Tag Archives: Big 5

Thank You for Sharing

Posted in HSP by

I’m not a fan of TED Talks. What’s the point of recruiting interesting people who are experts in their field – who have highly detailed and specialized knowledge gleaned from years of intensive study – if you are going to impose an 18-minute time limit that forces them to generalize to the point of meaninglessness? No introvert thought that up, that’s for sure!

I’m similarly unenthused about “Big 5” personality trait theory, the extrovert bias of which I have ranted about elsewhere. I mention it only because one of the Big 5 traits is “agreeableness,” which is probably the inspiration for the same-named trait mentioned in this TED Talk.

Give and Take

Yes, this post is about a TED Talk, by organizational psychologist Adam Grant. Despite my skepticism about the format, his discussion of workplace sharing styles and how they relate to productivity and career success is highly relevant to my own experience.

Grant defines the sharing styles as taker, giver, and matcher. About a quarter of people are givers, a sixth are takers, and the rest are matchers. It’s interesting that a substantial majority are matchers. I’m betting most people think only in terms of givers and takers.

Go on, watch it. I can wait. You’ll love the part about the Canadian national slogan – so HSP! Continue reading →

The (Over)Thinker

Posted in Depression, HSP, Introversion by

An outdoor casting of Rodi's famous bronze statue, "The Thinker"This article proposes an adjustment to a widely used theory in psychology, shifting the definition of “neuroticism” from overly reactive to highly reactive, and concluding that such reactivity offers benefits in the form of foresight, creativity and drive, not just the costs of anxiety and depression. Do I see subtle signs that HSP and introvert advocates are making a dent?

Those who have wrestled with depression and/or anxiety will immediately recognize the references to “Self Generated Thought.” There’s actually an acronym for that, SGT. Who knew? It’s more judgmentally known as “brooding” by those who never do it.

Just because everything’s been said doesn’t mean everybody’s heard it.

I thought for most of my early life that I had very little imagination. In fact, I despaired over it in my twenties, around the same time I realized that everything profound had probably already been said. (I later realized this doesn’t really matter, since wisdom needs a constant stream of carriers across the generations to keep it alive and relevant. Just because everything’s been said doesn’t mean everybody’s heard it).

Twenty years later, when I became conscious of “negative self-talk” and other fantasies of doom that fueled the ouroboros loop of depression, I was ROFL at the notion that I had no imagination. Au, so contraire! In reality, I was constructing scenarios in my mind non-stop. Almost all of my energy went into it. Maybe the content needed a little tweaking, but it had been irrefutably established over decades that I was not only creative, I was extremely focused and prolific!