A study of vasotocin-producing neurons in birds reveals that birds that live in groups have more of that kind of neuron, and the neurons are more active, compared to birds that live in pairs. The neurons appear to be specialized in their response to situations depending on whether the situation involves positive interactions that are likely to increase affiliation, or negative interactions that are likely to bring about antisocial behavior. What constitutes a positive interaction varies depending on how social a bird is, and thus the activity of a bird’s vasotocin neurons is related to what type of social life the bird has (as a member of a colony, or as a loner with only a mate to keep it company). This article from ScienceDaily gives the details. This type of neuron appears in other animals, including us (although the analogous neurochemical in humans is vasopressin), so the results could tell us something about the neurological underpinnings of the human personality difference between introverts and extroverts.
As an introvert myself, I noticed that the words used to refer to the less social animals were negative (grump, misanthrope). OK, it’s just a press release, but I think it’s missing the point. Each bird is fairly nicely tailored to suit whatever kind of life it leads; I’m assuming there are environmental factors that influence which strategy (living in a colony or living with only a mate) is advantageous for a particular species. The closing sentence talks about possible implications for human behavior, although we don’t yet know how to “turn a misanthrope into a party animal.” For starters, introverts aren’t misanthropes; they just like their human contact in smaller doses than extroverts do. And why would you want to change them? Maybe there’s a role for introverts in the human world just like there’s an ecological niche for the less social birds. I’ll get off my introvert soapbox now.
