Not an extrovert or introvert? There’s a word for that.

Over the years, when people have asked if I’m an introvert or an extrovert, I haven’t known what to say because I don’t identify fully with either personality type. It turns out I’m hardly alone. It’s true, I’m often reflective and introspective, that I prefer to hang out with people one-on-one or in small groups, and that I often crave time alone to recharge—all of which are characteristics of introverts. But I can also be outgoing and chatty at parties, as well as assertive and action-oriented in my professional life, qualities that are associated with extraversion.

When it comes to personality types, “it’s a continuum that runs from introversion to extraversion,” says Dan P. McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University and coauthor with William Dunlop of The Person: A New Introduction to Personality Psychology. “It’s sort of a bell-shaped curve with most of us finding ourselves placed toward the middle.”

In fact, two lesser-known personality types exist. Ambiverts, proposed by American psychologist Edward S. Conklin in 1923, have a mix of introverted and extroverted traits; omniverts fluctuate between introverted and extroverted behavior.

“The language is a pop culture adjustment,” says Luke Smillie, a professor of psychology in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “The extrovert-introvert categories are not very nuanced so we’ve come up with these other categories for the middle ground of psychological characteristics.”

While the concept of ambiverts has been studied and appears in the psychological literature, the term omnivert seems to be a pop-psychology construct. And some experts are skeptical about its validity.

“In my experience, it doesn’t exist—[I don’t believe] that someone would oscillate between these two extremes,” says Richard Robins, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. “It's clearly possible for someone to act very extroverted in one specific situation and very introverted in another specific situation. What I don't think is possible is for someone to be in a hundred different situations and always act either extremely extroverted or extremely introverted in all of them, and never somewhere in the middle.”

Controversial concepts

Over the years, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has become a popular personality test throughout the world and it’s widely used in the workplace and educational settings. It classifies people into various types based on their scores on trait dimensions including extraversion vs. introversion, feeling vs. thinking, sensing vs. intuiting, and perceiving vs. judging. Since it was first published in 1975, the MBTI has popularized the concept of “personality types,” though Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was the one who introduced the terms extraversion and introversion into psychology in the early 1900s.

Part of the enduring appeal: “When you get a type score, you think there are other people like you out there—it makes you feel like you’re part of a team,” says McAdams. At the same time, the blend of traits you supposedly have can also make you feel unique or different from other people.

“People are desperate to understand themselves,” says Scott Barry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist at Columbia University in New York and founder of The Center for Human Potential. “The more you can tell people who they are, the more it gives them a sense of certainty in an uncertain world.”

But here’s a surprise: There’s no scientific validity to the Myers-Briggs test, McAdams says. “Research in personality psychology consistently shows that psychological variation does not follow that kind of either/or logic.” Instead, dimensions like extraversion/introversion exist on a continuum and people reside on different points along it, adds McAdams who views introversion and extraversion as traits, not personality types.

“Since the 1980s, [scientific] evidence began to pile up that people differ by degree,” Smillie says. Nevertheless, this typology continues to appeal to many people. “We gravitate toward these categorical ways of thinking because they simplify the very complex world,” he adds.

The Myers-Briggs Company doesn’t acknowledge the existence of ambiverts. And yet some personality psychologists do.

“These traits [of introversion and extraversion] exist on a continuum and most people are in the middle so the term ambivert is useful,” says John Zelenski, a professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa.“We don’t always behave the same way across different situations. Most people are flexible in this way. Being rigid is often a sign of mental illness.”

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While these traits have a genetic predisposition, they can change over time, especially as people get older, McAdams says. “It’s both nature and nurture but nature gets it going.”

The perils of personality labels

While each of these personality traits has its strengths and drawbacks, as well as idiosyncrasies, they’re not necessarily what people think. Research suggests, for example, that extroverts and ambiverts tend to be better at mood regulation than introverts are. Another study found that while introverts and extroverts both prefer talking to texting, ambiverts prefer texting. Moreover, a series of studies published in a 2023 issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that people consistently judge more extroverted people to be worse listeners than those who are less extroverted.

But these traits have nuances that are often overlooked, and one of the risks of relying on these categories is that it’s easy to misinterpret someone’s behavior. “Introversion is often miscategorized as aloofness or low levels of agreeableness—it’s really a low motivation to socially engage,” Smillie says. Similarly, “extroverts are often misperceived as more competent because they’re more talkative and seem to have more to say on a topic.”

Surprisingly, the core element of extraversion isn’t sociability per se but reward-seeking behavior, research has found. People who score high in extraversion are driven to engage in social interactions to gain social status or social attention, Kaufman notes. Extraversion seems to be fueled by the release of dopamine in the reward circuits of the brain, he explains, which promotes more social exploration and engagement. By contrast, introverts don’t get as strong a reward effect from these social experiences, Smillie says.

Another misperception is that people who are highly extroverted are naturally socially gifted. Studies have found that extroverted people are better at building rapport with other people but it’s because they mimic those they’re interacting with more than introverted people do.

“Sometimes extraversion gets equated with social skillfulness—we found that extroverts engage in more behavioral mimicry without realizing it,” says Korrina Duffy, a research scientist at the University of Colorado Anshutz Medical Campus.

Meanwhile, while extroverts were long believed to be ideal leaders in business, newer research has shown that other personality types bring unique strengths to the table. A study in a 2023 issue of Frontiers in Psychology found that extraversion and its associated facets of assertiveness and sociability did not directly relate to the effectiveness of workplace leaders’ behavior in responding to various challenges. What did make a difference, in the eyes of employees, were leaders’ ability to generate intellectual stimulation and proactivity from their colleagues, factors that might be associated with more introverted personalities, as the researchers note.

“People assume that people in positions of power are extroverts,” says Robins. But that’s not always true. In fact, he adds, “extraversion is less related to successful life outcomes than other adaptive traits like conscientiousness.”

Indeed, Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, found in a study that ambiverts “achieve greater sales productivity than extraverts or introverts do,” largely because “they naturally engage in a flexible pattern of talking and listening.” He calls this “the ambivert advantage.”

Discovering common ground

In some ways people with these different personality traits have a fair amount in common. For example, even people who are highly extroverted get tired from socializing, research has found; it may just take them longer to feel depleted.

“All of us can identify with situations that bring out our wild sides and others where we want to curl up in a ball and be alone,” says Kaufman. “It’s human nature to have introverted and extroverted capacities within us.”

Sometimes, forcing yourself to get out of your comfort zone can bring psychological perks. Research by Zelenski and colleagues found that when people who are naturally introverted intentionally acted more extroverted, their moods improved.

“People who identify as introverted experience lots of positive emotions when they behave in an extroverted fashion,” Zelenski says. “Most of them also report feeling very authentic, like they’re expressing their true self.”

Regardless of your natural personality inclinations, cultivating a sense of flexibility and adaptability in your behavior—being able to dial up or down certain qualities to meet the demands of different situations, Smillie says—may be the optimal way to go through life.