A shy child who became a shyish adult, Emma Jacobs decided to investigate the science of a complex character trait.
I don’t remember much Italian from the abortive attempt I made to learn the language in Perugia at the age of 18. A few words, however, are lodged in my memory.
“Rosso, rossa!” the teacher called out to the class, pointing at my furiously blushing cheeks. Which is how I learnt Italian for red. Not that I ever said the word out loud.
I was a shy child who morphed into a shyish teenager. On my first night at university, I stood awkwardly behind various other freshers playing Space Invaders in the games room, willing someone to turn round and say hi, unable to make the first move. Being shy wasn’t all bad. When it came to dating, it was often misconstrued as cool indifference.
Over the next three years, my social awkwardness eased before returning with a vengeance as I started work. My first professional experience was as a researcher in parliament and then in TV. There didn’t seem to be any upside to the character trait here. Aloofness might serve the head of a company or a star employee, but not a young unknown hoping to make an impression.
I set myself small challenges: say one thing at a meeting, then two; speak to the next person on my left at an event, or behind me in a conference buffet queue. It seemed to work. Or perhaps I was just getting older. I felt my shyness dissipate. I never dominated a room but I could hold my own and, more importantly, once I became a journalist, I could forge a connection with interviewees as part of my job.
Apart from occasional bouts of public speaking or panels, I didn’t blush during social interactions, feel my heart race or hear the click of my dry mouth opening and closing. For years, I didn’t think about shyness at all.
Then the pandemic struck, and my social awkwardness reappeared. Not at first, of course, because I didn’t see anyone except my family. But over time, a gaucheness crept in over team video calls, sometimes rendering me mute even when my mic was on. I was hardly alone in these feelings. A study conducted during the pandemic found that undergraduates at one university reported higher levels of shyness than their predecessors. At times I wanted to tell colleagues, to explain why I’d gone so quiet. But at the same time, outing myself as “shy” seemed pathetic, as though by saying the word out loud I was pathologising a normal emotion or demanding attention.
My son turned eight in the first year of the pandemic. At times I noticed him struggling to socialise. When he joined a new football club, he kept himself separate, standing to one side except during matches. “Why don’t you talk to the others?” I said one day. “You’ll enjoy the game more.” “Why don’t you?” he responded. It was a fair accusation. I’d hardly talked to any of the parents. Had I accidentally become a shy role model or was it hard-wired?
The study of shyness
In 1974, Ray Crozier was in his first job as a psychology lecturer at South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education in Wales, now Cardiff Metropolitan University. While working in the library one day he stumbled across a 1965 study by an American psychologist, Andrew Comrey, which listed shyness alongside compulsion, hostility and neuroticism as measurable personality traits.
It was the first time he had ever seen shyness mentioned in an academic context. “That really intrigued me,” he said. Crozier was 28 and had just completed his PhD in the science of decision-making, but the study gave him a new focus, and he began combing through the literature on shyness. He found it was variously referred to as introversion, withdrawn behaviour or low sociability, a jumble of terms which “led to endless confusion”.
In 1979, Crozier published a paper suggesting that “anxious self-preoccupation” — an intense concern about how one appears to others — was at the heart of shyness and triggered reticence. His work was part of a growing academic interest in the field, including by Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison experiment, in which students given the roles of prison guards became increasingly sadistic. Zimbardo viewed shyness as a self-imposed “prison of silence”, and later set up a clinic to help sufferers break free.
Interest in the subject grew in a number of fields beyond psychology — psychiatry, education, culture. “It is quite, quite extraordinary how it’s expanded over the years,” said Crozier, who is currently honorary professor in the school of social sciences at Cardiff University. His working definition of shyness is wanting to interact with other people and being disappointed with the way those interactions play out. “You’re definitely people-oriented, but you’re finding it quite hard to find a role in certain circumstances.”
When I asked Crozier if he thought I was shy, he hesitated. After studying the topic for almost five decades, he’s learnt not to assess people on their outward appearance. “You associate shyness [as] just being withdrawn, and a lot of shy people are. But then you’ll meet people who seem most poised [and] say, ‘Oh no, I am really shy.’ You have to respect that.” It’s what makes the subject so interesting, he said. And it makes the research harder. Shyness is not just a trait but also a state. Like happiness or sadness, most people will experience shyness at some point in their lives, at a presentation, on a first date or going to a party where they don’t know anyone.
Academic interest in the topic, Crozier believes, reflects rising insecurity about how we should present ourselves in social situations, partly thanks to the democratisation of society. In the past, “if you were a farmer, you behaved like a farmer, and if you were an aristocrat, you knew your place. Social interactions [were] more regulated by the role you played.”
There are upsides to shyness, Crozier told me. He says coy smiles are important for infants forming a relationship with the caregiver, signalling a vulnerability and need for affection. A study published in 2012 found that babies as young as four months old produced more coy smiles during an interaction with a stranger than with their parents. The authors called this “positive shyness” — an emotion with “the specific social function of regulating our interactions by improving trust and liking, and showing politeness”.
In recent years, Crozier has been investigating blushing. Blushers tend to hate the involuntary phenomenon, which can draw attention to us when we least want to be noticed. But a blush can convey an apology or display a sense of modesty, he notes. If you knock over tins in a supermarket and blush furiously, people become sympathetic. A blush can take the “edge off any aggression from the other person, or rejection”. Onlookers feel more positive about someone if they blush.
Crozier is not immune to occasional self-consciousness. As a child he would “be envious of people who could shout in the street and call out to their friends and crack jokes. I never felt able to at that age.” Today, he experiences pangs occasionally, not in a seminar or lecture, where he has “a very clear role” but “sitting in a pub with a group of people, I find it quite hard to know what to say... But again, I think people do.”
The more I spoke to researchers, the more reassurance I found. Nejra Van Zalk at Imperial College London is a firm believer that shyness is not something to be eradicated. “It’s part of the human experience. To think it should be removed is wrong.” Robert Coplan, a professor of psychology at Carleton University in Canada who has researched childhood shyness and social withdrawal, told me: “Shyness is neither good nor bad. It’s a general tendency.”
A safe space
One Saturday afternoon last winter I attended a meeting of the London Shyness Social Group (LSSG), a volunteer-run community which organises events for people who consider themselves shy, introverted or both. Its online group has more than 16,000 members. “Our aim is to provide a safe space with a wide variety of social events and clear descriptions of what each event entails,” the website reads.
Today’s meeting was in an upstairs room of a Caffè Nero in central London. I was struck by the contradiction of what I was about to do: talk about shyness to a group of strangers. Feeling like a fraud, I wondered if I should ramp up my timidity to fit in, perhaps gaze at my feet? Another meeting was being held across the room, for introverts. Some LSSG members see themselves as both shy and introverted, while others describe themselves as shy extroverts, or fearless introverts.
Ning, the organiser of the event, had close-cropped black hair and a bright orange T-shirt. Attentive and chatty, he ensured everyone was comfortable, helping people find a seat and introducing them. “I’m quite good at putting up a different front,” he told me. “Inside I’m nervous.” His role as organiser eased his self-consciousness, he said, though he liked to sit near the edge of the room in case he needed a break.
The group included an ex-journalist and a charity worker. Some spoke exceptionally quietly, one fidgeted when it was his turn to talk. All shared vivid memories of shy agonies. Lauren, an academic with short blonde hair, said that when she was a child, her mother would send her to the shop with a written list to hand over to the shopkeeper in case she was struck mute with nerves. Amy (not her real name) spoke so softly that I had to lean in close to hear her describe how her shyness emerged 20 years ago when she arrived in London from Hong Kong. All described their frustration at a world shaped for the bold and boisterous, particularly the workplace. One recalled how she was criticised in the office for her shyness and told she needed to “have more personality”.
A man with a buzz cut and a checked shirt wandered over from the introverts’ group. Both shy and introverted people might avoid social activities, he said, but the former will probably do it from fear, and the latter from preference. That chimed with what Crozier had told me: “Introverts are people happy with their own company. Shy people want company and are unhappy about accessing it.”
Many members of LSSG have not yet attended a meeting, such as Katarina, a part-time psychology student who also works in a care home. Shyness is “a way of protecting myself from other people, or the potential to be emotionally hurt”, she told me over the phone. She knows it also stops her living a full life. “If I were less shy, then maybe I could be more open to new experiences. I feel like I’m... in a constant state of waiting.” Katarina agreed to talk to me because she felt another shy person might recognise their own experiences in hers and feel less alone.
Later I spoke to Neil, a volunteer at the Social Anxiety Alliance, a charity. When he was in his early twenties, his nervousness around social interactions became so bad that he would become flustered just making small talk in an open-plan office. “I dreaded the phone ringing, I dreaded lunch with colleagues.” Those feelings gradually became worse. He began to experience lightheadedness and difficulty getting his words out, even when he was at home with housemates.
Socialising began to feel as stressful as a difficult job interview. It wasn’t until he was in his thirties that he discovered the concept of social anxiety. He joined a cognitive behavioural therapy group and learnt techniques that enabled him to focus on the situation rather than constantly looking inward.
Social anxiety disorder is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a “persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny”. The sufferer fears they will act in an embarrassing and humiliating way, including by exhibiting symptoms of their anxiety. Being in the feared situation can produce panic attacks.
Some see the idea of social anxiety disorder as an example of the modern tendency to medicalise natural human characteristics. The late author Hilary Mantel wrote in 2009: “As drug patents expire, the pharmacological companies invent new illnesses, such as social anxiety disorder, for which an otherwise obsolete formulation can be prescribed. For this ruse to work, the patient must accept a description of himself as sick, not just odd; so shyness, for example, becomes a pathology, not just an inconvenient character trait.” Initially I had some sympathy for this view. But speaking to Neil, and others, softened my perspective. While shyness is something many of us feel at times, social anxiety disorder is rarer and more debilitating.
Not loud but proud
In December last year, I attended another meeting of the LSSG, this time at Massaoke (mass karaoke), where people sing along to a live band. The theme of the night was Christmas. Ning handed out glow sticks and fluorescent Minnie Mouse ears. As “Fairytale of New York” played, I got into an argument with an interloper who said he was not shy but had come along because he didn’t have any friends. “Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last!” the room sang, as the man told me shy people were self-obsessed. I started to see why he might have few confidantes.
The LSSG group might not have appeared shy to onlookers as they raised their arms and waved their glow sticks, though I noticed that almost everyone averted their eyes when singing.
A few months later, I visited a karaoke booth below a hotel in Bloomsbury. Outside, blossom was on the cherry trees. The venue smelled of booze and damp carpets. The gathering this time was quieter. Two men with long black hair held microphones and sang “We Built This City”. Their voices were so soft that it was hard to hear the words. In between songs, the room fell silent.
Ning, as ever, was expansive and hospitable. The companionship of the shyness community had helped him, he said. “I don’t need to explain to people. I don’t need to go to places that I feel really uncomfortable with.” The pandemic taught him, and fellow members, that there are alternatives to the way the world operates: people don’t need to go to the office to work, nor the pub to socialise. Shy people “start to feel they have more options”, he said. “Even eight or nine months after the pandemic we’re still doing online stuff. [There] are also really low-pressure activities... a walk in the park... or just play [board] games.”
Calling himself shy has helped him “understand myself a little bit more, appreciate myself, not criticising but appreciating myself”. He would like the community to feel proud. “People say, ‘I’m shy,’ and that may mean, ‘I’m inferior.’ All they can think about is only the negative. We want to change stuff. When we talk about shyness, there’s always something positive for us to talk about.”
Shyness v identity
After months of socialising, my own shyness had faded again. But when Ning asked in the karaoke booth if I would like to sing a song, I was gripped by nerves. Grabbing the microphone and belting out a Barry White number would surely prove I had vanquished my self-consciousness and provide this article with a neat conclusion. In the end I couldn’t.
Shyness has always lurked somewhere within me, ready to bubble up and deflate again. It is shape-shifting, fleeting, unpredictable. So many people told me in hushed tones that they, too, were shy, particularly after months of social distancing.
I learnt that it can bring its own positives, such as an ability to listen, to not blurt out chaotic thoughts to fill conversational gaps. Shutting up is occasionally useful. As Joe Moran wrote in his excellent book Shrinking Violets, why don’t we seek to cure the “insufferably bumptious”?
But I also came to believe that shyness is not an identity. Rather, as Robert Coplan said, it’s a personality trait, along with many others that explain the differences in how we act and behave. Shyness can feel uncomfortable but ultimately it speaks to a yearning for companionship. And that thought is a solace.
- Emma Jacobs is an FT features writer
Written by: Emma Jacobs
© Financial Times
