Читать книгу The Handbook of Solitude - Группа авторов - Страница 22

Temperaments are early‐emerging, biologically based, and stable traits that can provide individuals with diverse behavioral strategies that allow them to gain access to resources, reproduce, and coexist within a social hierarchy (Kagan, 1994). The shy‐bold continuum, for example, is commonly observed in nonhuman animal species of fish, birds, and mammals (Wilson et al., 1994). Within this continuum, some individuals are more biologically inclined to exhibit risk‐taking behavior and approach toward novel stimuli (i.e., bold behavioral strategy) whereas others will display fear and avoidance in response to unfamiliar objects, individuals, and situations (i.e., shy behavioral strategy; Groothuis & Carere, 2005; Koolhaas et al., 1999; Wilson et al., 1994). Similarly, temperamental behavioral inhibition can be assessed in humans, with these observed tendencies being evident from infancy throughout development (Kagan, 1994). While behavioral inhibition and the shy‐bold continuum tend to focus on the extent to which an individual experiences approach or avoidance motivations toward any unfamiliar stimulus, there are also individual differences in responses to unfamiliar stimuli that are of a social nature. Specifically, some individuals will exhibit bolder behaviors with social conspecifics while others tend to experience fear and anxiety when interacting with unfamiliar social partners and when encountering new social situations (see Schmidt & Schulkin, 1999, for a review). Although both responses can be viewed as adaptive, wariness and fear are not always acknowledged to have value in our evolutionary past or in more recent human history. Given how conserved the shy‐bold continuum and phenotype appear to be across a range of animal species, it likely has served an important function to species’ survival throughout evolution.