Читать книгу The Handbook of Solitude - Группа авторов - Страница 82

According to the contextual‐developmental perspective, culture may affect the functional meaning of children’s behaviors as indicated in their developmental outcomes. In societies where shyness is viewed as an undesirable characteristic, children who display shy behavior may receive negative social evaluations, which in turn may make the children feel frustrated and distressed. The adverse social environment and negative reactions of shy children in turn may result in the development of adjustment problems. In societies in which shyness is viewed as more normal or even desirable, however, shy children may receive social support, which helps them learn skills to function in the society, form social relationships, and develop self‐confidence and positive self‐regard. In this environment, shyness may be associated with less problems and more positive developmental outcomes.

Shyness is generally associated with adjustment problems, including social incompetence, academic difficulties, negative self‐regard, and other internalizing problems in Western cultures (e.g., Hughes & Coplan, 2010; Rubin et al., 2009; Schmidt & Buss, 2010). Liu and colleagues (2015), for example, found that shyness is associated with loneliness and depressive symptoms in Canadian children. In a 19‐year longitudinal study, Asendorpf et al. (2008) found that children rated as shy by their parents at 4 to 6 years old experienced more difficulties in establishing career and first stable partnership at the age of 23. Gest (1997) found in a longitudinal study with an American sample that shyness in childhood was associated with poor social relationships, low quality of life, and emotional distress in early adulthood.

Shyness seems to be associated with fewer negative outcomes in more collectivistic and less competitive societies. Kerr et al. (1996), for example, found that shyness was not related to career stability, income, or education level in Swedish men, though it predicted later marriage and parenthood. Kerr and colleagues (1996) explained that Swedish society was not highly competitive due to the well‐established support and welfare system. Moreover, the egalitarian values endorsed in the society might guide people to view shy behavior positively and thus reduced the differences between shy and the non‐shy men. Chen and colleagues (2009, 2020) explored, in a Chinese sample, how behavioral inhibition in toddlerhood, a temperamental antecedent of shyness, was related to social and school adjustment in childhood and adolescence. The results indicated that children who were inhibited at two years of age showed more positive social outcomes, such as peer preference and social integration, and positive school attitudes and academic achievement at age seven. Moreover, inhibited children in China continued to function competently in social and school adjustment in late adolescence. The data on behavioral inhibition in these studies were collected in early 1990s. Recent research (e.g., An & Eggum‐Wilkens, 2019; Liu et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2018; Nelson et al., 2015) suggested similar relations between shyness and adjustment problems in Chinese and North American children. In a study with Indian children, Bowker and Raja (2011) found that shyness was positively associated with loneliness and socioemotional difficulties, although the magnitude of the associations appeared smaller than that in North America. Taken together, findings from research programs in different countries indicate that cultural values may shape, to various extents, the developmental significance of shyness in terms of its relations with adjustment outcomes.

Xu and colleagues (2007) identified two distinct types of shyness in Chinese children, anxious shyness and the regulated shyness. Anxious shyness is a type of shyness that has been studied extensively in Western societies; anxious‐shy children experience fear and low self‐confidence in social situations and are concerned about social evaluation. In contrast, regulated shyness refers to acquiescent, nonassertive, and unassuming behaviors such as “behaving modestly” and “not showing‐off,” in social interactions. Different from anxious‐shy children, regulated‐shy children constrain their social initiative and activities in order to fit in the group and maintain group harmony. It is argued that children displaying regulated shyness are perceived as well‐behaved and polite (Özdemir & Cheah, 2015). A common feature of anxious shyness and regulated shyness is the low frequency of interactions that children display in social settings. According to Xu and Krieg (2014), however, the two types of shyness are associated with different adjustment outcomes. Research results have indicated that regulated shyness is positively associated with higher peer preference, effortful control, and prosocial behavior, and negatively associated with loneliness and internalizing problems, whereas anxious shyness is positively associated with social and psychological difficulties (Xu et al., 2007; Xu et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2008). Özdemir and colleagues (2015) also identified these two types of shyness and found that they were similarly associated with indexes of adjustment among children in Turkey.

An interesting question is whether nonanxious regulated shyness, which seems to represent a regulated behavior based on self‐control, is similarly associated with positive adjustment outcomes across cultures (Chen, 2019). It appears reasonable to argue that the pattern of associations between regulated shyness and adjustment is cross‐culturally similar although the magnitude of the associations may be greater in cultures, such as East Asian cultures, that place higher value on the regulation of behaviors. A related issue is the associations seem to reflect the constructive role of behavioral regulation, which tends to be positively valued and encouraged in most societies (Eisenberg et al., 2006; Zhou et al., 2009). If this is the case, Xu et al.’s work (2007) may be largely concerned with comparisons of shyness and regulation (or regulation in a specific form such as “not showing‐off”), rather than different types of shyness. It will be interesting to examine these issues in future research.