Redefining Extraversion: How Cultural Differences Shape Our Understanding of Leadership

I just recently shared a talk at Cloud Next (see my second talk here) around our blind spots not just on extraversion but also leadership and how it discriminates against introverts and certain cultural and minority groups.

It all started with a cultural training workshop that I lead in APAC and there have been a lot of interesting questions that come up in those sessions, but one that caught me off guard was on cultural differences and introversion and extraversion.

As I dug further, I hit on something that I do feel is very important that is missing from the discussion. It’s something we need to talk about if we want to talk about the extraversion bias.

SO WHAT DO WE KNOW?

• Extraversion is characterized by a general motivation to approach new situations, where extraverts’ dopamine centers fire more strongly, they can tolerate and seek out more often higher stimulating environments, which is an “approach” behavior
• Introversion is then the opposite — their dopamine centers fire less strongly and they are more aware of risks, making them less likely to seek highly stimulating environments, which is an “avoid” behavior
• Extraversion and introversion differences in reward center behavior (approach and avoid) are most strongly pronounced in high stress situations — the biological nature of extraversion and introversion is not as pronounced as probably environmental factors that create a stronger distinction.
• Extraversion bias — there is a bias towards rewarding those who exhibit extraverted characteristics, especially in the workplace

DEBUNKING EXTRAVERSION

Challenging Extraversion: How does culture affect the extraversion bias?

Challenge 1: Extraverts are more talkative and assertive

• Different cultures view talking differently. The West is influenced by Greek philosophy on debate and oratory — talking is evidence of thinking. Many Asian cultures influenced by Buddhism downplay talking — enlightenment is achieved through introspection and reflection (silent meditation retreat anyone?)
• A study showed that talking differentially affected thinking. Looking at test taking and solving problems either aloud or silently found that Asian Americans did worse on the test if they were forced to think out loud and European Americans’ scores improved if they were able to think out loud

Source: Kim, H. S. (2002). We talk, therefore we think? A cultural analysis of the effect of talking on thinking. Journal of personality and social psychology, 83(4), 828.

• Similarly, they found that Finns are less willing to communicate than Americans but both cultures share the same levels of communication apprehension and communication competency (so there’s no differences in their aptitude to communicate, Finns just don’t focus on talking as much as Americans).
• REDEFINING EXTRAVERSION #1: Cultures differ on how they value talking. Talkativeness may be a stronger signal of extraversion for North Americans than it is for other cultures. Those who ascribe to more Western perspectives on talking would see someone who speaks up and offers their opinions in meetings as someone who is a critical thinker and intelligent and those who are silent as not expressing their thoughts or worse — not having any ideas at all.

Challenge 2: Extraverts are high energy and emotionally expressive.

Source: Tsai, J. L., Knutson, B., & Fung, H. H. (2006). Cultural variation in affect valuation. Journal of personality and social psychology, 90(2), 288–307.

• Cultures value different types of emotional expression. North American cultures, they preferred high arousal positive emotions (HAP) — meaning high energy emotions like excitement and enthusiasm. East Asians were more likely to prefer low arousal positive emotions (LAP) such as contentedness and satisfaction.
• Our signal of extraversion impacts hiring. Researchers showed European Americans and Hong Kong Chinese either excited (HAP) candidates or calm (LAP) candidates and asked them to rate the candidates on extraversion and whether they would hire them. European Americans were most likely to hire candidates with the excited expression and also saw them as more extraverted. Hong Kong Chinese were more likely to hire the candidate with the calm and neutral expression because they perceived them as more extraverted than the European Americans did
• Extraversion did explain hiring across cultures but WHAT extraversion looked like differed. European Americans are more likely to see extraverts as those with high energy whereas Hong Kong Chinese did not.
• REDEFINING EXTRAVERSION #2: We can be biased towards our own cultural definition of extraversion. Our own cultural biases on what extraversion looks like could give preferential treatment to those who fit our culture’s definition of extraversion, and those who express extraversion differently can still be penalized. Could you be introverted? Yes, but you might also be extraverted but not display the cultural signals that someone is looking for in an extravert.

SO WHAT…

…about me?

• How do we tell who’s an extravert? Reexamine your ideas on extraversion and introversion, specifically on what signals you look for when you try to bucket people in different categories. How does the absence of those signals unintentionally penalize people? Are these signals self limiting (e.g., “I’m an [introvert/extravert], therefore I can’t do…”)?
• How do we tell who’s a future leader? How intertwined are our ideas of leadership and extraversion? Find exceptional leaders that challenge our notions of leadership, especially when it comes to extraversion

…about work?

Revisit how we measure leadership.

• Review how we describe and evaluate leaders, swapping out words that overly focus on talking in favor of more open ended descriptions. What are other signals should we encourage? (e.g., “strong verbal communication skills” → “strong communication skills”, “people-skills” → “team-oriented”)
• What typically introverted qualities should we celebrate more? For instance — focus on outcomes vs. behavior (e.g., instead of “assertive”, “has presence”, look at “created an inclusive environment”, “reduced overhead by…”), let them find the method that suits them.
• Train our teams, especially managers, hiring/recruitment teams, on these biases. Have bias detectors in hiring and promotion meetings to keep discussions in check(you can check out a free unbiasing checklist).
• Look towards other cultures to see what leadership looks like. This will expand our definition of what is possible. For instance, in cultures where talking and high energy are not as emphasized, how do leaders lead? How are they supported and how are they measured? What are their definitions of leadership?

Diversify communication styles.

• “Warm calling” — soliciting responses privately to a question and then letting individuals know they will be called on to share their response
• Embrace hybrid — asynchronous communication and reduced visual cues can reduce anxiety to share or be judged
• Embrace intimate discussion groups — talking doesn’t always have to be done in large public forums.
• Create diverse feedback mechanisms: give employees choice in how to show their work (1:1 conversations, presentations, reports, voting, chat, etc.). You can keep what you’re already doing but make sure you have other ways to measure contribution. It’s like investing, it’s risky to have a portfolio that isn’t diversified ;)
• Emphasize results over presentation: disentangle the content from how it’s delivered

Review the energy levels in our activities

• Some cultures prefer high arousal positive emotions, some prefer lower arousal positive emotions — do we provide activities and spaces where people can cultivate these?
• When we have team activities — how much balance do we give to high and low arousal activities? Are our only low arousal activities downtime and breaks?

Increase your cultural intelligence (it’s me — you knew this was coming)

• High cultural intelligence means you 1. Know about cultural differences 2. You adjust your behavior to be more accommodating to different cultures and 3. You are confident and are motivated to do so
• Don’t assume — Find out people’s expectations
• What are our definitions for things — is this shared by others we work with? How might they differ?
• How do you align with others on a shared definition?
• Example: How a manager and a direct report might measure or signal success, leadership, drive, etc. might differ. A manager can ask — what does assertiveness look like to you? What does leadership look like to you? How do we agree on what it looks like?

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Cheng, K. H., Hui, C. H., & Cascio, W. F. (2017). Leniency bias in performance ratings: The big-five correlates. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 521.

Depue, R. A., & Fu, Y. (2013). On the nature of extraversion: variation in conditioned contextual activation of dopamine-facilitated affective, cognitive, and motor processes. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 7, 288.

Earley, P. C. & Mosakowski, E. (2014). Cultural Intelligence, Harvard Business Review.

Fischer, R., Lee, A., & Verzijden, M. N. (2018). Dopamine genes are linked to Extraversion and Neuroticism personality traits, but only in demanding climates. Scientific reports, 8(1), 1733.

Kim, H. S. (2002). We talk, therefore we think? A cultural analysis of the effect of talking on thinking. Journal of personality and social psychology, 83(4), 828.

Sallinen‐Kuparinen, A., McCroskey, J. C., & Richmond, V. P. (1991). Willingness to communicate, communication apprehension, introversion, and self‐reported communication competence: Finnish and American comparisons. Communication Research Reports, 8(1), 55–64.

Tsai, J. L., Knutson, B., & Fung, H. H. (2006). Cultural variation in affect valuation. Journal of personality and social psychology, 90(2), 288.

Tsai, J. L. (2007). Ideal affect: Cultural causes and behavioral consequences. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(3), 242–259.

• Note: most of the studies I talk about compare Asians and European Americans, this is partially because most of cultural psychology compares these two cultures (most of psychology is based on American participants).

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I’m the doctor that can’t give you meds or tell you why you hate your boss. But I can talk forever about cultural and digital psychology. This blog helps me stay on top of a field I love so much, share what I’ve found, and constantly push psychology’s application to life and work in meaningful ways.