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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 in both self‐regulation and shyness. Although self‐regulation is often conceptualized as an adaptive characteristic, there may be individual differences in the adaptiveness of high levels of self‐regulation in fear‐based temperamental styles such as shyness (Eisenberg et al., 1995; Graziano et al., 2007; Gross & Munoz, 1995; Ponitz et al., 2009). Similarly, although shyness is often conceptualized as avoidance in novel social contexts, our results suggest that not all shy children display reluctance to engage in social situations, and some of this heterogeneity may depend on children’s temperamental self‐regulation (Kagan et al., 1987, 1988).