained about the matter, never considering that perhaps they ought to adapt and accept rather than object.
The girls in this group insisted on wearing short shorts and spaghetti straps on the streets, yet were outraged when every time they constantly received wolf whistles and other unwelcome attention. Instead of adapting, they continued to act as before while complaining bitterly and making pronouncements about how people in that country should behave. All they had to do was dress a little more modestly like the locals and their problem would have been solved.
Most of the Americans in my group reacted negatively to the local culture and spent all their time in each other’s company. In months of living there, some of them barely left with any more Spanish than they came with.
My brother when studying in Latin America had an embarrassing experience with a socialite girl in his group of students. She went up to a local and told him in broken Spanish ‘you must not smoke.’ Needless to say, her presumptuous demand was ignored.
The common pattern exhibited here is that many extroverts are quite simply unable to acknowledge that there is more than one Correct way for a social environment to function. The obvious refutation of millions of people living by another standard is an affront to everything they have founded their identity upon and everything they believe in. It challenges assumptions they were raised with and have accepted without question. The standard reaction is aggressive denial and an irrational struggle. To a true introvert, they most resemble toy poodles yapping shrilly at an indifferent and gigantic great dane. To view their utter impotence is a vindication and a delight.
These extroverts are used to living in a society they feel they belong to and which they feel belongs to them. At home they are used to having a say in how their society is implemented. When they arrive in a foreign country, they are quite simply unable to adapt to the fact that they are complete outsiders with no say at all.
As an introvert studying abroad, I found that I had an enormous advantage over the other people in my group. I had spent all my life in a society that had made me feel an outsider. To feel that I had no stake or say in the surrounding society seemed for me the most natural impulse in the world. That I had to adapt to what others were doing, even if I didn’t agree with it, was so obvious it didn’t need thinking. I did not share that need to judge and attempt to set things into a familiar order.
Consequently, I got along well with my host family and spent my time with them instead of the other American students. Investing all my time in my host family was richly rewarded. I had the experience of a lifetime and grew to appreciate another culture. I allowed myself to see both the advantages and the faults of that particular culture. In many ways, it was a big improvement over living in the United States.
The whole trip was an affirmation of strength for me as an introvert. It was an experience in weakness and disorientation for most of the extroverts.
Afterwards I could never forget that those who let society define them are noisy yet insignificant toy poodles if they are simply taken out of their element and placed in another.
I couldn’t help but wonder if being a social minority is an experience more extroverts need to have– that claustrophobic feeling of being crushed under millions of people whose customs and expectations drastically differ from one’s own.
6 Comments
This has a lot to do with the arrogance of not all but many extroverts. A lot of them feel like they are liked by everyone else because they are socially adept and that their opinion is always welcome. Since they tend to be more assertive, they think that they can go anywhere and get others to change to meet their expectations. They don’t realize that not everyone is going to fall at their feet like that. Their arrogance blinds them from seeing anything wrong with their own ways. It’s everyone else that is slow on the uptake and needs to change. It’s a very narcissistic way of thinking. Self-absorbed extroverts have that mentality whenever they are around other people, regardless of the environment.
I am thinking about possibly doing a “homestay” kind of trip to Ireland at some point, which means that I would be staying with a family and learning about the culture from a familial perspective. So I definitely wouldn’t be going there with the assumption that I am the one running their show. A lot of extroverts are of the opinion that they are the ones running everyone’s show. On a trip like that, a person has to realize that he or she is going in order to learn how other people do things, not to impose his or her way of doing things.
They’ve never had to think any different.
For them, adapting requires changing a lifetime worth of habit.
The social aggressiveness that handicaps them in foreign countries is their greatest ally at home.
This aggression is just their normal response when things get tough.
Still it fascinates that many of those who pride themselves on being ‘people persons’ prove to be singularly self centered when put to the test.
Extroverts do not hold a monopoly on being arrogant or insensitive. Maybe, as introverts, you don’t fall prey as easily to some of these problem behaviours, but saying that your fellow travellers acted this way because they are extroverts is incorrect, as well as being a generalization/causation someone in your position should know to avoid. Just sayin.
My field of expertise is in linguistics and foreign relations and I find almost invariably that the people most successful at functioning in a foreign society are relatively introverted. Certain jobs abroad, like the post of ambassador, are dominated by extroverts because they function on a purely business level. When it comes to getting personal, introverts are almost always the first pick for rustling up information, courting contacts, etc. This is partly because they tend to listen more than they converse, and also because they are much more likely to possess the ability to comfortably navigate a foreign culture. When people see you as someone outside their society, it really is better to be altogether unassuming than to actively try to collaborate.
“Extroverts do not hold a monopoly on being arrogant or insensitive.”
Gin Gin is certainly right. Nobody likes a petulant introvert who reckons he is superior to society, but finding a niche as a foreigner is not easy. For any number of reasons the thought process and instinct required to make it living in a foreign culture is more likely to be possessed by introverts.
Extroverts simply don’t do as well- they are often uncomfortable with disorienting change, confused by unfamiliar expectations and reactions, and they tend to make imprudent choices even when they are perfectly well-intended. Most definitely it takes someone, er, shall we say, special, to actually match the descriptions that Gluon describes, but it is an indicator of an existing trend.
“Instead of adapting, they continued to act as before while complaining bitterly and making pronouncements about how people in that country should behave. All they had to do was dress a little more modestly like the locals and their problem would have been solved.”
This advice sounds like something an extro would say to you or me — “blend in”, “mingle”, “schmooze” (I hate that fucking term!).
‘Blend in’ and ‘schmooze’ are terms that mean actively engaging a certain group of people and attempting to make oneself known and possibly even accepted by that group. It means getting them to like you.
My advice is not along those lines. In this case, I recommend the usual introvert strategy of avoiding trouble by not attracting attention in the first place.