For a Worthy Cause, Going Against Your Own Grain Makes Sense

An introvert with a worthy cause can suddenly look and sound like quite the extrovert! Don’t be surprised.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could go through life playing entirely to your introverted preferences?

Well, not to be harsh but … you can’t.

I can’t either.

None of us can.

We introverts can’t expect the world to start magically catering solely to us, for starters.

Much more importantly, though, we often pull out our extrovert skills intentionally, in the name of a worthy cause.

Knowing full well that we will likely pay an energy and overstimulation price for our actions, we sometimes go forth as temporary extroverts anyway—on purpose, for a purpose.

In his fascinating book Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, psychologist and lecturer 
Brian Little—himself a strong introvert—offers a name for this phenomenon, which he himself 
engages in every time he stands in front of an audience to lecture.

He calls it acting out of character.

A “Flaming Extr[o]vert”?

Little—quite the character himself judging by both his experiences and his refreshingly humorous writing style—says that, like many other introverts, he has much of the world convinced he’s an extrovert.

All it takes to be fooled, he says, is watching him present.

As he recalls about a talk he once gave:

“When I stepped up to the platform to deliver the keynote address …, a familiar ‘click’ occurred. I switched from my natural (biologically) introverted personality to something very different. At 8:35 in the morning, 
audiences do not really want to hear modulated, soft-spoken, tentative introvert-speak, especially after a long bout of impassioned drinking the night before. … So, as a member of the audience, if you were asked a few minutes into my presentation what Professor Little is like, you probably would have said he is a flaming extr[o]vert.”

Not so.

He was intentionally acting out of character, a term that must be understood in not just one but two contexts, he stresses.

The first is the one we typically associate with the phrase: acting away from or differently than what’s normally expected of us.

Acting, almost literally.

The second context of acting out of character, on the other hand, means “acting because of,” Little says, as in: “She did it out of compassion.”

“So when I use the phrase ‘acting out of character,’” Little writes, “it means two different but equally powerful ways of explaining a pattern of behavior. It simultaneously means people are acting inconsistently with what we have come to expect and that they are doing it because of something in their character, because of the values they wish to express.”

And just what might those values be? In other words, why would you, as an introvert, knowingly and intentionally engage in extroverted types of behavior?

There are two primary reasons, Little argues: love and professionalism.

• Love—Perhaps you go to a party with your extroverted spouse and interact with the people there because such a gesture makes your beloved feel cherished.
• Professionalism—You don’t mind getting on the phone and calling total strangers if it means raising money for the nonprofit agency you’ve worked so hard to build over the years.

The Costs of a Worthy Cause

But what about that price you expected to pay for your extroverted actions? It’s real, particularly if your “temporary” extroversion turns out to be less temporary than you first anticipated.

As Little puts it:

“I believe that protractedly acting out of character … can extract both psychological and physical costs.”

Which means, he says, that as an introvert, it’s critical for you to find one or more restorative niches—places or activities that help you reclaim your more natural, introverted “first nature” after a time of extroverting.

Sadly, though, this is the part of the equation that we introverts too frequently overlook or ignore, thinking it doesn’t really matter—not really really.

But it does.

After all, you’re probably extroverting for a worthy cause to begin with, whatever it may be.

Don’t forget that you’re recharging for a worthy cause too …

You.