Jennifer is seven months older than Julie, but she is terrified by the whirling bingo cage. “Take the balls out,” she pleads, grabbing the arm of the chair and gesturing to the researcher and her mother. Jennifer has never been big on surprises. Videotapes of her earlier visits to the lab show her shrinking in fear from a Winnie the Pooh mobile, and steadfastly refusing to dip her fingers into a cup of water. Kagan calls her “highly reactive.” You could also call her shy.
Shyness is a nearly universal emotion; cross-cultural surveys suggest that 90 percent of all adults feel socially inhibited in certain situations. But for the 30 to 40 percent of the population that counts itself chronically shy, the tendency can be crippling. Studies indicate that shy people are more likely than others to end up maladjusted and lonely, not to mention underemployed. Until recently, researchers assumed that shyness was strictly an acquired habit. But the ground has shifted in recent decades. Many experts now agree that the trait is at least partly hereditary - that some kids are bound to experience the world as Jennifer does, no matter how they’re raised. The good news is that biology is not always destiny. Many people outgrow their inhibitions, just as some acquire them only later in life. And even the terminally shy sometimes triumph on their own terms.
Psychologists have yet to agree on a single, rigorous definition of shyness, but its symptoms are well known. In surveys, roughly half of the adults who describe themselves as shy say they blush easily and that social situations make their hearts race and their stomachs ache. Most also say they become preoccupied with the impression they’re making, and that they get awkward or reticent in public settings. The problem is not a lack of sociability; unlike introverts, who prefer solitude to society, shy people often long to be more outgoing. “The opposite of shyness is social self-confidence, not extraversion,” notes psychologist Jonathan Cheek of Wellesley College. Yet shyness is not always synonymous with low self-esteem. People who know they’re smart and attractive may still clam up in public. The question is, why?
Kagan’s interest in genetic influences dates back to 1962, when he came across data showing that shy adults had often been cautious and timid as early as the age of 3. To see whether the trait might emerge even earlier in life, before it could have been learned, Kagan and his colleagues embarked in the late 1970s on several studies of 2-year-olds. The kids were all from white, stable, middle-class families (Kagan designs his studies that way to minimize ethnic or socioeconomic influences), but they differed markedly in their responses to unfamiliar people and novel situations. Roughly 20 percent were frightened and wary, while 25 to 30 percent were consistently fearless. The two temperaments held remarkably steady over time. Follow-up studies showed that half of the timid toddlers, and 90 percent of the fearless ones, exhibited the same tendencies at the age of 7.
Kagan deduced that there might be fundamental differences in the two groups’ nervous systems. Specifically, he suspected that the inveterate wallflowers had been born with low “thresholds of excitability” in the nerve pathways that create the sensation of stress. In 1988, he tested that hypothesis by subjecting children of different ages to mildly stressful experiences (such as being asked to solve a problem or recite a string of words) and monitoring their physiological responses. As he’d predicted, the most timid kids showed the greatest fluctuation in heart rate, pupil size and skin temperature. The boldest kids showed the least.
Suggestive as they were, none of these findings documented an inborn tendency toward shyness. Critics noted that since Kagan’s subjects had all spent two years in the world by the time they entered his lab, experience alone might still account for their differences. So he started recruiting even younger subjects. In newly completed experiments, he and psychologist Nancy Snidman examined more than 300 infants, starting at the age of 4 months, to gauge their responses to strange sights, sounds and smells. Once again, two temperaments emerged. Twenty percent of the infants consistently thrashed about and cried when surprised, while 30 percent showed the serenity of little Zen masters. What’s more, follow-up studies showed that the easily agitated newborns were the most likely to become fearful toddlers.
If these infancy studies leave any doubt that shyness is in some part congenital, other recent findings should cinch the case. Adam Matheny Jr., of the University of Louisville School of Medicine, has shown that identical twins are more likely than fraternal twins (who share fewer genes) to share a tendency toward shyness or sociability. Other scientists have shown that shy people are more likely than others to have blue eyes, thin faces and hay fever (all products of heredity). As one psychologist was moved to declaim, “The genetically influenced synchronization of patterns is clearly apparent.”
Yet no one contends that a fearful child is destined to suffer a lifetime of shyness. The fact is, most people eventually outgrow the tendency. Kagan’s studies suggest that whereas 20 out of 100 children will be highly reactive as infants, only 16 of the 20 will be shy at age 2, and only 10 will remain so at age 6. By adulthood, fewer than half of the original 20 will qualify as shy (even if they’re not Ethel Mermans). Moreover, many people who show no predisposition as babies become shy in the course of growing up.
Psychologists are vague on just how life experience figures into these phenomena. Kagan suspects that shyness is triggered by “stressors” in a child’s environment, such as “marital quarrels, illness in the family or the presence of a dominating older sibling.” Jonathan Cheek, the Wellesley psychologist, points to a lack of “emotional expressiveness in the family” and a “perceived lack of parental support.” Arnold Buss, of the University of Texas at Austin, blames late-blooming shyness on parents who overemphasize correct behavior. Unfortunately, none of this can be stated as fact. “Although a vast number of investigators have attempted to relate children’s social behavior to the child-rearing behavior of their parents,” notes Jens Asendorpf of the Max-Planck Institute for Psychological Research, in Munich, “there is no clear evidence that shyness is associated with particular parenting styles.”
Even so, common sense suggests that parents can help their kids become socially competent, simply by nurturing self-esteem and a sense of belonging. “If children are eased into situations, and if they’re not hit with too much stimulation and too much novelty all at once, they can develop their own adaptations,” says Mary Rothbart of the University of Oregon. The trick, she and other psychologists agree, is to accept timid children as they are, and to avoid apologizing or speaking for them when they’re slow to come forward. Arden Watson, of Penn State University, has found that reading stories and writing letters can help shy kids feel more confident, by enhancing their language skills. So can games that involve conversations with make-believe strangers. Sometimes temperament still prevails. But there are worse fates than growing up shy. William Blake could scarcely utter a public sentence, so he made his pronouncements on paper. They turned out just fine.
Charles is such a bashful mouse he can’t bring himself to say please or thank you, play with other mice or even go near a phone. To avoid dancing, he pretends to be asleep - for a week. Rather than speak to a shopkeeper, he hides in a flour sack. But when his baby sitter has an accident and needs emergency service (rhymes with “nervous”), Charles behaves heroically. The lovingly observant illustrations, as enchanting as the story, reinforce the real moral: it’s OK to be shy.
