07 Apr Princeton researchers discover how loners and introverts will save society
via Fast Company by Arianne Cohen
Loners are not dysfunctional failures of the herd. They save the herd. They are herd heroes.
This is the finding of Princeton researchers who empirically demonstrated that across the animal kingdom, loners—defined as “individuals out of sync with a coordinated majority”—likely serve as evolutionary insurance plans, ensuring species survival. For example, if a pandemic of a coronavirus called, say, COVID-19, hit a species, the introverted shut-ins who stayed alone in their homes until they received vaccines would have a 100% survival rate. Their antisocial tendencies would make them invulnerable to the group threat.
Loners exist across the animal kingdom, such as small herds of mammals that skip group migrations and plants that flower days before or after the rest of the species. They’re everywhere. “Now that we’re starting to look for it, we realize that a whole lot of systems are not perfectly synchronized,” says the study’s coauthor Corina Tarnita, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton. Loner humans are widespread. “We call them misfits or geniuses, contrarians or visionaries, very much depending on how the rest of the society feels about their behavior.”
… happiness can be found in isolation. Happiness need not be tied to extroversion. There are pros and cons to everything but too often the benefits of introversion are overlooked. If you’re one of the quiet ones, believe you can be happy and bring happiness! Keep reading the full & original article HERE