What? How did you get to that conclusion? That’s not what the article says at all? It says Phyllis Blanchard used the (then incorrect) spelling with an O (while also changing the definition of the term to something most people I think would disagree with) in a paper she wrote and nobody knows why. And it spread from there.
I think you’re interpreting “Today, ExtrOvert is the most common spelling of the term in the United States.” to mean it’s spelled with an A elsewhere, but the author even brings up the Oxford Dictionary (UK) that says that the original spelling with an A is rare in general use. I live outside the US and I pretty much exclusively see the O-spelling.
EDIT: Changed from “incorrect” to “then incorrect” to clarify. She wrote her article before extrOvert entered the dictionary, and - according to the author of the article linked earlier in this thread - her article might have been a big contributing factor for it entering the dictionary that was published soon after.
It very clearly states that since 1918 the american spelling has been ‘extrovert’. That has nothing to do with whether the A or O is correct, only that O is more common in American English.
It also says she changed the definition, that’s the nature of language, it evolves. That can be through a colloquialism, a hard change (as this seems to be), or many other reasons.
I am not arguing whether it is correct or not, I am simply saying it is different.
Maybe I’m tired but this comment reads to me as if you’re disagreeing with me when everything you say supports what I said? My objection/question was how you came to the conclusion it’s a US/UK thing. There’s no support for that in the article.
Thanks to Phyllis Blanchard ExtrOversion is the prominent spelling of the word in the United States today.
In her 1918 paper, “A Psycho-Analytic Study of August Comte” she writes:
“In order to understand the marked contract between Comte’s mental attitude during his early years and that of his later life, we must keep in mind Jung’s hypothesis of the two psychological types, the introvert and extrovert, – the thinking type and the feeling type.”
Not only did she change the spelling of the word, but she also changed the definition!
That’s what I’m saying! It does not say anywhere that it’s spelled extrAverted in the UK. If anything it says the exact opposite.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “The original spelling ‘Extravert’ is now rare in general use but is found in technical use in psychology.”
You can say that people who identify as introverts use more concrete language, but there's no reliable way to identify intro/extraversion because it's about as scientific as an internet personality quiz.
Jung's original definition that some people get energy from socializing while others have to expend energy to socialize doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We're social primates and sometimes we like socializing and other times we find it taxing but often it's a little of both.
If you really don't like socializing you may have some degree of social anxiety, and maybe you identify as an introvert. Which is fine of course - most people will understand what you mean.
But I think it's important to remember that we're not talking about a real thing that actually exists in our genes or brains. It's just a vague description of your attitude to socializing.
I can’t say for sure whether or not this particular study used proper testing, but as a whole introversion and extroversion is not pseudoscientific.
Jung wasn’t a good scientist, but he did a lot of studies and came up with a lot of theories, some of which happened to be at least partially correct. Also, you seem to be getting something mixed up because Jung defined introversion as an “attitude-type characterised by orientation in life through subjective psychic contents”, and extraversion as “an attitude-type characterised by concentration of interest on the external object”, whereas the more common energy focused definition is not from Jung at all - at least, as far as I am aware.
The big five personality traits, namely openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism have been shown to be consistent, even cross culturally.
There are limitations to that: like how it’s an empirical observation, that other personality traits exist that aren’t factored into those five, or that it’s possible there are a larger number of smaller subfactors that make up those five traits, but ultimately they are scientific.
In addition to Aezora’s response, extrovert vs introvert being a description of your attitude to socializing is only a colloquial use of the term. I am a shy extrovert. I do not get social energy by being alone, like an introvert does, and I have problems talking with new people and even with friends prefer a back seat in the conversation.
Most people seem to fit into more clear buckets, if you believe the marketing, but that doesn’t make the buckets the definition.
People seem to be downvoting you but you’re absolutely right. Languages are dynamic and evolve all the time. The language “rules” are merely descriptive; they explain how most people use the language, and if you want to make sure everyone can understand you it’s best to follow them.
Even then there’s some wiggle-room. Take the gif/jif pronunciation debate, it was coined as “jif” but the majority of people switched to “gif”. So (depending on the dictionary you own) it will often either list just “gif” as correct, or list both as equally valid pronunciations (which given the sizeable minority for “jif” seems like the correct approach imo). All the gift/giraffe/creator-says-x is just fluff and not actually all that relevant.
Rules definitely help keep a language more consistent! They’re not without use. It also helps to teach language to children and makes established parts of a language stay more consisteny over time. However, pretending there’s a rhyme or reason behind all of them is hard to justify, as well as claiming “x is correct because of rule y” if a majority decides z is correct instead.
It’s a bit hard to take in the present era, when the old rules were maintained by highly literate people like copy editors, and the new rules are made by anyone with a smartphone. I didn’t agree with all the traditional rules, but they have an elegance and consistency that Internet discourse usually lacks.
n = 40, this is junk. they couldn’t even get 100 people for this?
these were all sampled from 1 company in amsterdam. the differences could be explained by company culture, or local culture, or whatever. more work needed.
n=40 isn’t actually bad for generalized conclusions, given a reasonable spread in the results. Your second point is a much stronger argument. The sample is entirely non-representative.
IIRC from stats n=32 is generally considered the minimum to be considered representative for a random sample (and this is not a random sample outside of the company in Amsterdam 🙄).
bps.org.uk
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