Shyness

Shyness refers to passivity, emotional arousal, and excessive self-focus in the presence of other people ( Jones, Cheek, and Briggs 1986). It also frequently involves negative self-evaluations, social avoidance, and withdrawal. From a practical point of view, the importance of shyness derives from its consequences. Shy persons, for example, are often excessively uncomfortable and anxious in social situations. Moreover, because of such discomfort, chronic shyness often leads to failures to capitalize on the occupational and interpersonal opportunities available to the shy person. Scientifically, shyness affords the opportunity to observe the complex interplay of personal and situational context factors in the evolution of social interactions.

State versus Trait Shyness

Typically, a distinction between two characterizations of shyness is drawn. The immediate emotional/cognitive experience of shyness—arousal and heightened self-consciousness in response to social threat—defines what is known as state or situational shyness. This type of shyness may be experienced by virtually anyone from time to time, especially in certain social situations. For example, people are generally more shy in situations involving strangers than when interacting with friends or family members. By contrast, trait shyness refers to the chronic tendency to experience state shyness more frequently or at lower levels of social threat (Buss 1980). For some people state shyness dissipates when the circumstances giving rise to it change, whereas trait shyness is a personality dimension leading to frequent and intense experiential shyness over time and across situations (Russell, Cutrona, and Jones 1986). The specific level of state shyness experienced by persons high in trait shyness also varies from one situation to the next, but remains higher for them than for persons low in trait shyness.

The Experience of State Shyness

State shyness consists of converging processes in the cognitive (e.g., self-focus, thoughts of escape, dread, preoccupation with the self, concern with one's performance), affective (e.g., anxiety, shame, embarrassment), behavioral (e.g., nervous gestures, inhibited speech, dysfluency, nervous and excessive verbalization), and physiological (e.g., sweating, heart palpitations, elevated blood pressure, dry mouth) domains of experience. These experiences are often sufficiently unpleasant to lead to withdrawal from or avoidance of many social situations, but they also compound the distress of shyness by distracting from skilled and self-confident social interactions.

The origins of state shyness are twofold. First, certain situations in which one's identity is at issue under conditions of uncertainty, and situations that elicit awareness of the self as the object of others' attention, give rise to the experience of shyness (Buss 1980). Relevant situations include those involving evaluations, public performances, novelty, high status/attractive people, formality (e.g., weddings, funerals), self-presentations, and being the center of attention. The necessity of meeting and interacting with strangers at social gatherings is a prototypical example of an experience involving several of these factors. The second contributing factor is trait shyness. Specifically, some people are predisposed to experience state shyness by virtue of their personality and characteristic ways of coping with social demands. Thus, state shyness is a joint function of the level of trait shyness and situational characteristics.

State shyness is related to other social emotions such as shame, audience anxiety, and embarrassment. All involve some degree of social withdrawal, but shyness also differs from these other emotions by virtue of its situational elicitors and the specific components of the experience. For example, shame arises from the public detection of an immoral or undesirable behavior whereas shyness involves vacillation between interest and fear in social situations (Izard 1972). One unpleasant consequence of shyness is that it often results in negative interpersonal and emotional judgments in which the shy person is perceived not only as reticent, but also as unfriendly, arrogant, or even hostile.

Trait Shyness

Origins of trait shyness. As a relatively stable personality characteristic, one important issue is how trait shyness develops. Research and theory suggests two major sources of trait shyness (Buss 1984). First, trait shyness often reflects a genetic predisposition toward inhibition and excessive anxiety. Several studies have found evidence of a high degree of inheritablity for shyness (e.g., Plomin and Rowe 1979). Alternatively, shyness may emerge because of disruptions or problems in development, most especially those involved in the establishment of a personal identity during adolescence (e.g., Asendorpf 1989; Buss 1984).

Social inhibition is a developmental precursor of shyness and is relatively stable over time (Kagan, Reznick, and Snidman 1988). Inhibition in an infant is often manifested as stranger anxiety, which is common at about nine months of age. Not all infants are excessively afraid of strangers, and even those who are often become much less so during the second year. For a minority, however, inhibition continues and resembles the avoidant and reticent behavior of shy adults. Children with a chronically inhibited social interaction style beyond age three are usually labeled as shy. Thus, the idea that some children are born with the biological foundation for shyness is further supported by research showing that inhibition is consistent across situations and is related to specific physiological responses: Shy-inhibited children tend to have higher and less variable heart rates and larger pupil dilation during cognitive tasks than uninhibited children (Garcia-Coll, Kagan, and Reznick 1984).

Alternatively, shy children may be conditioned for inhibition by parents or others (Asendorpf 1989). For example, being intimidated, harassed, or rejected may encourage a wariness of others as a means of avoiding being hurt. This is especially so if shy expressions are also modeled or reinforced by parents. More commonly, uncertainty and anxiety associated with establishing a personal identity in adolescence may initiate shyness (Buss 1984). The transition from elementary to secondary school, the relative increase in peer influence as compared to parental/family influences, and accommodation to social and role expectations are illustrative of the identity transformations that may be implicated in the initiation of acquired shyness. Consequently, although some children may be born with a readiness for inhibition and physiological arousal in social situations, this inclination may at least partially actualize through environmental/developmental factors involving both learning and stress.

On the other hand, in one study shyness at age two predicted parenting practices at age four such as a lack of encouragement of independence, but parenting practices at age two did not predict shyness at age four (Rubin et al. 1999). This suggests that the experiential contribution to the development of shyness may be a parental response to existing shyness rather than shyness resulting from differences in parenting behaviors.

Developmental manifestations of trait shyness. Another important issue regarding trait shyness is how it is expressed at various stages in the life cycle. Being shy during childhood does not automatically mean that an individual will remain shy throughout life. On the other hand, shyness appears to stabilize by approximately eighth or ninth grade, and adolescent shyness has been found to predict significantly adult shyness as much as twenty-five years later (Morris, Soroker, and Burruss 1954). During adolescence, shyness is likely to be intensified by the physical impact of puberty as well as changes in social context in the adolescent's life that may contribute to disturbances in self-image. In this regard, junior high school students more frequently describe themselves as shy than do elementary school students (Simmons and Rosenberg 1975).

Shyness among adults involves inhibited social behavior that impedes the development of friendships and romantic and work relationships ( Jones and Carpenter 1986). For example, shy adults tend to have selective memory for unpleasant social interactions, underestimate their own social skill, and assume responsibility for failure, but not for success (Halford and Foddy 1982; Jones and Briggs 1984; Jones and Carpenter 1986). Also, shy adults are less effective in asking for help, expressing opinions, and coping with stress, and more likely to engage in negative self-evaluations (DePaulo et al. 1989; Eisenberg, Fabes, and Murphy 1995; Jones, Briggs, and Smith 1986).

Longitudinal data indicates that individuals identified as shy and reserved in late childhood differed in marital and family experiences thirty years later (Caspi, Elder, and Bem 1988). For example, shy males were more likely than their male age cohorts to delay marriage and parenthood to a later point in life, whereas shy girls were more likely to pursue conventional marital, childbearing, and homemaking endeavors than their less shy counterparts.

In work-related situations, chronically shy persons tend to achieve lower occupational status and stability (Caspi, Elder, and Bem 1988). Also, shy adults fail to take advantage of the employment opportunities available to them and are less confident and active in occupational endeavors (Phillips and Bruch 1988). For elderly adults, shyness is associated with greater life disruption as a result of retirement, widowhood, and other changes toward the end of the life cycle (Hansson 1986). However, because the social roles of the elderly have fewer effects on other people and the evaluations of others are not as important to the elderly, shyness may have fewer or less dramatic consequences as people grow older.

Variations in Shyness

Shyness appears to vary in conjunction with gender. Gender role stereotypes may play a role in the development of adolescent shyness. Shyness is considered to be a feminine trait; therefore, it is not surprising that girls report more self-conscious shyness after age eleven than boys (Simmons and Rosenberg 1975). Stereotypes make it more acceptable for girls to be shy and shyness may be a more serious problem for boys because they are expected to take the initiative in social encounters (Porteus 1979). Research also suggests cultural variation in shyness. For example, one research group (Pilkonis and Zimbardo 1979) found self-labeled shyness to be highest among samples of Japanese, Taiwanese, and Indian national groups and lowest among samples of Jewish Americans, Israelis, and Mexicans. The origin of such variation has not been determined, however.

Shyness and Adjustment

Another important issue that has not been fully resolved is the point at which shyness ceases to be an everyday problem common to many people and becomes a form of psychopathology. There is evidence that shyness is related to introversion and neuroticism more or less equally (Briggs 1988). However, although studies indicate a convergence between shyness and various diagnoses such as anxiety disorder, social phobia and avoidant personality, most research suggests that shyness results in such debilitating conditions in only a small number of cases (e.g., Prior et al. 2000). Moreover, shyness tends to be most seriously problematic during life transitions (e.g., going away to college or changing jobs) that require social skill and assertiveness to acquire new social networks and relationship partners as compared to more stable periods of life ( Jones and Carpenter 1986). Finally, there is also evidence that both "everyday" shyness and its variants of greater clinical significance can be successfully treated with psychological and other forms of intervention (Cappe and Alden 1986).

See also:Anxiety Disorders; Developmental Psychopathology; Peer Influence; Separation Anxiety; Temperament

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warren h. jones