Shyness is a fundamental trait associated with social-emotional maladaptive behaviors, including many forms of psychopathology. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that hyper-responsivity to social and emotional stimuli occurs in the frontal cortex and limbic system in shy individuals, but the relationship between shyness and brain-wide functional connectivity remains incompletely understood...

A number of studies have suggested that shyness and sociability may be orthogonal dimensions of personality, each of which is associated with distinct behavioral and psychophysiological correlates, and that a combination of shyness and sociability may be a risk factor for illicit drug use. We examined whether self-reported shyness, sociability, and sensation seeking measures predicted substance...

Shyness is a debilitating experience for a large proportion of the population. Shyness can be defined as a form of excessive selffocus, a preoccupation with one’s thoughts, feelings, and physical reactions and may vary from mild social awkwardness to total social inhibition. This article explores shyness, its prevalence and effects and examines the role of the internet in the experience and exp...

Researchers have suggested that individual differences will help to determine which online communication tools appeal to and are used by different individuals. With respect to the domain of computer-mediated communication, shyness is a particular personality trait of interest, as forums provide opportunities for social interactions that shy individuals might otherwise avoid. The present study i...

Previous empirical studies have shown that the personality trait of shyness, either alone or in combination with varying levels of sociability (i.e., a socially-conflicted profile--high shyness with high sociability) to be a reliable predictor of various psychopathologies, including substance abuse and mood disorders. Extending these findings to other forms of dysregulated behaviours, we examin...

Recent evidence suggests that a combination of shyness and sociability is associated with distinct behavioral and psychophysiological correlates at rest and in response to social stress and may be a risk factor for developmental psychopathology in children and illicit substance use in adolescents and young adults. Using the Cheek and Buss (1981) measurement model on the relative independence of...

A trait approach was compared to a social cognition approach in predicting discomfort in a laboratory social interaction. The relationships of trait shyness and actual-own/ought-other (AOO) self-discrepancy with multiple aspects of discomfort were evaluated. Results from a canonical correlation analysis showed that the overall relationship between these two predictors of shyness and criteria of...

A typological model of shyness as neurotic-introversion has been suggested but never evaluated. We compared the ability of two direct measures of trait-shyness (Revised Shyness scale, Social Anxiety scale) and two typological measures (additive and interactive versions of neurotic-introversion) to predict peer-rated shyness and talk-time in leaderless groups. One hundred and twenty participants...