Ambiversion: A Distinct Trait That Can Benefit Organizations

Abstract

Ambiversion is a personality trait in which an individual scores in the middle of the extraversion and continuum and possesses traits making them distinct from extreme extraverts or introverts.  While the trait has received little attention for industrial and organizational psychological research, there is support for the notion that ambiversion may be a more effective trait for occupations such as management and sales position which are generally associated with extraverts.  Past studies have identified that the ambiversion trait is more than simply a milder version of extreme extraversion and introversion, and it has even been found that ambiverts display different neural activity when performing certain tasks.  Some traits such as speed of response to a new stimuli that are traditionally assumed to be emblematic of extraverts has been found to have no connection with this personality trait.  Additionally, several studies have indicated that despite being thought of as universally positive for performing well in an organization, there is in fact a certain point in which too much extraversion can lead to poor job performance, even for occupations such as sales as well as positions requiring high enterprising demands.  These findings support the notion that employers would benefit from modifying their recruitment practices to evaluate the interviewee’s level of ambiversion when interviewing for positions that are traditionally associated with extreme extraversion.  Additionally, organizations should broaden their consideration of leadership positions to include ambiverts.  Firms must be cautious of hiring extreme extraverts and they should be mindful of not being overly swayed by the persuasive abilities possessed by candidates.  Organizations should also be aware that a personality trait such as ambiversion is not always the best fit for a company, and the firm must therefore take the characteristics of the firm into account and not hire based solely on this trait possessed by the candidate.  Finally, due to the nascent awareness of ambiversion’s usefulness to organizations, firms would benefit from investing in more research on the ambiversion personality trait.  Specifically, it would useful to research, how ambiversion correlates differently depending on different work environments, whether the trait offers advantages for traditionally “introverted occupations,” as well as whether certain sub traits of extraversion are more advantageous for an ambivert to possess.

Ambiversion: A Distinct Trait That Can Benefit Organizations

The 5-Factor Model or Big 5 is one of the oldest and most well known taxonomies utilized to characterize an individual’s personality based upon the overarching traits, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.  This taxonomy of personality was developed through the use of factor analysis, which found that after numerous statistical tests that the five traits of the model consist of sub traits that do not correlate with the other four traits (Engler, 2009).  Extraversion is a dimension of the Big Five that measures the degree with which an individual is considered sociable, assertive, talkative, and active (Barrick & Mount, 1991).  In other words, if an individual scores high on this dimension they would be labeled an extravert and would possess sub traits such as being sociable and assertive while someone scoring low would be an introvert and would instead be considered less talkative and active according to the Big Five framework. 

Past studies, such as the study conducted by Barrick and Mount have investigated whether the trait of extraversion is beneficial for occupational success in different organizations.  After analyzing if there exists a relationship between the Big 5 dimensions and different job performance criteria for various occupational groups, the Barrick and Mount study found that extraversion was positively correlated for manager and sales occupational groups for all aspects of job performance criteria (Barrick & Mount, 1991).  Studies such as these have influenced organizations’ hiring practices, and as a result, recruiters often place a large emphasis on the extraversion personality dimension.  However, it is often overlooked that the extraversion measure is a score along a continuum, and that most people fall somewhere in the middle of this scale rather than at the extremes (Grant, 2013).  Someone scoring on the middle of the extraversion continuum is identified as a unique personality trait known as ambiversion.  For this paper I will analyze several research studies that were conducted on the ambiversion trait as well as studies demonstrating that extreme extraversion can have disadvantages in organizations and the trait of ambiversion is in fact a stronger predictor of success in many situations.  Finally, I will draw upon these studies and propose the ways in which organizations can better understand the trait of ambiversion and how this can benefit organizations, specifically for roles strongly associated with extraversion, such as occupations relating to sales as well as leadership positions.

 

Ambiverts are defined as people who are neither introverted nor extraverted, but are in the middle of the continuum between the two extremes (Georgiev, Christov, & Philipova, 2014).  There is a common belief that people who score in the middle on extraversion are characterized as simply milder versions of the extremes, meaning that there is nothing unique or discernible about ambiverts other than possessing less of the sociable or assertive traits related to extraversion.  A study in 1979 conducted by Donald Cohen and James Schmidt was designed with the intention of challenging this belief about individuals scoring in the middle of the extraversion continuum.  Cohen and Schmidt hypothesized that you can divide individuals scoring in the middle of the extraversion continuum into three groups, indifferent, mixed, and ambiverted types (Cohen & Schmidt, 1979).  The authors conceptualized that the indifferent and mixed types were composed of individuals who were unsure or ambivalent about whether they were more at ease during extraverted or introverted activities, but the ambiverted type fell in the middle of the continuum due to a genuine commitment to midrange responses (Cohen & Schmidt, 1979). 

 

The study entailed having 100 participants initially complete the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (or EPQ), which is a type of assessment devised by Hans and Sybil Eysenck in order to determine an individual’s degree of extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism (Engler, 2009).  This allowed the authors of the study to determine whether the participant was a midrange scorer on the extraversion continuum.  The authors’ criteria for a midrange responder was any participant who scored within one standard deviation of the mean on the IE scale of the EPQ, which ended up constituting a sample of 69 participants (Cohen & Schmidt, 1979).  The participants of the study then took an Activity Preference Scale measure, which was designed by the experimenters to assess how frequently a certain activity was true for the participant as well as how upset they would be if they had to change performing a particular activity in their life (Cohen & Schmidt, 1979).  This scale was utilized for the purpose of seeing if the midrange extraversion responders differed in terms of their ambivalence towards being in the midrange versus being more committed to being in the middle in terms of extraverted situations. 

 

After performing t-tests, the overall finding was that the mixed type differed significantly in terms of neuroticism from the designated ambiverted type, as was determined by the EPQ (Cohen & Schmidt, 1979). Additionally, the authors determined that there were only two significantly different groups of midrange scorers, those who were ambivalent about their preference towards either introverted or extraverted activities who were generally more neurotic (mixed type) and those who were more committed to the midrange and were comfortable with activities that were sometimes extraverted and sometimes more introverted (ambiverted type) (Cohen & Schmidt, 1979).  Thus this early study established that the ambiverted type was something more distinct than just a milder version of extraversion, and this misconception could be attributed to some people being the mixed type, which can be characterized as milder versions of extraverts.

 

More currently, a study was conducted that investigated whether ambiverts possess distinct physiological characteristics which could further distinguish this personality trait from extreme extraversion or introversion.  The study began by utilizing an electroencephalogram in order to monitor the event-related potential, which is the measured brain response due to specific sensory, cognitive, or motor event, as the volunteers completed four auditory mental and sensorimotor task conditions (Georgiev, Christov, & Philipova, 2014).  After completing these tasks, the experimenters sought to determine the level of extraversion possessed by the volunteers.  Much like the previous study, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire was once again distributed to participants, and designated whether the individuals were part of the introverted, extraverted, or ambiverted group of the study (Georgiev et al., 2014).  After averaging the event-related potentials for each person and for each of the tasks, a statistical analysis was performed to assess any significant differences between the extraverted, introverted, and ambiverted groups.  It was discovered that the ambiverted group differed significantly from the extraverted and introverted group in terms of N1 and P3 amplitudes of the event-related potential, which means that ambiverts are prone to display increased selective attention when exposed to auditory stimuli (Georgiev et al., 2014).  The primary takeaway from the study is that on a physiological level, ambiversion is qualitatively different from extraversion and introversion and therefore it is important to evaluate the trait in a way that treats it as more than a lesser version of extraversion.

 

Despite there being evidence of ambiverted individuals demonstrating unique personality traits from extraverted people, the bias still remains in Western culture that extraverts are more well-suited to fast paced environments such as sales related occupations.  This perceived strength is often attributed to the fact that extraverted people are better able to think spontaneously and act quickly in response to a dire situation.  Studies in the past have assessed this sub trait of extraverts and it has been believed that when responding to a subsequent stimulus, the length of time it takes to respond to this second stimulus is shorter for extraverted individuals in comparison with introverts (Brebner, 1997).  This period of time, referred to as a psychological refractory period, is believed to be shorter for extraverts due to these individuals having a strong tendency to organize responses instead of analyzing the stimulus information, which is more characteristic of introverts. 

 

A study conducted at the University of Bern sought to investigate whether the personality trait of extraversion has a significant effect on the length of the psychological refractory period when individuals complete tasks consecutively (Indermühle, Troche, & Rammsayer, 2011).  The study recruited 80 undergraduate students who completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire in order to determine the individual’s level of extraversion (Indermühle et al., 2011).  The participants of the study then completed an auditory two choice task as well as a visual two-choice task in order to assess how quickly the individual is able to complete a subsequent task, which is interpreted as the length of the psychological refractory period (Indermuühle et al., 2011).  The statistical analysis revealed that there was no significant correlation between the participant’s level of extraversion and the length of their respective psychological refractory period (Indermühle et al., 2011).  This study indicates that despite there being a bias by many employers that extraverts are better suited to environments in which they must act quickly when encountering a new stimulus, as is typical of many sales related positions, there is in reality no correlation with the extraversion personality dimension and this ability to act quickly.  This means that theoretically, some introverts could have shorter psychological refractory periods than some extremely extraverted individuals.

 

One of the few studies that directly compared ambiversion with extraversion in terms of job performance was done during Adam Grant’s study in which he hypothesized that the relationship between extraversion and sales performance is curvilinear rather than linear (Grant, 2013).  This means that as the degree of extraversion an individual possesses on the continuum increases and approaches the extreme end, success with a sales related occupation will begin to decrease after initially increasing. The author tested the relationship of extraversion on performance in sales positions through a study of 340 outbound-call-center representatives, in which each volunteer completed the 20-item Big Five personality measure in order to determine the participant’s level of extraversion (Grant, 2013).  The revenue accumulated through the participant’s sales performance for the last three months was also tracked from week to week and a hierarchical regression analysis was performed to assess the relationship between extraversion and sales performance (Grant, 2013).  The results of the analysis found that there was indeed a positive correlation between extraversion and the amount of revenue earned through the individual’s sales performance, however after the degree of extraversion surpassed a certain level, the amount of revenue began to decrease (Grant, 2013). 

 

Grant believes that this level of extraversion is exemplified by ambiverts, and that ambiverted individuals’ ability to engage in a flexible pattern of talking and listening is what allows them to be better at persuading others and thus close the sale when compared to extreme introverts or extraverts (Grant, 2013).  Additionally, Grant further contends that extreme extraversion has an adverse effect on sales success due to the high levels of assertiveness and enthusiasm associated with extraverted individuals (Grant, 2013).  Specifically, Grant states that extreme extraverts may focus too heavily on their own perspective and not focus enough on the perspective of the prospective customer (Grant, 2013).  Additionally, extremely extraverted salespeople may assert the value of the product or service they are selling in an overly enthusiastic and confident manner, which could lead to the customer interpreting this confidence as the person trying to influence them, thus preventing a sale from occurring (Grant, 2013).  Grant’s study alludes to the darker side of extraversion and the fact that too much of this trait is not always beneficial and can in fact lead to problems, even for jobs that are strongly linked with that trait.

 

            The concept of an overabundance of extraversion acting as a liability rather than a strength was further investigated in a study, but in the context of enterprising job performance, which is defined as an employee’s ability to lead others in goal attainment, verbally persuade, and handle ambiguity (Blickle et al., 2015).  The study focused on the sub trait of extraversion, known as social potency, as this tendency to be decisive and persuasive is generally thought to be essential to succeeding in enterprising occupations.  Based upon the description of enterprising job performance and social potency, it should be clear that possessing this skill is essential for an employee to occupy a leadership position, as the ability to lead others and verbally persuade others is an essential trait for managing a team.

 

Much like Grant on the previous study, the authors of this study proposed a similar curvilinear relationship with extraversion and job success, however they were now comparing extraversion with enterprising job performance and believed this would become negative over time with too much extraversion (Blickle et al., 2015).  The study was conducted by first emailing employees from a variety of occupations, which would allow the employee to take an online questionnaire to assess their levels of extraversion as well as the enterprising demands of their job.  After completing this questionnaire, employees were asked to provide up to five other individuals from their work environment, who they felt would be able to evaluate the participant’s enterprising job performance.  These individuals were then emailed with a questionnaire designed to assess their opinion of their colleague’s enterprising job performance.  Essentially, the variables “social potency” and “enterprising job demands” were gathered through the questionnaires filled out by the participants themselves, while the “enterprising job performance” variable was calculated through the surveys completed by the designated “other raters” who have experience working with the participant.  The jobs held by participants were then analyzed through Holland’s RIASEC-model in order to determine what type of job the individual held (Blickle et al., 2015).  This confirmed that the study assessed many different types of occupations and not just sales positions as Grant’s previous study did.  In other words, this allowed the experimenters to examine the enterprising job demands of a wide variety of occupations rather than solely occupations where they would only be utilizing enterprising job demands.

After plotting the quadratic interaction of these variables, the results indicated that there was initially a positive relationship between social potency and enterprising job performance, however after surpassing the medium level of social potency it began to have a negative impact on the enterprising job performance variable (Blickle et al., 2015).  It should be noted that this curvilinear relationship was only present for participants with jobs that were designated as having high enterprising job demands.  For participants with jobs that had low enterprising job demands it was discovered that the more social potency the individual possessed the better their job performance was (Blickle et al., 2015).  Based upon these results, the authors of this study contend that too high of a degree of social potency could be maladaptive for an employee as the individual’s need to be in charge combined with their ability to persuade others could lead to the employee occupying a leadership position that is beyond their capability and thus they will not perform well (Blickle et al., 2015).

 

Based upon these findings one recommendation is that employers should modify their recruitment practices for positions that are typically associated with extreme extraversion.  As the study on sales performance indicated, optimal revenue from sales is more likely to be achieved by ambiverts rather than by extreme extraverts (Grant, 2013).  When interviewing an individual, organizations should administer assessments similar to the EPQ so as to gauge where the individual scores on the extraversion continuum.  Additionally, the assessment utilized should also pinpoint whether the potential employee is the indifferent type or a true ambiverted type as the 1979 study believed was an important distinction (Cohen & Schmidt, 1979).  This distinction is important for the organization as the indifferent type showed a stronger association with neuroticism, which may be detrimental in a sales environment, as increased susceptibility to anxiety could lead the individual to having a worse sales performance than was projected by the Grant study.  It should also be noted that the Grant study did not make this distinction between the indifferent and the ambivalent types of midrange extraversion scorers, which means that a follow up study funded by an organization could be useful so as to determine if the level of ambivalence towards being in the middle of the extraversion continuum is correlated with job performance in a sales related position.

 

Additionally, firms interviewing for sales position roles should not be quick to dismiss interviewees who seem more introverted during the interview process, as they may in fact be ambiverted.  As was stated during the Georgiev study, ambiverts combine qualities of extreme extraversion and introversion, which means that in certain situations the individual may manifest introverted behavior and in other cases they may seem more extraverted (Georgiev et al., 2014).  Additionally, the bias towards extraversion for sales positions is potentially unfounded as the study on the psychological refractory period discovered that the ability to quickly respond to a new stimulus is not correlated with the extraversion personality trait (Indermühle, 2011).  In other words, extremely introverted individuals are just as likely as extravert to be able to quickly attend to a new stimulus in a fact-paced environment.  These findings reinforce the notion that a better course of action for recruiters would be to utilize a modified version of the EPQ and to contextualize the questions so they relate to the particular sales position and are able to assess certain traits, such as the length of the individual’s psychological refractory period, as the basis for hiring the prospective employee. 

 

It is also recommended that organizations broaden their consideration of leadership positions to include ambiverts, and become cautious of hiring individuals who are overly extraverted.  As is supported by the Bickle study, it is important for organizations to not be swayed by how persuasive the individual is, as it was found that overly extraverted people often have a tendency to acquire positions that they are not qualified for.  In other words, the strong desire to lead combined with the ability to persuade others that is present in many extreme extraverts can lead to interviewees acquiring positions they are not qualified for, which can lead to a poor managerial performance.  In order to avoid this mismatch, it is important for interviewers to be reliant on objective personality assessments and not give their persuasive skills too much weight during the consideration process.    

 

It is also important that organizations remember that a personality trait like ambiversion is not the best fit for all organizations.  It is crucial that the characteristics of the firm be taken into account and the impact this may have for individuals vying for a leadership position at a particular firm.  An example of this can be seen from the Blickle study and how jobs that had high enterprising demands (like project managers) and low enterprising demands (such as a leadership position in an engineering occupation) demonstrated different trends in regards to whether extraversion had an adverse effect on enterprising job performance (Blickle et al., 2015).  Based on the findings of this study, recruiters interviewing for a firm that is low on enterprising demands should not be cautious of extreme extraversion as it was found that there were no drawbacks for individuals with this personality trait being placed in leadership positions, however if the job had higher enterprising demands, an ambivert might be preferable based on Blickle’s findings.  In other words, recruiters must be mindful that certain types of leaders will do better in certain situations, thus sometimes ambiversion, introversion, or extraversion could be an ideal trait of the prospective leader depending on the particular circumstances occurring at the firm. 

 

            Finally, it is recommended that firms invest in conducting more research on the ambiversion personality trait and how it may correlate differently depending on if the trait is present in different work environments.  While there is no doubt that ambiversion has been understudied as a personality trait, especially in relation to organizational behavior, the existing research offers strong support that it is a distinct trait from extreme extraversion and introversion and it would be worthwhile for organizations to investigate it further.  It would be interesting to explore what the relationship is between ambiversion and performance for occupations typically associated with extreme introversion.  It is possible that, as with extraverted professions, the blend of introverted and extraverted tendencies inherent of ambiverts may be beneficial to introverted professions.  Additionally, it would be of interest for organizations to study whether certain sub traits of extraversion and introversion, such as social potency or ambition, are more advantageous for an ambivert to possess.  For example, it is possible that individuals possessing the more introverted sub trait of being prone to listen and assess stimuli combined with the extraverted sub trait of being uninhibited during group meetings may be a stronger candidate for many leadership roles in comparison with another ambiverted individual who instead is more eager to provide responses rather than listen to others, but who feels anxious during group meetings and does not state their opinion as confidently as a result.  This research would be extremely beneficial to recruiting firms as the majority of people fall within the middle of the extraversion continuum, so this research could reveal that there are in fact more strong candidates for positions they are seeking to fill than they initially thought.

 

References

Barrick, M.R. & Mount, M.K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance. Personnel Psychology, 44, 1-26.

 

Blickle, G., Meurs, J. A., Wihler, A., Ewen, C., Merkl, R., & Missfeld, T. (2015). Extraversion and job performance: How context relevance and bandwidth specificity create a non-linear, positive, and asymptotic relationship. Journal of Vocational Behavior 87, 80-88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2014.12.009

 

Brebner, J. (1997). Extraversion and the psychological refractory period. Personality and Individual Differences 25, 543-551.

 

Cohen, D. & Schmidt, J. P. (1979). Ambiversion: Characteristics of Midrange Responders on the Introversion-Extraversion Continuum. Journal of Personality Assessment, 43, 5.

 

Engler, B. (2009). Personality Theories. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.

 

Georgiev, S. Y., Christov, C. V., & Philipova, D. T. (2014). Ambiversion as independent personality characteristic. Avtivitas Nervosa Superior Rediviva Volume 56 (3-4): 65-72.

 

Grant, A. M. (2013). Rethinking the Extraverted Sales Ideal: The Ambivert Advantage. Psychological Science 24(6) 1024-1030. doi:10.1177/0956797612463706

 

Indermühle, R., Troche, S. J., & Rammsayer, T. H. (2011). Personality and the Psychological Refractory Period: No Evidence for an Extraversion- or Intelligence-Related Effect.Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science Vol. 43, No. 3

Previous
Previous

Online Endorsements: A Reflection of the Emerging Authentic Self, or a Maladaptive Façade?