Most of us would admit to being shy, at least in some situations. Are we born shy or do we develop shyness? What are the main components or characteristics of shyness? If you are a shy person, what can you do to make the most of your shyness? In this Essay, I attempt to address these questions and explore the research on shyness.
A Necessary Component: A Sense of Self.
How do we know that individuals are not born with a sense of self? Research indicates that the initial signs of a sense of self first seem to appear at about six months of age, emerging gradually and becoming more refined over a period of about a year (Damon & Hart, 1982; 1988; Lewis, Sullivan, Stranger & Weiss, 1989). For example, a child of about six months will reach out and try to touch his or her image in a mirror as if it were another child. But, how do we know that the child really recognizes himself or herself in the mirror and is not just reaching out to touch someone else who is willing to do exactly as he or she does? To answer this question, researchers dabbed red rouge on children's noses and then placed the children in front of a mirror. At around 15 to 18 months of age, when seeing the rouge, the children would touch their own nose, not the image of it in the mirror (Gallup & Suarez, 1986). Thus, by 15 to 18 months of age, children have some sense of what their faces should look like and are curious about variations of it. The evidence showing that a sense of self does not begin to emerge until 6 months of age supports the idea that individuals are not born with a sense of self. Without an inborn sense of self, there is no way that, we can be born shy. But why do we believe we are born shy? What other factors play a role in shy behavior? The Role of Inhibited TemperamentAlthough there is no evidence that we are born shy, approximately 15 to 20 percent of infants are born with what Dr. Jerome Kagan of Harvard University (Kagan, 1994) and his colleagues (Kagan, Reznick, & Snidman, 1988) refer to as an inhibited temperament.
