An ambivert is a person whose personality falls between the extrovert and introvert extremes. They feel comfortable in social situations but also enjoy time alone, balancing between outgoing and reserved behaviors.
An ambivert essentially changes their behavior based on the situation they find themselves in.
For example, they may be quite introverted and reserved around strangers but will be more energetic and extroverted around close friends and family.
Other psychologists have called ambiverts (Petric, 2019):
- Outgoing introverts: introverts who can be outgoing in certain situations, around certain people, or when they absolutely need to be.
- Antisocial extroverts: extroverts who need time to recharge before socializing or who like to be alone more than a typical extrovert.
- Social introverts: an introvert who can behave in a more extroverted way when needed.
Key Takeaways
- Ambiversion: Having both introverted and extroverted traits, unlike introverts (energised by solitude) or extroverts (energised by socialising).
- Balance: Ambiverts enjoy time with others but also need alone time to recharge afterward.
- Prevalence: Most people are actually ambiverts, though many assume they are strictly introverts or extroverts.
- Origin: Psychologist Kimball Young coined “ambiversion” in 1927, arguing everyone falls somewhere on a spectrum.
- Sales Advantage: Ambiverts may outperform introverts and extroverts in sales by adapting their approach to each customer.
- Newer Evidence: Two recent studies did not rerun Grant’s design. Neither reports the same extraversion curve.
- Verdict: Not yet rigorously tested. The ambivert sales advantage rests on one field study that nobody has directly rerun.
Ambivert Characteristics
Ambiverts can exhibit both introverted and extroverted traits and may switch depending on the context and individual factors.
For example, an ambivert may be somewhat talkative and quite assertive but not exceptionally sociable (Petric, 2019).
This mix of traits can make it difficult to identify ambiverts, as their behavior may vary depending on the situation.
Nonetheless, there are a few key traits that are commonly associated with ambiverts, including:
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Being able to adapt to different situations
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Being good at communication – both listening and speaking
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Being comfortable with both large groups and small intimate gatherings
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Being able to work well both independently and in teams
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Having a strong sense of self-awareness
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Providing balance in social situations
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An ability to regulate behavior and responses
While ambiverts share some characteristics with both introverts and extroverts, they are unique in that they can draw from both sides of the spectrum. This allows them to be more flexible and adaptable than either type alone.
Ambiverts process thoughts and feelings both ways. This means they may benefit from talking a problem through with others, and from working it out alone through an activity such as writing.
The table below compares the three types side by side.
| Feature | Introvert | Ambivert | Extravert |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spectrum position | One end | In the middle | The other end |
| Energy | Gained from solitude | Enjoys time with others, then needs alone time to recharge | Gained from socialising |
| Typical manner | Quiet, reflective and reserved | Adapts to the situation: reserved with strangers, energetic with close friends | Outgoing, assertive and sociable |
Examples
Sales
- Aim: Grant (2013) tackled a puzzle in the sales literature: decades of research found only weak, inconsistent links between extraversion and sales performance. He proposed a curvilinear relationship instead.
- Method: Grant surveyed the extraversion of 340 outbound call-centre representatives at a software company. He then tracked their actual sales revenue over the next three months.
- Results: Revenue rose with extraversion, then fell again past the mid-point. Ambivert staff won, reportedly outselling introverts by around a quarter and extraverts by around a third.
- Conclusion: Grant concluded the traditional ‘hire extraverts for sales’ heuristic is misguided. An ambivert’s natural back-and-forth between talking and listening lets them persuade and close without seeming pushy or overconfident.
Evaluation: The strengths are real. Grant measured actual sales revenue over a meaningful three-month window, not a self-report or lab proxy, which gives the finding genuine ecological validity.
Its main limitation is generalisability: the sample was one job type at one company. The design is also correlational, so it cannot rule out reverse explanations, such as roles that reward moderate assertiveness simply retaining moderately extraverted staff for longer.
Business Research
Karl Moore of McGill University wrote about introverted versus extroverted traits in business. From his own work with executives, he argued that blending the two types fosters workplace success.
Moore’s second claim is about decisions. He reported that people near the middle of the introversion-extraversion range tended to make the best business decisions. He reasoned that they can weigh both sides of an issue and reach a well-rounded conclusion.
He made a bolder claim too. Becoming more of an ambivert, he said, is a learnable skill, not a fixed trait. That sits in tension with the common view that a person’s underlying position on the spectrum does not change.
Treat all of this with caution.
It comes from a Forbes column summarising unpublished consulting work, not a peer-reviewed study. Grant’s field study is the stronger evidence.
Academic Performance
- Aim: Tretiak et al. (2016) investigated whether university students’ position on the introversion-extraversion spectrum, along with their cognitive abilities, was linked to academic performance.
- Method: The researchers assessed personality type and cognitive characteristics in a sample of university students. They compared academic outcomes across those classified as introverted, ambiverted and extraverted.
- Results: Ambiverts did best academically, outperforming both introverts and extraverts. They were also more likely to seek help from tutors, peers or instructors when they struggled.
- Conclusion: The authors suggested the advantage comes from drawing on both introverted qualities, like focused independent study, and extraverted qualities, like comfortably asking for support.
Evaluation: This is a single-sample, correlational study.
It cannot establish whether ambiversion improves study habits or whether effective students simply present as more balanced. The finding also has not yet had the large-sample replication the sales-performance claim has started to receive.
Personnel Selection
“Hire ambiverts” has become a popular takeaway from Grant’s (2013) study, with real consequences for recruitment.
Taken literally, it would encourage employers to screen out candidates scoring at either end of a personality inventory, not just the low-scoring end.
That raises the same measurement problem raised above: on a continuous scale, where does “extravert” end and “ambivert” begin?
The line is genuinely blurry.
Large modern studies of personality and job performance (see Contemporary Research below) suggest a narrower reading. It is safer than the confident popular summary online.
Curvilinear, ambivert-favouring effects show up for some job types and some facets of extraversion.
They are far from a general law that a single score threshold could use for hiring decisions across roles, across every organisation.
Evidence Check: Is the Ambivert Advantage Real?
Verdict: Not yet rigorously tested.
The headline claim, that people in the middle of the extraversion range outperform both ends, rests on one objective-outcome field study of a single job type. Nobody has rerun that design.
A larger study of five-factor traits and performance found a curve for conscientiousness, not extraversion (Song et al., 2025). An independent conceptual test found diminishing returns rather than a downturn (Blickle et al., 2015).
One Field Study Carries the Sales Advantage
Level of evidence: Correlational or self-report study; not yet replicated.
The claim is that sales revenue peaks at mid-range extraversion and drops at both extremes. The only direct support is Grant (2013).
He measured extraversion by questionnaire in 340 outbound call-centre representatives at one software company. Revenue came from company records over the next three months. It was highest in the middle band.
Nothing on record repeats that design with a new sample, a preregistration or a registered report. The closest independent test is conceptual.
Blickle et al. (2015) studied extraversion and job performance in enterprising jobs. For social potency they found a positive asymptotic relation, meaning gains level off rather than fall.
The nearest tests come from the wider personality-performance literature. Song et al. (2025) analysed 1,190 employees with machine-learning methods that can detect curves. Conscientiousness showed a noticeable curvilinear relation with job performance. The abstract reports no extraversion curve.
Norbom et al. (2026) studied 288 participants in sales and advisory roles. They tested no curve. They found a negative linear relation between extraversion and inbound sales.
Wihler et al. (2017) followed insurance field salespeople over nine months with objective sales as the outcome. Its abstract reports no extraversion curve.
Wilmot et al. (2019) pooled 97 meta-analyses, but those estimate average linear relations, which would hide a curve. Le et al. (2011) found curves for other traits, conscientiousness and emotional stability.
The evidence is compatible with the claim but does not confirm it. Grant’s result is a real observation in one setting. Curves for other traits (Le et al., 2011) make a curved extraversion effect plausible. Plausibility is not a test.
The later studies differ from Grant’s in sample, job, construct and outcome, so none is a failed replication.
Song et al. (2025) is the largest probe, but its curve is for a different trait. None confirms or overturns Grant’s outbound result.
How far can Grant’s result be trusted? Its strengths are an objective revenue outcome and a personality measure taken before the outcome period.
Its weaknesses are a single organisation, a single job type, a result that cannot be separated from who stays in that role, and no independent rerun.
It is the most trustworthy evidence on this claim, and also the least checked. A direct, preregistered rerun in outbound sales would settle it.
In short, one field study found the highest sales revenue at mid-range extraversion (Grant, 2013). No direct rerun is on record. The “ambivert advantage” is best described as a single unreplicated result, not an established effect.
Is Ambiversion a Separate Type?
Level of evidence: Correlational or self-report study; not yet replicated.
The claim is that “ambivert” is either the statistical middle of a continuous scale or an independent characteristic. The two readings have not been compared head to head.
The dimensional reading draws on McCrae and Costa (1989), who used self-reports and peer ratings on a five-factor inventory from 267 men and 201 women aged 19 to 93.
They found no support for the view that the Myers-Briggs instrument measures truly dichotomous preferences or qualitatively distinct types. They tested two poles, not a middle type.
The type reading draws on Georgiev et al. (2014), who argue for distinguishing features of ambiversion. They argue the case rather than test it.
Fleeson (2001) adds that people vary substantially in how extraverted they act from one situation to the next, while their average state tracks their trait score. That fits an ambivert whose average sits mid-scale. It does not separate a type from a mid-scale position.
The unresolved status is honest. The sources do not show a distinct ambivert type, and they do not rule one out.
If ambiversion is only a mid-scale position, any ambivert advantage is a claim about a curve along one dimension. That is a narrower claim.
McCrae and Costa’s strengths are an adult sample of 468 and two sources of data, self and peer. Its weakness is that it examined the Myers-Briggs dichotomies, so it bears on an ambivert type only by inference. It was also a volunteer sample from one research programme.
In short, introversion-extraversion scores do not split into distinct types (McCrae & Costa, 1989), so “ambivert” is safely used for the middle of a continuous dimension. Whether it is also a distinct type has been argued (Georgiev et al., 2014) but not tested.
Theoretical Origins
The first person to coin the term “ambiversion” was psychologist Kimball Young in 1927 in Source Book for Social Psychology .
However, the concept of introversion and extroversion dates to Carl Jung’s core ideas in his exploration of personality.
He defined extraversion as “an outward turning of libido” and introversion as “an inward turning of libido.” Jung used libido to mean the motivational energy behind behaviour generally, not only sexual gratification. The word had a broader meaning for Jung.
Since then, research has shown that ambiversion is fairly common, with estimates suggesting that more than half of the general population are likely to be ambiverts.
Despite the prevalence of ambiversion, it is less commonly written about than extraversion and introversion.
That gap is telling.
This is largely due to the widespread belief that extraversion and introversion are binary traits. As a result, many ambiverts fail to recognize their ambiversion, instead placing themselves on one end of the spectrum or the other.
Personality Spectrum
The introvert-extrovert spectrum is a model of a continuum between introverted and extroverted behaviour, with ambiverts falling in the middle.
Introverts, at one end, tend to be quiet, reflective and reserved. Extraverts, at the other, tend to be outgoing, assertive and sociable.
Ambiverts sit in between.
Genetic and Neurological Evidence
There may be a genetic component to introversion, extraversion and ambiversion, with much of the evidence coming from twin research. One study found identical twins were more likely to share the same orientation than fraternal twins.
Brain activity tells a similar story.
One study found introverts have more blood flow to the frontal lobes, and extraverts more to the rear regions, suggesting underlying neurological differences between the two.
The two traits are not fixed, though. One study found that people’s self-reported orientation can change over time, suggesting people are not locked into one type but may fall somewhere in between (Botwinick, 1984). That mix of fixed and flexible evidence is exactly what fuels the debate below.
That distinction matters for research too. If the traits were purely binary, studying them would be simple, but connecting outward behaviour to underlying biology gets harder once they are not.
Trait Versus Type
Whether “ambivert” names anything real, over and above a person’s raw extraversion score, is a genuine dispute rather than a settled fact. It splits into two camps.
The dimensional view treats extraversion as a single continuous trait. Introvert, ambivert and extravert are informal labels for regions of one bell-shaped distribution, not three separate natural kinds.
This is how the Big Five factor model treats the dimension: everyone has a score, and most people cluster near the middle. No test can draw a non-arbitrary line.
The typological challenge goes further, arguing that ambiversion deserves recognition as its own construct rather than a residual middle band (Georgiev et al., 2014). On this view, ambiversion has its own defining features: adaptability, situational flexibility and dual processing of thoughts and emotions.
Trait psychologists have long doubted this. McCrae and Costa (1989) evaluated the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator‘s claim that people fall into a small number of true “types.”
They found its introversion-extraversion scores are normally distributed, with most people clustering near the centre rather than piling up at two poles. A real type would predict two peaks.
If most people already sit in the middle of one smooth distribution, “ambivert” cannot be a rare, distinct type squeezed between two more common ones. It is simply where most people already are.
Splitting a continuous scale into labelled groups also discards information (McCrae & Costa, 1989). A person who scores 49 and one who scores 51 on a 100-point scale are almost identical. Yet group labels can make them look categorically different.
The dispute is not merely academic. If ambiversion is just the statistical middle of a normal curve, then a study of “ambiverts” is really testing something different.
It is asking whether a trait has a curvilinear, inverted-U relationship with an outcome, worst at the extremes and best in the middle. That reframing is what Grant’s sales research is built on.
Most of the evidence on ambiverts, including the findings below, tests this weaker, curvilinear claim rather than proving ambiversion is a distinct type.
Evaluation
Grant’s sales-advantage finding is genuinely useful, but ambiversion research still leaves real questions open. The main ones are:
- Contemporary Research: Two recent studies did not rerun Grant’s (2013) design, so the popular “ambiverts make the best salespeople” summary remains untested.
- Narrow Evidence Base: The sales, business and academic-performance findings each rest on one sample, and only the sales claim has been retested at scale.
- Situational Variability: People vary in how extraverted they act from one moment to the next, raising doubts about what “ambivert” really measures.
- Omnivert Evidence Gap: The omnivert construct (someone who swings between fully introverted and fully extraverted states) rests on far less research than ambiversion itself.
- Practical Costs: Ambiversion brings real flexibility, but also pressure to keep balancing two modes and a risk of seeming to lack conviction.
Contemporary Research
Grant’s (2013) single-organisation finding raised an obvious question: does a curvilinear, middle-scorers-do-best pattern hold up across many employees and job types, not just one call centre? Song, Oh, Kim and So (2025) tested this using a large machine-learning re-analysis.
- Aim: Song et al. (2025) asked whether personality relates to job performance in a straight line or in curves. They also checked for interactive patterns across traits and job types.
- Method: They analysed 1,190 employees, comparing linear regression with interpretable machine-learning methods that detect non-linear and interactive patterns. Analyses covered broad traits, narrower facets and several job types, including sales roles.
- Results: Non-linear methods outperformed linear regression only slightly, mostly through conscientiousness, which showed a clear curve. Most extraversion facets showed little evidence of curves, except positive emotionality (warmth and enthusiasm), which mattered for sales jobs.
- Conclusion: Curved personality-performance relationships are real but specific to particular traits and facets, not a general feature of extraversion. The study did not directly test Grant’s sales finding.
Song et al. is the largest direct probe of curved personality effects, but its curve is for a different trait. It cannot confirm or overturn Grant’s outbound result.
The inverted U for extraversion and sales therefore remains one unreplicated observation, not a template for personality and performance in general.
A second study adds to the picture. Norbom, Moe, Strand and Steindórsdóttir (2026), studying 288 employees in sales and advisory roles, found only low-to-medium correlations between personality traits and sales performance.
Extraversion was actually negatively related to performance on inbound sales, where customers make first contact. That differs from Grant’s outbound cold-calling sample. The study tested no curve.
Read together, the two studies suggest the ambivert sales advantage may depend on the sales channel and job demands. Neither reran Grant’s design. The advantage is untested, not refuted.
Narrow Evidence Base
The three central applied findings above each rest on a single sample. Grant (2013) surveyed one software company’s call-centre staff.
Moore (2012) drew on his own unpublished consulting observations. Tretiak et al. (2016) studied one university system.
Only the sales finding has been through the large-sample scrutiny described under Contemporary Research above.
No study here has combined a genuinely representative, cross-organisational sample with an objective performance outcome. That is narrower than the confident, general framing ambiversion often receives in popular psychology writing.
Situational Variability
An ambivert is defined, at the top of this article, as someone who changes their behaviour with the situation. Fleeson (2001) found this is not unique to ambiverts.
Even people who describe themselves as strongly introverted or extraverted show substantial variability in how extraverted they act from one situation to the next.
Behaviour is better modelled as a spread of states around a person’s average than as one fixed point. That reframing matters here.
Jayawickreme, Zachry and Fleeson (2019) extended this into what they call Whole Trait Theory. A trait score, on this view, summarises how someone typically acts across situations, rather than a rigid disposition.
This raises a real question. If everyone shows this kind of variability, is “ambivert” describing a genuinely distinct kind of person, or simply naming the ordinary variability every personality already shows?
The construct may capture a difference in the degree of variability, rather than a wholly different type.
Omnivert Evidence Gap
Unlike ambiversion, which has the sales, business and academic-performance findings above, the omnivert distinction has very little published research behind it.
The concept is largely descriptive, drawn from clinical and popular-writing observation (Petric, 2019) rather than from a study comparing omniverts against ambiverts on an objective outcome.
That absence of data cuts both ways. It may mean omniverts are genuinely rare.
Or it may simply mean the construct has not yet attracted serious empirical attention. The two explanations cannot currently be told apart.
Practical Costs
Ambiversion brings real flexibility, adaptability and balance. An ambivert can adjust their behaviour to fit a one-on-one chat or a leadership role in a larger group. That range supports effective social navigation and stronger relationships.
But drawing on both sides has a cost.
Being able to draw from both introverted and extroverted traits does not guarantee being able to commit fully to either. Some people read that as a lack of conviction, relegating ambiverts to a “peacekeeper” role.
Holding a deliberate balance can itself be tiring. There is also a subtler pressure to keep behaving consistently in a given setting. Others may never see that an ambivert’s personality has an alternate side (Grant, 2013). Many ambiverts simply learn to live with both sides.
References
Blickle, G., Meurs, J. A., Wihler, A., Ewen, C., Merkl, R., & Missfeld, T. (2015). Extraversion and job performance: How context relevance and bandwidth specificity create a non-linear, positive, and asymptotic relationship. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 87, 80-88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2014.12.009
Botwinick, J. (1984). Personality development: Stability and change. Aging and Behavior, 143-165.
Fleeson, W. (2001). Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: Traits as density distributions of states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(6), 1011-1027. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.6.1011
Georgiev, S. Y., Christov, C. V., & Philipova, D. T. (2014). Ambiversion as independent personality characteristic. Activitas Nervosa Superior Rediviva, 56(3-4), 65-72.
Grant, A. M. (2013). Rethinking the extraverted sales ideal: The ambivert advantage. Psychological Science, 24 (6), 1024-1030. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612463706
Jayawickreme, E., Zachry, C. E., & Fleeson, W. (2019). Whole Trait Theory: An integrative approach to examining personality structure and process. Personality and Individual Differences, 136, 2-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.06.045
Jung, C. G. (1921). Psychological types. The collected works of CG Jung, Vol. 6 Bollingen Series XX.
Le, H., Oh, I.-S., Robbins, S. B., Ilies, R., Holland, E., & Westrick, P. (2011). Too much of a good thing: Curvilinear relationships between personality traits and job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(1), 113-133. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021016
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1989). Reinterpreting the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator from the perspective of the five-factor model of personality. Journal of Personality, 57(1), 17-40. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1989.tb00759.x
Moore, K. (2012). Introverts no longer the quiet followers of extroverts. Forbes.
Norbom, H. M., Moe, H. T., Strand, M. F., & Steindórsdóttir, B. D. (2026). Personality as a predictor of general job performance and sales performance. Scandinavian Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.16993/sjwop.386
Petric, D. (2019). Introvert, Extrovert and Ambivert. The Knot Theory of Mind.
Song, Q. C., Oh, I.-S., Kim, Y., & So, C. (2025). Revisiting the nature and strength of the personality-job performance relations: New insights from interpretable machine learning. Journal of Applied Psychology, 110(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001218
Tretiak, T. O., Severynovska, O. V., & Boyko, M. (2016). Connection of students’ academic performance and cognitive abilities with their psychological characteristics. Regulatory Mechanisms in Biosystems, 1 (7), 18-26.
Wihler, A., Meurs, J. A., Momm, T. D., John, J., & Blickle, G. (2017). Conscientiousness, extraversion, and field sales performance: Combining narrow personality, social skill, emotional stability, and nonlinearity. Personality and Individual Differences, 104, 291-296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.07.045
Wilmot, M. P., Wanberg, C. R., Kammeyer-Mueller, J. D., & Ones, D. S. (2019). Extraversion advantages at work: A quantitative review and synthesis of the meta-analytic evidence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(12), 1447-1470. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000415
Young, K. (1927). Source book for social psychology.
FAQs
What is an introvert and extrovert mix called?
An ambivert personality is characterized by a balance of extrovert and introvert traits. Ambiverts can be outgoing and social when needed, but they also appreciate quiet time alone.
They are adaptable and able to adjust their approach to align with their surroundings, which can lead to a well-rounded perspective on life. They are neither excessively outgoing nor overwhelmingly reserved, instead showing flexibility in various social settings.
What’s the Difference Between an Ambivert and an Omnivert?
An ambivert is a person whose personality falls between the introvert and extrovert extremes. They show qualities of both and adjust their behaviour to the situation, rather than swinging fully from one extreme to the other.
An omnivert, on the other hand, is someone who can feel intensely introverted or extroverted in different situations. Their preference for introversion or extroversion can change frequently and drastically, rather than hovering around the middle of the spectrum like an ambivert.
