Whenever people discuss introverts and extraverts, the claim comes up: "and then there are ambiverts". Rumour has it that ambiverts are people who possess the traits of both introverts and extraverts. They are even credited with super-qualities, and it is claimed that they are the majority. Is the ambivert a separate personality type, is it really so good to be one, and why are they never identified as a group of their own — that is what we shall look at in this article.
We shall dilute the experts' opinion of "ambiverts" with the results of our own observations. Working from the S-Theory, a model of personality with a twenty-year history, we established the introversion and extraversion of a statistically significant number of people through personal interviews (not a hundred, but close to it). And we came to some very interesting conclusions, which we share below.
For those who are short of time, here are the article's key points straight away:
- Ambiverts are what you get when the test result leaves it unclear whether the person is an introvert or an extravert
- Ambiverts are credited with "magical" character traits, the best of both the extraverts and the introverts. In reality these are the signs of a harmonious personality
- They are identified with introversion–extraversion tests based on the Big Five or on Eysenck's method
- According to the tests, ambiverts make up between 12% and 68% of the population. According to our observations, which agree with A. Maslow's view, they are 1% of the population, and we have never met one.
- The error is built into the tests themselves, which confuse the Attitude (introversion – extraversion) with the Life position (the active male principle or the passive female principle)
- The more stable a person's psyche is in middle age, the more clearly their introversion or extraversion is expressed and the less of an "ambivert" they are.
So, if you are interested in going into the details, read on.
Who is an ambivert?
The answer from the official sources explains everything:
Meshcheryakov and Zinchenko's Comprehensive Dictionary of PsychologyAMBIVERT (English ambivert) — a person with mid-range scores on the extraversion scale.
In other words, ambiverts are people whose attitude has not been established by tests or by specialists, or who do not know which they are. Hence the assumption that such people possess the qualities of both introverts and extraverts, that is, that they can behave in different ways. In other words, they do not limit themselves the way this character from the series "Billions" does:
There are also authors who regard ambiverts as a separate personality type.
What is the strength of ambiverts?
Since ambiverts have no qualities of their own and are measured on the scale that determines the Attitude, their qualities have to be "borrowed" from both the extraverts and the introverts. As their authors conceive them, they combine the very best of both:
- They are healthy, flexible, adaptable and effective (in the view of the American psychologist Edmund Conklin in 1923)
- They are less prone to cognitive impairment as they age (in the view of M. Crowe in 2006)
- They earn 24% more than introverts and 32% more than extraverts (in the view of A. Grant in 2013)
- They are more oriented towards cooperation, unlike extraverts, who are geared to competition, and introverts, who are inclined to compromise (in the view of S. V. Dubrovina in 2016)
In short, they are superhumans. Even Jung spoke of ambiverts with admiration:
C. G. Jung, International Congress of Education, Switzerland, 1923There is, finally, a third group, and here it is hard to say whether the motivation comes chiefly from within or without. This group is the most numerous and includes the less differentiated normal man, who is considered normal either because he allows himself no excesses of any kind or because he has no need of them. The normal man is, by definition, influenced as much from within as from without. He constitutes the extensive middle group, on one side of which are those whose motivations are determined mainly by the external object, and, on the other, those whose motivations are determined from within. I call the first group extraverted, and the second group introverted.
And we agree with them entirely, with one large reformulation: in Abraham Maslow's language, ambiverts are called the "self-actualizing personality", the ideal of the harmonious human being, marked by such features as:
- realism and acceptance of themselves and of others
- creativity in small things and getting a high without chemistry
- sociability towards society at large, and
- depth of relationships within their close circle
Incidentally, in Maslow's view such people make up only one per cent of the world's population.
And we have noticed that a person who has been through years of therapy, who has come to know themselves and life, becomes "balanced" in the sense of a harmonious combination of the traits of introversion and extraversion, of the male and the female principle. We have not come across such people even after many dozens of typings. Perhaps other researchers have been luckier?
How do you identify an ambivert?
So then, ambiverts are identified not by a method of their own, but by establishing people's Attitude (introversion–extraversion).
Take an interest in the specialisation of the authors who argue for the existence of "ambiverts" and you will quickly notice that in doing so they use two methodologies:
- The five-factor model of personality, the Big Five (also known as OCEAN), in which extraversion is one of the five dimensions of the typology, or
- Eysenck's model of personality, in which extraversion is one of the two personality scales
It is precisely in these models that the main "little error" lies, the one that gives rise to the conclusions about the existence of ambiverts.
How many ambiverts are there?
Among the many specialists of different schools you will find completely different answers: ambiverts make up anywhere from 12.5% through 38% to 68% of the population.
Meshcheryakov and Zinchenko's Comprehensive Dictionary of PsychologySince the frequency distribution in a normal population is centred on the middle section of this scale, most people may be considered to be Ambiverts.
These are pretty assumptions that do not match reality. In 2016, for example, the relationship between burnout and the level of introversion–extraversion was studied in a sample of 32 law-enforcement officers in the city of Cherepovets:
Dubrovina, S. V. Behavioural strategy in a conflict situation with different personality orientations (by the parameter of extraversion–introversion62.5% of the officers of the Internal Affairs Directorate are extraverts, ... 25.0% of the subjects are introverts, ... and finally 12.5% of the officers of the Internal Affairs Directorate fall into the category of ambiverts
Incidentally, everyone surveyed was male, and we shall come back to that later.
Robert R. McCrae, a psychologist working on personality typologies within the Big Five methodology, told the Huffington Post that somewhere around 38% are ambiverts.
Barry Smith, professor emeritus and director of the Laboratories of Human Psychophysiology at the University of Maryland.Ambiverts make up as much as 68% of the population.
As for us, we agree with the proposition that most of the population, taking tests on their own in which introversion–extraversion and life positions (male – female) are mixed together, will not get a clear answer as to who they are.
Where is the little error?
Why does a situation arise at all in which a person does not know whether they are an introvert or an extravert? There are three reasons for this:
- An error in the design of the tests
- Avoiding yourself, answering from what is "desirable" or "socially correct"
- The neuroticism of the personality
Let us take each answer in turn.
An error in the design of the tests
Take an interest in the specialisation of the authors who argue for the existence of "ambiverts" and you will quickly notice that they establish introversion and extraversion using the Big Five methodology or Eysenck's model of personality. The main problem with these models is that they mix up the Attitude and the Life position.
Eysenck's test, for instance, contains the following questions, which have nothing to do with extraversion at all:
- Are you usually the first to take the initiative when meeting someone new?
- Do you think that people spend too much time securing their future by putting money aside and insuring themselves and their lives?
- Would a life without any danger in it seem too dull to you?
The five-factor scale of the Big Five typology gets even more "confused", tying dimensions such as "Dominance – submissiveness" and "Activity – passivity" directly to Extraversion and Introversion:
- I enjoy taking physical exercise
- I cannot stay still for long
- I often have to be the leader and to show initiative
In Jung's language, these questions describe a person's degree of Activity, "the phase the individual is in at a given moment in relation to the outside world", and are not a scale of introversion.
C. G. Jung, 1914In my view, the factor of activity ought to be dropped as a principal characterising feature; as a feature of secondary importance, however, it still plays a part.
It is only natural that, taking Eysenck's tests or those based on the Big Five method, introverted men who are masculine and active by nature will come out as "unclear" ambiverts, because their answers about their activity neutralise their answers about their introversion. Remember the survey of male law-enforcement officers mentioned above, 62% of whom turned out to be extraverts. Which is hardly surprising: men who specialise in solving life's problems by force and dominance go into the police and answer the questions accordingly.
In the same way, extraverted women who are feminine and "passive" by nature and oriented towards harmony and cooperation will come out as "ambiverts" with mid-range answers, since their answers about passivity cancel out their answers about extraversion. In the end it is hardly surprising that, given the imperfection of these methodologies, most of those surveyed turn out to be nobody in particular.
Neuroticism, or avoiding the answers
For example, how would you answer a question about your attitude to violence? I think that in the Western world most people would answer negatively. And at the same time, if you were attacked by thugs, would you want the police to use violence against those thugs and rescue you? Or should a murderer be caught by force and put in prison (after all, the murderer may not agree to such violence being used against him)?
That question is about the Life position. Most men will answer it positively, most women negatively. But that is when there are no witnesses, when you are honest with yourself.
We have also noticed that balanced people give clear answers to questions about their introversion or extraversion. And the other way round: the more neurotic the person you are talking to, the more he or she is caught in the stress of a divorce, a dismissal or a conflict, the more "ambivert" features come out: the person answers at random.
You are not an ambivert. Who are you, then?
This article has done its job if it has left you wanting not to be an ambivert and to find out who you are: an introvert or an extravert? You can do that in the app DatiCo. After taking a few tests, you will see the result in your personal profile, complete with a percentage estimate of how reliable your answers are ?
