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It is believed that science is at its best when it attempts to understand a phenomenon from multiple disciplines, multiple levels, and multiple systems. Thus, it is hoped that this belief was evident in the pages of this book. Due to the manifestation of animal analogs used to understand fear and anxiety and advances in neuroimaging techniques and molecular neurobiology, it is right to apply the knowledge established by the new theories and techniques to more fully understand the origins and developmental course of extreme fear and shyness in humans than ever before. Moreover, there are many positive qualities to some aspects of shyness and these should be emphasized. It is now the objective of future research to determine how the knowledge established by basic research can be most effectively employed.

Shyness (also known as social anxiety) is not the same thing as self-consciousness. Shyness is an anxiety disorder that is specific to social situations. The aspect of self-consciousness known as public self-consciousness appears to be a component of shyness, along with low self-esteem. This chapter presents a “vicious circle” model of shyness in which the social anxiety one experiences before a social encounter triggers negative thoughts and feelings that undermine one's ability to perform adequately during the social encounter, which in turn strengthens one's original negative beliefs after the encounter has ended. The results of many studies that are consistent with this model are reviewed. Surprisingly, perhaps, shyness is contagious: the partner of a shy individual comes to display similar thoughts, feelings, and behavior as the shy person does during an initial dyadic interaction.

This chapter reports that there may be different types of childhood shyness. The affinity between shyness and shame looks to be claimed by researchers who are interested in shyness as a state or emotion rather than as a temperament or trait. The research into fearful and self-conscious shyness is described. It then provides the results from a study that used the methodology of the studies of children's conceptions to the content analysis of material from interviews with a sample of adults. The data showed that the studies of children's and adults' conceptions of shyness indicate that there is some support for a distinction between two forms of shyness, fearful and self-conscious. It is suggested that the concept of self-conscious shyness is worthy of additional research.

This chapter represents the neural circuits that underlie fear responses in animals and explores the possible implications for understanding fear and shyness in humans. It is shown in recent data that contextual and punctate auditory stimuli use different intra-amygdala pathways to access the central nucleus. There are two variables, similarity of a response to an animal's species-typical defensive behavior and degree of fear, that present two dimensions along which the reactive and active systems may interact. The amygdala appears to be the place where both learning and expression of fear responses take place.

This chapter explores the influences of hormones on brain development and how these effects have implications for understanding the development of both shyness and disease. It reviews studies of hormone action that illuminate these principles and illustrate the rapidly increasing understanding of the lifelong interactions between genes and environment as they affect the progression toward disease. The data presented display some of the new information indicating that the brain is a plastic and ever-changing organ of the body and is very much influenced by life experiences. It appears very likely that the condition of extreme fear and shyness offers to a lifelong pattern of allostatic load and that structural and functional correlates will be found to exist in the brains of those individuals who are extremely shy and fearful.

This chapter offers data and a model that may shed light on the developmental course of shyness and social inhibition. It describes the various psychological literatures to explore the short and long-term effects of three constructs commonly used to describe social reticence (behavioral inhibition, social isolation, and shyness) and their relationship to social phobia. It begins with a conceptualization of shyness. There is evidence for stability of behavioral inhibition over time, even though the associations are only moderate. In addition, correlates of behavioral inhibition include theoretically related constructs and disorders such as shyness, specific fears, separation anxiety, and social isolation. It is noted that there is much overlap in behavioral inhibition and social phobia, as well as some differences. However, it is likely that at least some of the children in these various categories suffer from the same condition, and the model proposes one heuristic conceptualization of the relationships among these constructs.

This chapter reports the development and results related with different types of shyness in adolescents and adults. It specifically describes the research and theory on shyness with a focus on the varieties of shyness that are experienced during adolescence and adulthood. After considering the distinction between early- and later-developing shyness, it discusses the three-component model of adult shyness. It then introduces a new approach to withdrawn and dependent subtypes of shyness. Finally, it ends with some implications of the approach for future directions in theory, research, and treatment. It can be concluded that the personal revolution necessary for reorganizing the shy person's self-concept and social behavior is a difficult but achievable goal.

This chapter reports the evidence from the author's work with highly sensitive people. It also describes its clinical relevance to understanding and treating shyness. It shows that there may be a different way to understand at least some of what is inherited which predisposes certain individuals to feel extreme fear and shyness. In addition, it explains the research that depicts that they may also be more affected by aversive experiences, making them more prone to actually become shy or fearful. But it is proposed that vulnerability, negative affect, fearfulness, or shyness are not as generally useful and accurate descriptors of this trait as sensitivity is. It also examines the concept of sensitivity as others have observed it, directly or indirectly. Next, it suggests how extreme shyness and fearfulness may in many cases arise from this fundamental trait rather than make up the fundamental trait. Furthermore, it explains the implications of this new understanding for developmental outcomes and treatment. The author's research has noted that sensory-processing sensitivity cannot be equated with either introversion or negative emotionality.

This chapter addresses the treatment of social phobia and compares and contrasts it with the treatment of panic disorder. It also reports the most current methods for treating shyness and anxiety-related problems in children and adults. Although most studies so far have not determined corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis abnormalities in social phobia, results from animal studies and from human studies of fear and behavioral inhibition indicate that more work is important to clarify the functioning of this system. In general, the data on treatment of social phobia and panic disorder indicates similarities and differences between the two disorders. Both social phobia and panic disorder have been shown to be responsive to several classes of medications. However tricyclic antidepressants are highly effective for panic but disappointing for social phobia.

This book links a number of people under one intellectual setting: namely, the attempt to understand the origins, developmental course, and outcomes of extreme fear and shyness. In particular, this chapter provides a discussion on historical precedent and contemporary relevance. The three major parts of this book, with each part followed by a commentary on the chapters contained within that section, are summarized. New discoveries in developmental psychology and the neurosciences make this an exciting time in the study of extreme fear and shyness. It is hoped that this book will suffice as a resource for researchers and students working in the areas of behavioral neuroscience, developmental and clinical psychology, psychiatry, and pediatric medicine.

This chapter reports the evidence from a series of longitudinal studies that indicate that there may be a distinct pattern of physiological responses which depicts and characterizes different types of shy children. It begins with a conceptualization of shyness in which it is argued that individual differences emerge out of the underlying motivation tendencies of approach-avoidance. It also reviews the evidence from studies of animals and humans that implicate the frontal cortex and the forebrain amygdala as a possible neuroanatomical circuit that underlies different types of shyness. It then outlines a diathesis-stress model that may account for different types of shyness, arguing that the individual differences in forebrain sensitivity may reflect a predisposition toward the dysregulation of fear responses. Furthermore, it evaluates the evidence from a series of longitudinal studies that have been conducting over the last decade with infants, preschoolers, school-aged children, and adults that corroborate this model. It closes with a discussion of how knowledge of individual differences in shyness may inform theory and practice.

This chapter reports the data derived from electrocortical and neuroimaging studies which provide strong evidence for a possible neuroanatomical circuit underlying fear responses and shyness in humans. It starts with a selective overview of the some of the key circuitry that underlies two major emotional and motivational systems — the approach and withdrawal systems. It also addresses individual differences in these basic systems, indicates how such differences might be studied, and discusses the behavioral consequences of such individual differences. In addition, it specifically considers the problem of behavioral inhibition and offers new findings on relations between prefrontal asymmetry and measures of behavioral inhibition in a longitudinal sample. Lastly, it evaluates some of the implications of these data for understanding the mechanisms that underlie behavioral inhibition. It is shown that neither the measures of brain function nor the behavioral measures of inhibition are stable from age 3 to 10 years even though measures of prefrontal activation asymmetry predict concurrent measures of behavioral inhibition.

This chapter provides new evidence of early self-awareness and its influence on the development of emotions often thought to be secondary emotions, such as shyness and showing-off. These behaviours occur in the first year of infancy, before infants are believed to be capable of self-conscious affects. It explores continuities in the development of expressions of shyness and showing-off. Both behaviours show more than merely superficial similarities over time and constitute significant evidence that self-conscious affects do not emerge from the representations of the self in the middle of the second year of human infancy, but significantly precede and very likely inform them.

Evidence to support the notion that introversions are positively linked to levels of musical performance is presented in this chapter. Whilst extraverts direct their energies outwards towards people, introverts tend to move naturally away from people, preferring to dwell in a personal, internal world of subjective experience. Underlying factors of introversion are first discussed in this chapter. The author focuses on Cattell's contributory primaries, since this will assist in gaining a clearer definition of the resultant second-order factor. Because the principal interest is introversion, the primary factor descriptions that relate to that end of the dimensions are given more attention. These include aloofness, self-sufficiency, desurgency, and shyness. This chapter stipulates that in musicians, the trait appears to manifest itself particularly in a tendency to direct energy inwards, resulting in a reserved and introspective temperament. The reason why introversion seems so critical in the musician's personality is also examined.

This chapter explores mainstream narratives regarding a particular EU migrant group in the UK, namely Roma from the Central and Eastern European EU member states — a group that has been particularly strongly associated with ‘benefit tourism’ due to a number of enduring negative stereotypes. The portrayal of Roma populations as ‘benefit tourists’ has become common within popular media over the last decade, both in the UK and the wider EU. Indeed, Roma are especially vulnerable to such characterisation, as this group has been confronted with majority populations' perceptions and media portrayal of criminality, ‘work-shyness’, and deceitfulness for many years all across the European continent. Furthermore, it is also clear that the content of popular narratives about migrant Roma and ‘benefit tourism’ is not a uniquely British phenomenon. There are prevalent discourses on Roma and welfare not only among established communities in Central and Eastern Europe but also in other locations which have experienced large-scale migration of Roma.

Chapter 10, “Charisse Jackson and Her Family,” describes a working-class African American family with two daughters. Mrs. Jackson quit her full-time, minimum-wage job in preparation for the birth of Charisse’s sister, who was born during the study. Charisse loved to do arts and crafts projects at home and at the public library, and she was proud of the number of words she could read. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson were touched by their daughter’s spontaneous acts of empathy. Charisse had an assertive personality; she knew her own mind and could hold her own in playful banter with her mother and her friends. Her “can-do” attitude convinced her parents that she had high self-esteem, but her Head Start teachers thought she was too quiet, and her kindergarten teacher told her parents that she needed to work on overcoming her shyness and improving her self-esteem.

Chapter 3, “A Chorus of Parental Voices,” is the first of two chapters examining Centerville parents’ beliefs about childrearing and self-esteem, based on interviews with a diverse sample of parents from the Millennial study. Parents invoked a shared understanding of childrearing in which cultivating children’s self-esteem was a cherished goal, crucial to children’s healthy development. This understanding, espoused with strong conviction, was not confined to the highly educated or economically advantaged. This chapter delineates the contours of this social imaginary, quoting extensively from the parents. The chapter also describes parents’ complex engagement with self-esteem, encompassing mundane exposure to ambient images as well as active, creative response, from the invention of original metaphors for expressing the meanings of self-esteem to adjusting received knowledge to fit the idiosyncrasies of their own child. Parents believed that shyness was an indicator of low self-esteem, yet exempted their own shy children from this diagnosis.

Chapter 9, “Eric Prewitt and His Family,” describes the older child in a working-class European American family. Mrs. Prewitt, who was divorced, was raising Eric and his younger brother on her own, with very little social support from her family but with help from her church and other local institutions. During the study, she graduated from community college, the first in her family to do so. Eric was a prodigiously curious child who loved music. He was fascinated by vehicles and computers and learned to read early. Although his preschool teachers were impressed by his advanced computer and literacy skills, they (and Eric’s mother) were concerned about his shyness, which they took to be a sign of low self-esteem. Eric was shy in the classroom, but not in the gym, where he was the very picture of exuberance. At his teachers’ urging, Eric began to see a therapist.

From the title poem of Some Trees onward, the impersonality of John Ashbery’s work has been conceptualized as primarily defensive in nature. This chapter argues that Ashbery’s use of ekphrasis involves identifications with the visual give way to a sort of shyness that is generative rather than repressive. This bashful aesthetic is evident in Ashbery’s art criticism, particularly his writing about Joe Brainard. The latter’s work offers Ashbery a way of imaging a queer artistic subjectivity that transforms experiences of shame into a means of connection. Rather than reading the aesthetic in repressive terms, as something that hides the secret of sexuality, Ashbery offers a way of thinking about the aesthetic in more generous terms. This lesson sheds light on contemporary work in queer theory focused on the role of shame in the formation of identity.