and gaze aversion. Blushing, which has been found to occur more in children who exhibit high levels of positive shyness (Nikolić et al., 2016), is a physiological reaction to social evaluation and signals that the individual is perceptive to possible social judgments and social norms. Similar to a general expression of positive shyness, blushing conveys that the individual is sensitive to a possible social violation and therefore exhibits appeasement (Castelfranchi & Poggi, 1990; de Jong, 1999; Keltner & Buswell, 1997). Such a reaction has been thought to signal trustworthiness and prosocial behavior (Dijk et al., 2009; Dijk et al., 2011) and in turn is likely to reduce negative evaluation from others (de Jong, 1999). Gaze aversions have also likely evolved as appeasement mechanisms as they are thought to be signals of submission to more dominant individuals (Terburg et al., 2012; Van Honk & Schutter, 2007).
In all, low to moderate levels of self‐conscious shyness appear to have many adaptive functions in current human history. Although fearful shyness may be currently useful in some specific contexts, this subtype was likely more adaptive in our evolutionary past when unfamiliar individuals were more likely to be physically threatening. Self‐conscious shyness (i.e., positive shyness) can provide appeasement and affiliative signals to others while simultaneously providing the individual with more time to gather information regarding the given social situation. Positive shyness can protect the individual from social rejection and threat to the ego while aiding in gaining access to social and nonsocial resources. Finally, the development of smiling as seen in positive shyness has been thought to be related to physiological processes of arousal. Namely, expressions of positive shyness in early childhood, and even infancy, might exist to reduce arousal during social interaction while simultaneously engaging with another person by holding their interest and attention (Sroufe & Waters, 1976). We discuss the regulatory functions of positive shyness further in the next section on self‐regulation in the context of shyness.
What Are Some of the Regulatory Mechanisms of Adaptive Shyness?
Self‐regulation is one critical factor that has been heavily implicated in our understanding of shyness in general, and adaptive shyness in particular. Self‐regulation has been long regarded as a key component of temperament and personality (Posner & Rothbart, 2000; Rothbart & Bates, 1998). Broadly defined, self‐regulation encompasses the behavioral, physiological, cognitive, and affective processes that serve to modulate reactivity in order to support goal‐directed behavior (Hofmann et al., 2012). Self‐regulation is hypothesized to emerge in early infancy through increased control over orienting responses (Harman et al., 1997; Johnson et al., 1991) and continues to develop throughout the life span, displaying especially rapid development during the early preschool years (Eisenberg et al., 2004; Kopp, 1982).
Self‐Regulation and Shyness
Self‐regulation has been frequently implicated in the development and maintenance of shyness. As early as the first year of postnatal life, infants display individual differences in inhibition toward social and nonsocial novelty (Calkins et al., 1996; Kagan, 1994; Rothbart, 1988). It has been suggested that self‐regulatory capacity may lead to individual differences in behavioral inhibition (wariness in response to novelty, a proposed antecedent of shyness), such that low levels of self‐regulation may be associated with relatively higher levels of behavioral inhibition in the context of high negative reactivity (e.g., Rothbart, 1988; Rothbart & Bates, 1998). In support of this theory, shyness in adulthood has been cross‐sectionally associated with low regulation and high negative reactivity (Eisenberg et al., 1995), and longitudinally in childhood, high levels of inhibitory control (one component of self‐regulation) at 42 months was negatively associated with the trajectory of shyness over 3.5 years (Eggum‐Wilkens et al., 2016).
In addition to contributing to the development of shyness, some researchers have even proposed a distinct subtype of shyness in which regulation is of critical importance. For example, Xu and his colleagues have suggested that “regulated shyness” is observed in Chinese children and is culturally‐linked to the display of social restraint and modesty in order to maintain social harmony (Xu et al., 2007, 2008, 2009). It is possible that positive shyness in North America functions similarly to regulated shyness in China. Specifically, both positive and regulated shyness appear to be associated with regulatory mechanisms, and both may represent more socially acceptable forms of shyness compared to nonpositive or anxious shyness.
Typically, children’s ability to self‐regulate is conceptualized as a positive attribute, regarded as critical for optimal development across functional and socioemotional domains. For example, high levels of self‐regulation are known to predict positive social functioning (Eisenberg et al., 1995) and academic success (Graziano et al., 2007; Ponitz et al., 2009), whereas poor self‐regulation has been linked to behavioral problems and mental illness across the life span (Gross & Munoz, 1995). Despite these positive aspects of self‐regulation, some have suggested that there may be individual differences in the adaptiveness of self‐regulation depending on temperamental factors (see Henderson, 2010; Henderson & Wilson, 2017; and Thompson & Calkins, 1996, for reviews).
Some studies have found an interaction between shyness and aspects of self‐regulation when examining socioemotional outcomes. For example, in a sample of preschool‐aged Italian children in the school context, shyness was negatively associated with teacher‐reported prosocial behavior and popularity when preschoolers exhibited higher levels of inhibitory control, but positively associated with regulated school behaviors when children displayed lower levels of inhibitory control (Sette et al., 2018). In a separate sample of preschoolers, behavioral inhibition was positively associated with social anxiety and low social initiative only in the context of high inhibitory control (Thorell et al., 2004). Others have found a similar pattern of results when examining behavioral inhibition, inhibitory control, and anxiety in early childhood. For example, White and colleagues found that, in a sample of preschoolers with high inhibitory control, behavioral inhibition in toddlerhood increased the risk for anxiety problems in early childhood (White et al., 2011). In this same study, behavioral inhibition in toddlerhood increased the risk for anxiety problems for preschoolers with low attentional shifting. White and colleagues speculated that different aspects of self‐regulation differentially influence risk for anxiety symptoms in children with high behavioral inhibition, such that high attentional shifting serves as a protective factor and high inhibitory control serves as a risk factor.
Neural correlates of attentional shifting also have been shown to moderate the association between shyness or behavioral inhibition and socioemotional adjustment in much the same way. When individuals displayed neural correlates (e.g., N2 event–related potential response) associated with relatively strong attentional and cognitive control, shyness was positively associated with socioemotional maladjustment (e.g., Henderson, 2010; McDermott et al., 2009). This pattern of results suggests that different aspects of self‐regulation (i.e., inhibitory control and attentional shifting) may have different consequences for shy children across different domains of functioning (e.g., social adjustment, academic adjustment, psychopathology).
Our group has found a similar pattern of behavioral results using temperamental inhibitory control and attentional shifting to better understand the relation between shyness and observed social behavior in two different social laboratory contexts in a sample of preschoolers (Hassan et al., 2020). We were interested in children’s attempts at seeking social support from a relatively familiar experimenter during a frustration task where children were precluded from gaining access to a desirable toy. We also assessed children’s social engagement during a stranger approach task when a novel experimenter entered the room and attempted to engage with the child using a standardized script (Goldsmith et al., 1995). We found that attentional shifting, but not inhibitory control, moderated the association between shyness and social support seeking during the frustration task and social engagement during the stranger approach task. More specifically, we found shyness was only negatively associated with social support seeking and social engagement when individuals displayed relatively high levels of attentional shifting, and was unrelated to social behavior when individuals exhibited relatively low levels of attentional shifting.
These results provide support for the idea of heterogeneity