Introverts have greater social analytics skills, says study

Social psychology can be explained as the study of interaction between human beings, especially in social groups and situations, that is, it studies how an individual's feelings, behaviors or thoughts are influenced by the environment in which he or she belongs or belongs. time.

With the intention of analyzing this type of interaction, a study was done at Yale University, which concluded that introverts are very good at evaluating certain social situations, predicting the behavior of individuals even without any training in psychology. Social.

The two psychologists responsible for the study “Social Psychological Ability and its Correlations, ” Anton Gollwitzer and John Bargh, said that, according to the study's result, introverts have a better social analytical capacity compared to extroverts because they spend more time. time observing the environment than interacting.

These people have less motivational addictions, so they analyze situations more coldly and, therefore, are more successful both in the test analyzes and in their own daily lives. It would be the classic case of the sad but wise person, Gollwitzer explained to Yale News.

How the study was done

The study was divided into six steps. In the first, scientists have made sure that social psychological ability is consistent. For this, they applied tests over a period of two weeks, and during that time the participants confirmed the consistency, presenting the same number of correct answers. In this phase, some people already showed more ability to analyze social situations than others.

The second stage was a repetition of the first, but now correlating the results with the characteristics of each participant. As a result, they found that people who could easily solve problems that involved decision making, interest in discussing complex or introverted ideas with a propensity for melancholy, had better skills in predicting the social behavior of other individuals.

According to psychologists, this indicates that more analytical rather than intuitive thinking contributes much more to this kind of analysis.

After the third and fourth stages, which only served to validate the second, fifth, and sixth, they compared the skills of introverted people to those who tend to use intuition to predict social behavior. Again, introverts were more successful; Moreover, it was found that the use of these skills happens not only in laboratory tests, but also in the participants' real life.

Conclusion

According to the researchers, previously ideas about social phenomena were obtained only empirically, that is, by studying each case in isolation. With this study, however, it has been proved that some people can accurately analyze social behaviors without any training and can use these skills in a beneficial way to society.

Psychologists point out that someone with advanced social psychology skills could anticipate mass panic attacks, political movements, and even cultural and social changes. According to Gollwitzer, perhaps these skills are exactly what is lacking in government names or positions of power today.