Shyness

Development, Consolidation and Change

W. Ray Crozier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN:
  9780415224321
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134591817
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Written by some of the leading international authorities in the field, this volume provides an overview of significant contemporary psychological research into shyness. It brings together perspectives from developmental psychology, social psychology and clinical psychology.

1 Shyness and social relationships
Continuity and change

W. Ray Crozier

Perspectives and definitions

Perspectives on shyness

Psychological surveys find that substantial numbers of people regard themselves as shy (Zimbardo et al., 1975; Carducci, this volume, Chapter 11). However, it is only recently that shyness has attracted sustained research interest. The paucity of research in the past owes much to the domination of the study of individual differences in social behaviour by theories that prioritized the personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism, neither of which captures what is commonly understood by shyness. The neglect was perhaps more apparent than real, in that many of the concerns expressed by shy people were addressed in the psychological literature but were labelled in diverse ways, for example as reticence, social skills deficits or, more recently, social phobia. Nevertheless, willingness on the part of psychologists to embrace the ordinary language term shyness, notwithstanding the ambiguities involved in this, has stimulated interest in social anxiety. Because consideration of shyness and social anxiety is to be found in different branches of psychology, much of this research is published in separate journals and consequently is scattered. One of the goals of this volume is to bring together key representatives of diverse approaches to shyness.

Adopting a wider perspective, a growth of interest in shyness was contingent on paradigm shifts in psychology or, if this is to overstate the case, at least the foregrounding of hitherto peripheral theoretical positions. One such shift was away from behaviourist explanations to a focus on cognitive processes. This moved from an emphasis on construing social difficulties in terms of deficits in skill towards recognition of the importance of the individual’s self-concept and his or her preoccupations and self-appraisals. Chapter 12 in this volume, by Wells, illustrates particularly well the cognitive approach but its influence is felt throughout the book. A second shift is from the primacy of environmental explanations characteristic of behaviourism to the employment of biological, indeed evolutionary explanations. Along with this has come a revival of interest in the concept of temperament. There are numerous definitions of temperament but core elements are captured by Rutter (1987: 447) when he writes of ‘differences that appear early in life, show substantial stability over time, represent predictable modes of response, and possibly have fairly direct neurobiological correlates’. This concept has made a major impact on research into shyness, particularly Kagan’s theory of the temperament of inhibition. Kagan (this volume, Chapter 2) provides an overview of recent developments in the theory but its influence is evident in several chapters, most notably the contributions by Schmidt and Tasker (Chapter 3), Schölmerich, Broberg, and Lamb (Chapter 4), Kerr (Chapter 5) and Stevenson-Hinde (Chapter 6).

Shyness and related concepts

It is always open to researchers to define terms as they wish provided they supply details of how the terms are operationalized. However, progress in a field is hindered if there is a proliferation of definitions or if the same term is used in different ways or different terms are used in equivalent fashion. Research into shyness has suffered in this way; shyness is not a precise term. It refers to feeling awkward or uncertain in social situations. It is associated with self-consciousness, excessive monitoring of behaviour and over-rehearsal of potential utterances. The shy person feels anxious and often (though not invariably) appears anxious to others. Shyness takes the form of hesitation in making spontaneous utterances, reluctance to express opinions and making responses to the overtures of others that reduce the likelihood of further interaction. We illustrate these tendencies with excerpts from three written responses to a questionnaire distributed to a sample of university students asking them to describe in their own words an occasion on which they felt shy.

At my engagement party there were many friends and relatives. We [my fiancé and I] were the centre of attention which made me feel uneasy and rather self-conscious. The main moments of shyness was [sic] when we were opening presents and cutting the cake. Everyone’s eyes were on us and cameras were flashing. I was feeling a bit shaky, hot and cold and my face having a permanent blush. The pressure of everyone’s eyes penetrating, as if in to my body, was overpowering at specific moments. I felt that I had to impress everyone and I kept on trying to visualize how I looked, how I was presenting myself … . It was difficult because I am shy in front of people especially when I am the centre of attention.

I felt inadequate. I believed I was too young to say anything that would have been of the remotest interest to these people. I felt awkward as if out of place even though we were all there together as we belonged to the same Tennis Club. When anyone did ask me something I would be so concerned about how to reply that I could feel myself heating up and turning red. I tried to find something else to do so I could break away from the group … . I don’t think it has been resolved as I still feel inferior around such a group of adults – I don’t get embarrassed or feel shy with an individual from this group but once the ‘gang’ is assembled I feel intimidated.

I’m afraid that I’m the kind of person who is almost permanently shy! Lacking confidence, I sometimes find it an ordeal to step outside the front door every morning … . I try not to draw attention to myself, and am apt to fall silent in trying situations (for me a ‘trying situation’ can be (e.g.) sitting with friends then being joined by someone I don’t know – this is enough to make me withdraw). I have many times ‘opted-out’ of situations – although I usually regret this later, for example I frequently turn down invitations to socialize considering these an ordeal rather than a pleasure.

People typically draw upon such beliefs, somatic symptoms and behaviour in attributing shyness to themselves although research shows that there are individual differences in the weight that they attach to any of these (Pilkonis, 1977a; Cheek and Watson, 1989; Carducci, this volume, Chapter 11). The origins of these components of shyness, how they relate to each other and their implications for social interactions and interpersonal relationships are questions that currently preoccupy researchers.

Psychological approaches vary in the relative emphasis they give to these components. Thus Leary (1986: 29) argues that ‘shyness’ should be restricted to a particular syndrome, the concurrent experience of anxiety and inhibited behaviour (hesitation, awkwardness). According to this usage social anxiety is therefore not synonymous with shyness but is a broader concept. On the other hand, attribution theorists such as Zimbardo (see below) and trait researchers (e.g. Cheek and Krasnoperova, 1999) argue that the cognitive component is central to understanding shyness and that for some shy people at least, somatic symptoms or problems with behaviour play a minor role in their shyness.

The issue of definition is complicated by the attention paid by developmental psychologists to concepts that seem to have considerable overlap with shyness, namely behavioural inhibition and social withdrawal. Measurements of overt behaviour are important in the research associated with each of these concepts for determining, say, whether a child is inhibited or not or is withdrawn or not.

Inhibition, in the research undertaken by Kagan’s group at Harvard or Stevenson-Hinde’s group at Madingley, is assessed in the context of the child’s behaviour in a set of specially arranged episodes. These involve encounters with unfamiliar adults and novel toys or activities. Inhibition is defined in terms of fretting, crying, making distress calls, withdrawal and absence of spontaneous interaction with the researcher across the set of episodes, and also in terms of reactions to specific episodes. Of course, the studies are interested in making predictions about children’s ‘real life’ social behaviour outside the laboratory. Their shyness is assessed in terms of ratings provided by parents or teachers or systematic observations of behaviour in natural settings. It is not necessary to take into account how these situations look to the child. Indeed this would not be possible in studies undertaken with small infants. However, if we wish to consider the relationship between inhibition and shyness in later childhood or beyond, then the subjective dimension has to be taken into account, since shyness after the early years has a strong social-evaluative element. This is true of the nature of the situations that elicit it as well as of personal descriptions of the experience of shyness, responses to items on self-report questionnaires, and so on.

Social withdrawal can take various forms. Rubin and Asendorpf (1993) distinguish it from social isolation and from sociometric measures of neglect (children who receive few peer nominations, positive or negative) or rejection (children who receive negative nominations, e.g. are disliked). Rubin and Asendorpf regard shyness and inhibition as distinct forms of withdrawal: ‘Shyness is one form of social withdrawal that is motivated by social evaluative concerns, primarily in novel settings. Inhibition is a form of withdrawal characterized by social aloneness or withdrawal in novel settings’ (Rubin and Asendorpf, 1993: 14). Yet there are problems with these definitions. People who describe themselves as shy or who obtain high scores on a trait measure of shyness might not be withdrawn in behaviour. Carducci (this volume, Chapter 11) identifies ‘extraverted’ and sociable coping strategies that can be adopted by shy people. Also there is ambivalence in shyness that is not captured by the notion of being withdrawn.

Withdrawn behaviour is often attributed to shyness. To pick up on the example of the convicted serial murderer mentioned in the Foreword by Zimbardo and Henderson, Kaczinsky was described by those who knew him as shy, withdrawn, and a loner (Ferguson, 1997). However, it might be that withdrawn behaviour is the extreme of the dimensions of introversion or low sociability and characterizes someone who is aloof and self-contained with solitary interests, rather than someone who is shy in the sense of lacking confidence or being anxious about interacting with people. We return below to consider evidence for the distinction between shyness and introversion.

The most consistent differences in observed behaviour between shy and less shy individuals are obtained on measures of verbal performance, specifically the timing and frequency of speech acts. In comparison with their less shy peers, shy adults take longer to produce their first utterance in conversation with an unfamiliar person, are slower to break a silence in conversation and speak for a smaller proportion of the time (Pilkonis, 1977b; Cheek and Buss, 1981; Bruch et al., 1989). Similar trends emerge from studies of children. For example, Kagan (1994: 133) reported that 7-year-old children who had initially been identified as inhibited when they were 21 months old took significantly longer than non-inhibited children to produce their spontaneous comments during a test session. Although hesitation or reticence can be classified as instances of withdrawn behaviour, this usage can result in confusion. They might also be interpreted in strategic terms, for example, as a self-presentation ploy (Leary and Buckley, this volume, Chapter 9) or as the observable consequence of a ‘safety behaviour (Wells, this volume, Chapter 12).

Research into the clinical condition of social phobia is also relevant to the definition of shyness. The relationship between shyness and social phobia is controversial. Beidel and Turner (1999: 205) offer a summary of similarities and differences. They claim that the constructs have a number of features in common. Both involve elevated levels of physiological reactivity. Both are characterized by negative cognitions including fear of being negatively evaluated by others, self-deprecating thoughts and self-blaming attributions for social difficulties. Self-focused attention is salient in both. Beidel and Turner argue that social phobia differs from shyness in that it has a lower prevalence in the population, it has a more chronic course, more pervasive functional impairment, and a later age of onset.

Notwithstanding this analysis, shyness and social phobia are different kinds of concepts. Someone can experience shyness or face serious difficulties in social life without this coming to the attention of anyone else. On the other hand, social phobia is a diagnostic category influenced by factors such as the availability of medical services and the ability of physicians to make the diagnosis. It is a quasi-legal term (particularly in insurance-funded medical systems or where compensation claims are concerned). Social phobia would seem to have the advantage over a ‘fuzzy’ concept like shyness of being based on a precise set of defining criteria, as set out, for example, in the diagnostic and statistical manuals (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. In practice, however, criteria change in the light of research and clinical experience. Thus, the criteria for social phobia have altered in successive editions of the DSM. Current controversies are over the distinction between generalized and specific social phobia and the relationship between social phobia and avoidant personality disorder. Social phobia has been characterized as a persistent fear of situations where people might be subject to scrutiny by others; they fear that their behaviour will lead to embarrassment or humiliation. This causes a significant amount of distress because they recognize that the fear is excessive. Avoidant personality disorder has been defined in terms of hypersensitivity to social rejection, low self-esteem, social withdrawal, and reticence. Each of these categories has some overlap with shyness as this has been construed in social psychological or personality research (see Oakman, Farvolden, Van Ameringen and Mancini, this volume, Chapter 13).

Furthermore, diagnostic systems have been criticized on a number of grounds (e.g. Pilgrim, 2000). They are empirical and are not based on theoretical principles or understanding of the psychophysiological basis of the conditions they identify. They fail to do justice to the complexity of psychological problems by imposing a distinction between those who have a condition and those who do not. The criteria can seem arbitrary, for example, in specification of the duration of a problem before the diagnosis can be made.

It is important to recognize the complexity (and richness) of the phenomena associated with the concept of shyness. Despite the ability of most people to get through each day in a complex social world, to carry out routine transactions, and form relationships that are more or less satisfactory, scientific approaches to understanding these phenomena show how complicated they are. In parallel fashion, language capabilities are acquired effortlessly by most people, but understanding how this is achieved challenges the finest minds. Faced with the complexity of the phenomena and the difficulty of reaching consensual definitions, ps...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Shyness and Social Relationships: Continuity and Change
• 2. Inhibited and Uninhibited Temperaments: Recent Developments
• 3. Childhood Shyness: Determinants, Development and ‘Depathology’
• 4. Precursors of Inhibition and Shyness In the First Year of Life
• 5. Childhood and Adolescent Shyness In Long-Term Perspective: Does It Matter?
• 6. Shyness In the Context of Close Relationships
• 7. Shyness and Adaptation to the Social World of University
• 8. ‘U R a Lot Bolder On the Net’: Shyness and Internet Use
• 9. Shyness and the Pursuit of Social Acceptance
• 10. Blushing, Social Anxiety and Exposure
• 11. What Shy Individuals Do to Cope With Their Shyness: A Content Analysis
• 12. Modifying Social Anxiety: A Cognitive Approach
• 13. Challenges In the Treatment of Generalized Social Phobia: Why Our Treatments Work, and Why They Don’t Work Better