While reading through posts in TRP and the Mansophere, I've noticed that a lot of guys seem to think your outgoingness is directly related to how much self-confidence you have. If you've got a lot of confidence, you're going to be an extrovert. If you have low confidence, you're going to be an introvert. This has always struck me as a little strange, so I'm going to dispute the notion that confidence is tied to whether you're an introvert or an extrovert.

First of all, let's look at the definitions of the two words. An introvert is a person is a person who looks inward. His own thoughts and emotions interest him more than what's going on around him. This doesn't mean that he's incapable of paying attention to what's going on around him, it just means that most of the time his inner world is more stimulating to him.

An extrovert, on the other hand, is focused on the world around him. He's driven by a desire to know what's going on physically and socially in his immediate environment. He doesn't like the feeling of not knowing what's going on around him, so he engages strangers in conversation and asks a lot of questions.

Neither of these personality types are related to how much confidence you have. The "strong, silent type" man is an example of an introvert who has high confidence. And plenty of extroverts are talkative and want to entertain people because they seek validation from others, a very common sign of low confidence. A lot of stand-up comedians are deeply insecure about themselves so they use making people laugh as a way of finding acceptance.

Now here's a couple of real-life examples of what I'm talking about from the world's first heavy metal band: Black Sabbath. Specifically, I'm going to talk about guitarist Tony Iommi and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne.

Black Sabbath was founded in 1968 by Tony Iommi. Despite the fact that Tony is a known introvert, he is a very driven and ambitious person. He founded the band, he created the riffs and song structures, and he made all the important decisions regarding the band. He was a very authoritarian person and all of the other band members were intimidated by him. He was the undisputed leader of the group.

Now we look at Ozzy Osbourne, who did vocals and wrote the lyrics for the songs. Ozzy has suffered from depression and anxiety his entire life. When he was a kid going to school, he was the class clown because he desperately wanted people to like him. When he joined Black Sabbath, he continued this by being the prankster in the group. Still, his desire to entertain (and his lifelong struggles with drugs and alcohol) was his way of coping with his insecurities and self-esteem. This is reflected in his lyrics as well: the song "Iron Man" is frightening on the surface, but it's a song about a character who is sympathetic and tragic (he comes back from the future to warn mankind of a coming apocalypse, but people are so frightened by his appearance that they flee from him, so in his anger he ends up causing the apocalypse he tried to warn them about). The song "Fairies Wear Boots" is about a man who goes to a doctor because he's having hallucinations, and the doctor says he can't help him because "smoking and tripping are all that you do."

Tony Iommi is an example of an introverted alpha. Ozzy Osbourne is an example of an extroverted beta.

So TL;DR: Don't assume that introverted guys have low-confidence, because he may have an interior strength and resolve as tough as steel. And don't assume that extroverted guys have high confidence, because he may be crying in his beer the second he's alone.