Leonard Baier is a graphic designer who lives in a small town in Germany. He’s the perfect person to meet at a party because he can always find a topic of conversation. If he goes into a bar alone, he comes out with a handful of new acquaintances. Yet he also appreciates living alone in a cozy, two-room apartment. There he enjoys “closing the door every now and then and having some peace and quiet,” he says. After long visits with friends, for example, he is happy to be undisturbed for a while.
Baier meets the criteria for ambiversion, a trait in the middle of the continuum between extroversion and introversion. Whereas an introverted person draws most of their energy from being alone, an extroverted person becomes energized from interacting with other people. Introverts are more easily stressed by other people, whereas extroverts thrive in the company of others. But for Baier these dynamics depend on the circumstances: Sometimes he feels comfortable and relaxed in company. Other times people stress him out.
He's far from the only one. Most people are not exclusively introverted or extroverted. “Ninety percent of people are somewhere in the middle,” says Jens Asendorpf, a personality researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin. People who tend to be extroverted also like to keep to themselves from time to time. “And since everyone needs social contact, introverts also seek interaction with others—just less so,” Asendorpf adds.
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In other words, the vast majority of people are probably ambiverts. But it’s hard to clearly separate these categories, says psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman. “There is no magic line that clearly separates ambiversion from introversion and extroversion,” he says.
If you place people on the continuum according to their characteristics, the vast majority are probably in the middle, with fewer toward the extremes. This dimension of human personality is “normally distributed,” as the statistical term goes. There are also many more gradations than just introverted, ambiverted and extroverted. “You could create even more subcategories—for example, mild extroversion and mild introversion,” Kaufman says.
Ambiversion: The Best of Everything?
Ambiversion combines the worlds of extroversion and introversion: When Baier’s friends spontaneously drop by on a Friday evening and want to take him to a party, he grabs his jacket and sets off. But if he has no plans, that doesn’t bother him either. On the contrary, he enjoys a quiet evening watching a TV series or drawing. “Ambivert people have a more flexible mindset, which can be very useful in everyday life,” Kaufman says.
In general, it cannot be said that one of the three categories—extroversion, ambiversion or introversion—is better or worse than the others. “There is no hierarchy of goodness when it comes to personality traits,” Kaufman says. Instead each has advantages and disadvantages, depending on the situation. For example, although some studies suggest extroverts are happier than introverts, certain researchers have countered that this reflects a larger social bias that values outgoing behaviors that are more typical among extroverts.
So what are the benefits of ambiversion? Only a few studies exist on this dimension of personality, including one from 2013 by psychologist and author Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania. In Grant’s study, ambiverted employees in a call center had a higher mean sales revenue than their extroverted or introverted colleagues. Grant observed that they did more than introverts or extroverts to adapt to their conversation partners. They were enthusiastic and assertive enough to be persuasive—but did not appear excited or overconfident. Instead they listened to customers and took their interests into account.
A study published in 2016 found that both ambiverted and introverted biology students generally performed slightly better academically than extroverts. The researchers wrote that ambiverts may draw on characteristics from both ends of the spectrum by concentrating on their studies much like an introvert but socializing with classmates like an extrovert. Meanwhile a study conducted in Vietnam of 68 students majoring in English, published in 2023, found that the 22 students who described themselves as ambiverts balanced extrovert and introvert tendencies. They adapted varied study tactics to specific circumstances, such as rapidly skimming new information, asking others questions to improve their understanding and creating memory aids such as color-coded notes.
Beyond academics, the combination of introversion and extroversion could lead to the best decision-making in business settings, wrote Karl Moore, an organizational researcher at McGill University, in Forbes in 2012. Extroverted people are thought to be natural leaders who can inspire followers. But the downside is that they often like to talk more than listen. Introverted managers attend more to their employees and give them more room for their own successes. An ambivert leader could ideally do both.
A Common but Neglected Trait
Despite praise for ambiversion, the science is still relatively thin. For years the concept received little attention. First mentioned in 1923 by psychologist Edmund Smith Conklin, who was attempting to define introversion and extroversion, the term was then forgotten. It only reappeared decades later in the personality models of British psychologist Hans Jürgen Eysenck.
The lack of interest could relate to the fact that, by definition, ambiversion is not linked to particularly distinctive or memorable profiles. It was intended for “typical” people between the extremes, explained psychologist Ian Davidson, now at Concordia University of Edmonton in Alberta, in a 2017 paper.
By contrast, most studies to date have focused on pronounced extroversion or introversion. Despite the numerous efforts to that survey those dimensions, hardly any separate analyses exist for the middle 50 percent of people. Kaufman regrets this failing in his field: “It is good scientific practice to look at the entire range of values,” he says. “But many people prefer to look for simple answers to the question of why people feel, think and act the way they do.” Focusing on the extremes, in other words, makes certain research projects easier.
But neglecting the middle may do a disservice to everyone. People frequently misunderstand what extroversion and introversion actually mean. This could be addressed through a more nuanced look at these concepts. Take introversion, for example, which can be conflated incorrectly with shyness, a dislike of other people and even social anxiety. “It has nothing to do with a fear of social contact,” Asendorpf says. Instead, as he notes in his book Psychology of Personality, introverts simply prefer to be alone more of the time.
Another danger is that people may reduce themselves and others to an extreme end of the introvert-extrovert spectrum if they don’t understand the gradations that can exist. As a result, they may be more convinced that they are either introverted or extroverted and that these concepts are innate, unchanging and inflexible. In the process, people lose sight of human complexity, which is “full of personality traits that can contradict each other,” Kaufman says.
In fact, personality is not set in stone. Where we locate ourselves on a dimension such as introversion-extroversion can change over the years, as a review of 152 longitudinal studies found in 2000. Personality traits did become more stable with age but only reached the highest level of consistency after age 50.
Whether one is introverted, extroverted or ambiverted, their best bet is to accentuate the positives of their personality. “If you want to be happy, you should first and foremost accept yourself, as research has shown us,” Kaufman says.
Baier, for example, is happy not to belong to either extreme. At work, he usually has no problem speaking his mind. He grew up with six siblings and didn’t have his own room until he was 11 years old, so he is used to being surrounded by lots of people. Baier still remembers looking for ways to have a little time to himself as a child, however. When things got too busy for him at home, he would go for long walks with the family dog. He is still drawn to the great outdoors when he wants some time to himself. These short breaks are important to Baier. Too many plans and meetings overwhelm him. “Being able to be spontaneous is important to me,” he says.
This article originally appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and was reproduced with permission.