Alex Lathbridge

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You're listening to CrowdScience from the BBC World Service, the programme that's trying to overcome our social anxiety and work up a small amount of courage to answer your science questions.

I'm Alex Laffbridge and today I'm trying to find out why talking to new people is rather difficult.

Listener Daniel from Ghana wrote in to us with some questions about personality, specifically about being an introvert.

Daniel's question isn't just abstract scientific curiosity.

He's written in to us for a little bit of careers advice.

I mean, speaking to you now, you seem quite bubbly, gregarious.

But is this not the case?

Well, I've learnt to adjust.

A lot of our Crowdsense listeners may feel some form of shyness.

So what sort of advice would you give to them about owning how they are or accepting it?

You know what Daniel, it sounds like you've actually got lots of ways to understand your introversion and adapt to uncomfortable social situations, so well done you.

But why does Daniel have to work so hard at something which seems to come naturally for many others?

And like he feared, could his introversion be holding him back?

A good place to start is by getting our heads around the terminology.

When psychologists talk about introversion and extroversion, what do they actually mean?

So I've come across the city to the University of Ghana Medical School to talk to someone who knows the brain inside and out, Dr Thomas Tago.

Thomas explained that introversion and extroversion, they're not two sides of the same coin, as some might believe.

People aren't one or the other.

It's more like a spectrum, with extreme introversion at one end and extreme extroversion at the other.