Extroverts are rare: study
Do you think your friends are more social than you are? If yes, then you’re not alone. A new study suggests that we view our social world through a distorted lens.
This is the result of a “friendship paradox” that exists due to a disproportionate representation of extroverts on social networks.
Ironically, the effect of the phenomenon is strongest in the networks of socially outgoing people, and the researchers from Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, in the US say most networks are laden with extroverts.
“If you’re more extroverted, you might really have a skewed view of how extroverted other people are in general,” says co-author Daniel C Feiler. “If you’re introverted you might actually have a pretty accurate idea,” he says.
According to Feiler, social networks are formed as a result of extroversion, and a notion called homophily that says people with similar levels of extroversion enjoy each other’s company.
Networks, thus, take on a disproportionate number of extroverts, and the phenomenon leads to introverts becoming better socially calibrated than extroverts because they experience the friendship paradox to a lesser degree, he says.
Feiler and co-author Adam Kleinbaum, also of Tuck, surveyed each of the 284 new Masters of Business Administration (MBA) candidates two times.
The first survey occurred five weeks after their orientation and the second one took place 11 weeks later. Each time, students were asked to indicate their friends using a class roster, and they were given a test to determine whether they were introverts or extroverts not long after being surveyed for the second time.