There is a psychiatrist with name Rami Kaminski who has written about what he believes to be a further social personality style, in addition to introverted and extraverted people, which he calls “otroverted”.
Here is an article by him:
Introvert, extravert, otrovert? There’s a new personality type in town
Psychiatrist Rami Kaminski says he has observed a previously unrecognised personality type – the “otrovert”. Here is what he thinks these people can teach us
What is the most salient characteristic of this type, he writes, is that they have neither the ability nor an internal need to belong to larger or abstract groups. They are kinda able to unterstand their rules, even if unspoken, but they do not really belong, he writes, which leads them to be strongly independent persons.
But, as he writes, this does not inhibit them to make meaningful and strong individual connections - just with people, not groups.
Our communal society often conflates belonging with connection. However, while it is true that people who struggle to connect might find it hard to achieve a sense of belonging, it isn’t true that not belonging means no connections at all. In fact, without the noise of popular culture, gossip, family conflicts or political tribes (all disinteresting to otroverts), you are free to focus on deepening bonds with the people you feel genuinely close to.
It also looks like some of these people (assuming that we agree to Kaminski’s typology, which I think might still seriously lack supporting data) do something akin to autistic masking, when trying to fit in “normal” society, and this costs them energy.
There is a questionaire by an institute which he set up to support such people:
https://www.othernessinstitute.com/traits-of-otherness/
(Before you fill out forms there, consider it is on a server in the US).
Myself, to some degree I seem to match this description. Being a physicist, I work in science and IT and there are so many things now which I think about “nah, that’s pure bullshit”. Being it generative AI to generate software architecture or battery-powered passenger planes or planting trees to puportedly offset emissions by plane travel… I could go on.
I also seem to have some autistic traits (I once met somebody at a dance event which whom I had a bit of conservation, and he mentioned he is autistic and thinks I am too). So of course I am curious how these things are related.
It looks like in the list above there is quite some overlap with some properties which seem frequent in people with autism.
For example, could preference for small groups not just be due to the aspect that it is more effort to follow a lot of people at once and the noise level of larger gatherings?
Introvert and extrovert are opposite ends of the same dimension / axis, so this doesn’t make much sense to me at first glance. This seems to be about one’s proclivity to group identity or a need for belonging?
I agree. Extrovert/introvert is supposed to be a simplification of “do you gain energy by being with other people” (rough example: after a stressful day would you rather meet up with a bunch of friends it have a quiet evening at home not talking to anyone?). Otrovert seems to answer the question “how do you build your social net?” (With hand-picked connections or with group belonging). It seems composable with both extroverts and introverts.
Yes, these are thought to be on a continuum or scaled coordinate with a single dimension. Both are essentially defined by that. What Kaminski seems to think in sounds more like a triangle with three corners on a plane, like a color space triangle (like this one).
And of course there are many personality traits which are mostly orthogonal to that. I think what is actually the case can only be answered by a lot of data and careful use of statistical methods such as ANOVA. Psychologists and psychiatrists are not necessarily good at such stuff. And even then, the resulting model might match some people well and still do not justice to a lot of other people.