Today, during an interview (for once, I wasn’t in the hot seat) I learned about ambiverts and ambiversion. The candidate described herself this way, and I was intrigued by both the word and the concept.

It harkened back to my own second-round interview for the job I’m currently occupying. The superintendent asked me, in what he described as a strange question, whether I’d rather be a travel guide or a travel agent. I was intrigued by the question and it got me thinking, in that moment, about how I consider myself vs how I comport myself.

I do very much prize alone time and am comfortable being by myself most of the time. I’m also not likely to put myself in positions where I have to talk in front of groups of people, although I often feel better after having done so (and regret situations where I shy away from the challenge).

And I also thought about all of the times I’ve taken parents and students around to see a school they are curious about or reluctant to send their child, and I always heartily agreed to provide tours to parents. I like these situations because I often get a chance to talk about what I know, and also to exercise a little bit of persuasion.

And when I worked at the Camden County Educational Services Commission, I often found myself in a sales mode, trying to persuade customers to use our services. I was surprised by how much I got into this role, considering how little I every wanted to be in a sales position. I always considered it something I wasn’t suited to or interested in.

Anyway, ambiversion: The term was coined by Edmund Conklin, a psychologist, encompassing both extraversion and introversion. It’s not interesting, from a research perspective, because it’s normal:

In other words, ambiverts are simply healthy people, neither too extroverted nor too introverted. Some have argued that because of Conklin’s attempt to define the "normal," he’s the progenitor of positive psychology—remember that what was popular at the genesis of much psychology was defining what was going wrong in someone’s mind, not right.

Hans Eysenck [considered ambiversion](Extroversion-Ambiversion-Introversion – Arlene R Taylor PhD, Realizations Inc (arlenetaylor.org)) to account for the vast majority of people’s personality traits:

68% to 70% are estimated to fall in the middle of the continuum and are moderately alert when fully awake (Ambiverts). These individuals tend to function best with moderate or average levels of stimulation.

I like these seemingly obvious conclusions to our otherwise all-or-nothing orientation towards personality traits. Of course most people aren’t always extraverted or introverted. We’re both, depending upon the situation. I have often thought that, were we as a culture and a society less didactic about gender roles, young people would be less likely to declare a gender orientation and just be themselves. As a male brought up in a culture that celebrates extreme versions of masculinity, I don’t find the notion of switching identities personally alluring, but I have often longed for a more tolerant world.

If we can exist comfortably-normally-in between the two extremes of introversion and extraversion, we can surely understand and accept others, and ourselves, as living in between other polar opposites.