Читать книгу The Handbook of Solitude - Группа авторов - Страница 21

Raha Hassan^*, Taigan L. MacGowan, Kristie L. Poole, and Louis A. Schmidt

McMaster University, Canada

Shyness reflects inhibition and anxiousness in social situations, and has been conceptualized as an emotion as well as an enduring characteristic of one’s personality (see Jones et al., 1986). Although shyness is a ubiquitous phenomenon that is observed across development, with estimates exceeding 90% of individuals experiencing it at some points in their lives (Zimbardo, 1977), a smaller percentage of children (~10–15%; Kagan, 1994) and adults (< 40%; Pilkonis, 1977) are characterized as dispositionally or temperamentally shy. Temperamental shyness is associated with a number of distinct physiological correlates of stress‐vulnerability, including greater relative right frontal EEG activity, high and stable heart rate at rest, and high morning basal cortisol levels (see Kagan et al., 1988; Schmidt & Miskovic, 2014; Schmidt & Schulkin, 1999, for reviews). Interestingly, these same distinct patterns of resting physiology have been identified in other mammals, including timid and cautious nonhuman primates (see Shackman et al., 2013), suggesting that temperamental shyness may be conserved across mammals. Temperamental shyness also has been linked to a range of internalizing problems (Findlay et al., 2009), but primarily social anxiety (Heiser et al., 2003; Hofmann et al., 2006; Poole et al., 2017). However, we know that not all individuals who are shy experience maladjustment. Some individuals who are shy appear to adapt reasonably well (Schmidt et al., 2017; Tang et al., 2017).

Shyness is an inherently interesting phenomenon to study, not only because of its ubiquity, but because social interaction and social connection are so fundamental to human existence, raising questions regarding the function of shyness and what purpose(s) it serves (see Schmidt & Poole, 2020a). In this chapter, we explore this broader question from evolutionary and neuroscientific perspectives. To this end, we address three specific questions organized around the broader former question: (1) Are there adaptive functions of shyness? (2) What are some of the regulatory mechanisms of adaptive shyness? and (3) How are these self‐regulatory mechanisms instantiated in the brain in adaptive shyness?