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MedicalXpress is reporting on new research [Abstract only; full article pay-walled, but available for free (PDF)] into the "Friendship Paradox", as published (online) in the journal Psychological Science by researchers at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business.
The MedicalXpress article says, in part:
Social scientists have long known that, statistically speaking, our friends are probably more popular than we are. It's a simple matter of math: Because extraverted people tend to have more friends, they are disproportionately represented in social networks—which means everyone's network is more extraverted than the population as a whole.
New research by researchers Daniel C. Feiler and Adam M. Kleinbaum of Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College extends this so-called "friendship paradox" beyond a purely mathematical claim, documenting the phenomenon within the emerging social networks of a new class of MBA students. Not only did the researchers show that extraversion bias exists in real-world networks, they found the effect is more pronounced in the networks of socially outgoing people. In other words, popular people are not immune from the friendship paradox—they experience it more intensely than others.
[...] "If you're more extraverted, you might really have a skewed view of how extraverted other people are in general," Feiler says. "If you're very introverted you might actually have a pretty accurate idea."
[...] The rest of us view our social world through a distorted lens—a kind of carnival mirror that makes us feel less loved than our friends, and creates the impression that others are more social than they truly are. This could have profound effects on our job performance, relationships and self-esteem.
"There's a tendency to wonder, 'am I normal?'" Feiler says. "And our research suggests that you're probably more normal than you think."
Does this mean that we, as a species, are less social than we think?
Now get off my lawn!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 07 2015, @02:36PM
Most people do best with some time with others, and some time alone. The idea that there was some sort of difference was created more-or-less whole cloth by Carl Jung: Sure, some people do better with more alone time, and some do better with more social time, but in general too much of either is unhealthy.
The difference is usually defined by which behavior energizes a person, but that can very much depend on who the person is being social with. People thought to be introverted are often energized by a deep and meaningful conversation with a dear friend or spouse or relative. People thought to be extroverted are often drained by pointless chit-chat with idiots.
About the only point of the distinction is to attempt to train people to not be offended if somebody wants some alone time, or somebody wants to socialize. But slapping a label on that doesn't really help anybody.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @03:18PM
but in general too much of either is unhealthy.
With "too much" and "unhealthy" being subjective. Just like being a homosexual was a 'mental illness' a few decades ago, this is subject to the whims of people with opinions.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Nuke on Tuesday April 07 2015, @04:12PM
About the only point of the distinction is to attempt to train people to not be offended if somebody wants some alone time, or ... to socialize
Eh? So if someone pesters you to join a crowd, you say "Sorry, but I'm an introvert" ? I think that if you tried it you would find it does not work.
There does not need to be a "point" to the distinction. It is an observation, a general classification. There are shades of course, but generally it is applied more as an aid to descibing the more extreme cases; like "Oprah Winfrey is an extrovert" and "Isaac Newton was an introvert", the sort of thing you would say if you needed to sum them up.
Maybe someday someone will discover (perhaps they have already) that extroverts have some different brain cells from introverts. That is how science starts. Like Darwin drew perhaps "pointless" distinctions between different finches in the Galapagos Islands, but it led him to the Theory of Evolution.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08 2015, @02:31AM
The general idea is that the brain "wants" a certain level of activity. Too little or too much is uncomfortable and motivation leading to homeostasis kicks in. For extroverts, their default brain activity is less and thus have motivation to seek out stimulating things. For introverts, they have enough or too much default brain activity thus having added external stimulation is uncomfortable.