Sheldon Cooper among people....

Extraversion is one of the most observable traits, because it is expressed mostly when being with other people. Being an extravert means being socially engaged and enjoying the company of others. Using jargon we could say that extravert people are party souls. Quoting Wikipedia: 'Extraverts tend to enjoy human interactions and to be enthusiastic, talkative, assertive, and gregarious. They take pleasure in activities that involve large social gatherings, such as parties, community activities, public demonstrations, and business or political groups. Politics, teaching, sales, managing and brokering are fields that favor extraversion. An extraverted person is likely to enjoy time spent with people and find less reward in time spent alone. They tend to be energized when around other people, and they are more prone to boredom when they are by themselves'. Does Sheldon appears to be a sociable person? Let's take a look...

From my point of view, Sheldon doesn't seem to be very extravert, rather we would say that he behaves more like an introvert. He prefers to spend time on his own and with his brilliant ideas, he doesn't spend time with people other than his well-known group of friends, and he avoids gatherings like parties, fund-raising meetings, city buses, etc., ostensibly because he is scared of being overrun by a stampede of a specified number of adults or an appropriately larger number of children.

Sheldo-bot in his workplace

One time he was so tired of talking with people that he
created a 'robo-Sheldon': an automatic and
moving screen providing him a chance of not going
out of his room.

When spending time with friends, unfortunately he doesn't sounds like the funniest person in the world. His problems with social skills and huge ego make fertile ground for conversations (or rather monologues) and games, when he is the winner of most of them. It appears that other friends tolerate Sheldon because of Leonard and the possibility of meeting in their apartment.

All of the previous roommates of Sheldon ran away. The most recent one even left behind a wall inscription: 'DIE, SHELDON DIE!' and warned Leonard not to move in.

On the other hand, Sheldon is a chatter-box, he can't stop talking about topics he is interested in. No need to mention that he feels like an expert in most of the topics which you can think of. A good example of this is the following scene:

Raj: Okay, do you have an opinion about everything?
Sheldon: Yes.
Howard: And you just assume you’re always right?
Sheldon: It’s not an assumption.

From the one point of view Sheldon is a sociable person, but in most cases his behaviors are self-centred, not allowing for spontaneous exchange of thoughts or interests between friends. His childish part however sometimes takes control over him, allowing for expression of real happiness, such as when preparing for Comicon or Game Nights. All in all, Sheldon's extra/intro-version is a quite complex issue, making him more of an ambivert (the quality that integrates both extra and intoversion) with strong preferences about the valuable ways of spending social time. When he was a kid he even had imaginary friends, or as he put it:

'Sheldon: They were not friends, they were imaginary colleagues'.

Do you have any other observations about Sheldon's attitude toward time with people? Please, share it in comment section. Next week, we will end the theme of Sheldon's Big Five traits with conscientiousness.