I hear people all the time telling me that as they’ve gotten older, they’ve become more introverted. And when I think about it, the same is true for me. During my high school and college years, it was a normal thing for me to go out every weekend for a night out with my friends. But now, as I am in my late twenties, I enjoy more spending the weekends alone with a good book.
And it seems that I am not alone. Even my friends who were social butterflies have slowed down and they prefer a night in over a night out in a club. In fact, we hardly even see each other.
So, is it true? Do we become more introverted as we get older? The answer is yes, according to psychologists.
A 2004 research, conducted by Harvard psychologists Nancy Snidman and Jerome Kagan who have been studying people first as babies and then as adults, discovered that even those babies who were highly reactive to their environment have grown up to be more calm and cautious adults.
Psychologists call this introversion that comes as we get older an “intrinsic maturation” and it is a term that means that our personalities and our temper get more balanced with age.
In general, people become more agreeable, conscientious, quieter, self-contained, and more emotionally stable. Or in other words, they need less excitement and socializing to be happy.
The psychologists believe that this happens because the first half of our life is to mate, date, meet new people and put ourselves out there, while the second half of our life is making sense of everything that we are. The second half is reserved only for our family and our closest friends.
And this is not a bad thing at all. Introversion is needed when we are growing, healing, and evolving. Moreover, introverts know the beauty and the satisfaction of living a calm and quiet life.
Introverts, do you agree?
