You’ve Heard of Introverts and Extroverts, But Maybe You’re an Otrovert Instead 

If you want to understand yourself better, there is no shortage of systems, beliefs and tests out there offering help, from astrology, to corporate favorite Myers Briggs, to scientists’ preferred framework, the Big 5. 

But if you’ve tried these and still feel like nothing quite captures your inner reality, then I have intriguing news for you. There’s a hot new personality type in town that just might fit. Maybe you’re an otrovert. 

What’s an otrovert? 

The term was coined by respected Mount Sinai psychiatrist Rami Kaminski in his book The Gift of Not Belonging. The title should give you a clue as to what it means. An introvert is someone who is drained by other people and gets their energy by turning inward. An extrovert draws their energy from other people. (And an ambivert is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between the two.) 

But an otrovert isn’t defined by their relationships with others at all. “Otroverts is the term I use for those who don’t feel the obligation to merge their identities with others,” Kaminski explained in New Scientist. They’re not shy or antisocial. They just feel no need to tie their identity to groups or labels. 

These are the anti-joiners. Those that get no buzz from being part of a team or collective. To those with a more social orientation that might sound sad. Isn’t it lonely always being on the outside looking in? But otroverts who accept themselves (and avoid being browbeaten for their independent ways) aren’t troubled by their self-sufficiency, according to Kaminski.

Instead, they’re empowered by it. “When you don’t belong to any group, you aren’t subject to the group’s implicit rules or swayed by its influence. This confers two beneficial traits: originality and emotional independence,” he writes. “Being outside the hive, so to speak, allows you to think and create freely: to come up with unique ideas, untainted by groupthink or by what has come before.”

The joy of finding a personality label that fits 

That, I’m not going to lie, sounds pretty seductive to me. Kaminski kicks off his article by explaining his lack of enthusiasm for the Boy Scouts as a child. “While the other kids seemed awed by this initiation,” he recalls of his first scouting pledge, “I felt nothing.” 

I too found the Brownies baffling as a kid. And I vividly recall a camp counselor informing me I was “badly socialized” because I didn’t want to play capture the flag (or any other team activity). He was probably right, but I didn’t feel any inclination to change. To this day I rigorously avoid anything requiring membership meetings or a uniform. 

“Otroverts will not join. It’s not in them. They tend to shy away from organized religion, political tribes, or any cause that demands allegiance, because they don’t understand the logic of sacrificing a differentiated mind just to conform to the hive,” writes therapist (and self described otrovert) Jennifer Chase Finch of Medium. 

Yup, that’s me. 

The advantages of being an otrovert 

Which is why I should also be happy to hear from Kaminski that I am in good company. Frida Kahlo and Albert Einstein were likely otroverts, he asserts. And it’s certainly reassuring to hear from Chase Finch that otroverts make “remarkable leaders and powerful keynote speakers, great independent thinkers, and creative savants.” 

But to be honest, while my kneejerk reaction is to see myself in this new label and feel validated. There are also reasons to remain skeptical.  

First and foremost, there is something inherently contradictory in finding comfort in a socially constructed label that describes people who reject socially constructed labels. There is also the complication that while I may have zero interest in clubs and committees, I am deeply committed to more intimate forms of belonging, like family and friends. 

Even more fundamental though is the concern that any personality label, not just the idea of “otroverts,” can be a limiting mirage. 

The Barnum Effect and why you should be wary of personality tests 

Way back in the 1940s psychologist Bertram Forer demonstrated that people will almost always see themselves in the results of personality tests. If the test says something bland like “you often doubt you did the right thing,” most people agree the test describes them well. Forer called this tendency — which explains how horoscopes work — the Barnum Effect after the famed circus impresario P.T. Barnum. 

A recent study reported that 85 percent of students found a totally fake personality test convincing, demonstrating the Barnum Effect is still going strong some 80 years later. 

Our eagerness to buy into them is one reason to be suspicious of personality labels. So is the fact that research also shows our personalities can shift dramatically over time. One study found that a person’s personality at 14 bears basically no resemblance to their personality at 75. Maybe there’s hope for me to become a joiner after all. 

As psychologists Kelvin Wong and Wenting Chen warn on The Conversation, “If you pigeonhole yourself into a rigid personality type, you run the danger of limiting yourself to the boundaries of this label. You may even use the label to excuse your own or others’ problematic behaviors.”

Don’t limit yourself with the otrovert label

What’s the bottom line for entrepreneurs? If you see yourself in the otrovert label and it helps you feel more comfortable in your own skin and more confident in deploying your personal strengths, then add it to your vocabulary. If tools work, use them. 

But keep in mind that the warm, fuzzy feeling we get from psychological labels tends to blind us to how imprecise and broadly applicable they are. There is also the danger of using a label as an excuse to avoid personal growth or facing out limitations. 

Now that I know the word, I can’t help but see myself as an otrovert. But I still have obligations as a professional, citizen, and member of my local community to participate in groups and the future we’re all building together. If that means joining an agonizing PTA meeting or networking group or two, I should probably get over myself and my comfy labels and do it.