Around 10 to 15 percent of children suffer from shyness, causing them to experience anxiety in unfamiliar situations or at times when they feel they are being judged by others. Scientists already knew that this shyness can hinder children. But can you, as a young adult, still be affected by shyness from your childhood? Developmental psychologists from Radboud University and other institutions investigated this. To do so, they were able to use data from the Nijmegen Longitudinal Study (NLS), which has been following a group of 119 growing children since 1998.
‘The NLS closely monitors the social development of these children, including their level of shyness,’ explains Mallory Millett, a former PhD candidate involved in the NLS and now Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University. ‘Peer nominations were used to determine which children were shy and which were not. In these peer nominations, pupils anonymously completed questionnaires about their classmates: who are the most popular, who are the bullies and who are the shyest?’
The children were followed as they grew up between the ages of nine and twenty-one. Initially, there was an annual school visit during which the peer nominations were repeated. In addition, they completed questionnaires themselves, answering questions about their mental health and whether they had ever experienced issues such as bullying or exclusion. ‘The older they got, the more difficult the annual school visits proved to be, so data on later life is primarily based on self-reporting.’
Sensitivity to social threat
The researchers discovered that shyness may indeed have long-term consequences. ‘For instance, shy children were still sensitive to social threats, such as rejection, as young adults,’ explains Millett. ‘This also applied to so-called socially ambiguous situations: situations open to multiple interpretations.’
Millett gives an example: ‘Imagine you walk into a room, see two people talking and hear your name mentioned. If you are sensitive to social threat, you will be much quicker to think that those two are saying something negative about you.’
As well as greater sensitivity to social threat, shyness also leads to increased concern about what others think of you. This concern is linked to the extent to which a shy child is excluded. ‘Shy children who were not excluded were later less concerned about what others thought of them than shy children who were excluded.’
Exclusion more harmful than bullying
Strikingly, the impact of exclusion was greater than that of bullying. ‘Shyness combined with being bullied does not lead to additional concern about the opinions of others.’ This does not, of course, diminish the harmful consequences of bullying, Millett emphasises. ‘On the contrary, it shows just how harmful exclusion can be. In my view, that is the most important lesson from this research.’
Millett explains that exclusion, just like bullying incidentally, is sometimes difficult to spot and that it is by no means always driven by malicious intent on the part of others. ‘You can consciously ignore someone or not invite them, but it can just as easily happen unconsciously.’ Millett believes that people who work a lot with children, such as teachers and coaches at clubs, can particularly benefit from this knowledge.
‘Of course, there are also children who genuinely prefer to keep themselves a bit more aloof from a larger group, but there are also those who would like to socialise with others and experience negative consequences because their shyness prevents them from doing so. It would be good if teachers and coaches were mindful of this.’ Millett realises that it can be difficult to recognise why a child is keeping themselves a bit more aloof. ‘But you can simply ask them directly.’
Strategies for stressful social situations
The insights from this research confirm to Millett just how much more there is still to discover about the long-term consequences of shyness. She already has concrete plans for follow-up research. ‘For example, we’ve already conducted an experiment in which we had young people play small games online with strangers and observed how they behaved at that moment. And in the future, I would also find it interesting to monitor young adults shortly before, during or immediately after a situation they find nerve-wracking. For example, by having them fill in short questionnaires on their phones about what went well and what didn’t. Such research could, among other things, contribute to the development of strategies that shy people can use during nerve-wracking social situations.’
Photo: Kindred Hues Photography via Unsplash