friday, november 18, 1977
section b
page 3
Is shyness America's no. 1 disease?
V i 4
By Ray Walden
A band of sweat begins to trickle down
your forehead. Heart pounding and
stomach churning, a rush of heat sweeps
over to your cheeks. You haven't moved a
muscle, but surely everyone in the room
can see the agony you're going through
the chaos in your mind.
Now then, what was the question?
Why are they all staring? Waiting? Jud
ging? Wouldn't it be great to turn invisible
and walk away thumbing your nose as you
go?
More than 80 percent of us have been
shy at some time in our lives, according to
a study published this year by Stanford
University psychologist Philip Zimbardo.
Forty percent of Americans claim to be
shy now, Zimbardo found in a survey of
more than 5,000 people, mostly college
students.
He outlines the nature and surprising
scope of the shyness problem in "Shyness:
What It Is. What to Do About It" (263
pages, Addison-Wesley, $9.95).
His survey results offer a mix of opti
mism and gloom for shy people. Half of
the subjects who have been shy now claim -to
be cured. However, a quarter of those
surveyed always have been shy and still
are. This includes a four-percent slice
labeled "true-blue shy," people who are
shy all of the time in all situations and with
almost all people. In contrast, seven
percent claim to have never had shy
feelings.
That makes shyness a nearly universal
experience. But what is it?
"Shyness spans a wide psychological continuum," according to Zimbardo. "It can
vary from occasional feelings of awkwardness in the presence of others all the way to
traumatic episodes of anxiety that totally disrupt a person's life. For some people, shy
ness seems to be a chosen, preferred style of life; for others, it is an imposed life
sentence without possibility of parole."
At first blush, shyness may appear to be a personality disorder, finding cause in "un
conscious conflicts raging deep within the psyche." That is the psychoanalytic view.
Other branches of psychology view it as an inherited personality trait, a failure to learn
social skills or a product of social conditions which stress competition, individual
success and personal responsibility for failure.
. .the shy may seem cool and aloof to
others when they are really yearning
for approval. .
- Zimbardo acknowledges all of these approaches, except for the one claiming genetic
causes. But he puts more emphasis on the thought that shy people are shy because they
say they are.
Almost everyone shows signs of shyness at times. Your heart pounds when you make
a speech. Your palms are wet a you pick up the phone to make a date with a person
you recently met. You come up short of words when a professor startles you out of a
daydream. '
The difference between the shy and the non-shy, Zimbardo asserts, is that the latter
recognized that their shy reactions are caused by an awkard situation and the former
pin the blame on themselves. Similarly, the shy often have low self-esteem..
The shy person lacks respect for himself, so he expects others to Judge him negative
ly, llis tendency to be introspective and even egocentric leads him to believe that others
are judging him all the time. This self-consciousness dominates him at moments when he
should be concentrating his thought on the outward situation.
In this way, the shy may seem cool and aloof to others when they really are yearn
ing for approval, but because they don't expect to receive it they protect themselves
from criticism by withdrawing into themselves.
Zimbardo uses a metaphor of a prisoner and guard. In a prison the guard sets up rules
of behavior and enforces them and the prisoner obeys. The more demanding and brutal
the guard becomes, the meeker the prisoner is. As a result, the guard becomes more con
temptuous of him and more restrictive. '
A shy person carries both the guard and prisoner in his head, Zimbardo wrote. The
prisoner side of him wants to be free, to be sociable. But the guard side puts the clamps
'on.: ' " ' ' ' . .. .. . ..
This makes the prisoner of shyness envy the easy talker while he stays silent himself.
He turns down a party invitation, then sits at home alone and broods over his loneliness.
The shy are afraid of failure and convinced that they will fail. This can become a
self-fulfilling prophesy and the shy person may take a dive rather than deal with unex-
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pected success. Even when success comes, the, self-described loser may play it down
"any dummy could have done that."
Zimbardo contends the shy can change if they want to. First, they must recognize
they can change. There is no such thing as "the real me," he argues.
"You can change the direction of your entire life any time you choose to do so,"
he wrote. His book devotes about 100 pages to a game plan for conquering shyness.
The strategy begins with self-awareness. The shy person, who normally is too intro
spective, becomes even more so in order to identify the nature of his shyness-when he
is shy, who makes him shy, how he acts when he is shy.
He finds that he has erected a series of barriers between himself and other
people. When he has discovered what those barriers are, he begins to break them down
by attacking them in sequence, beginning with the easiest and least threatening.
"No go out and take a risk," Zimbardo advises at one point.. "Do something 'scary
that you would like to, ought to, but have been avoiding."
The scary" stunt might be something commonplace, but threatening for the shy
person. Such as caling Directory Assistance to ask for a phone number. Later, he works
up to making small talk with people in theatre lines, beginning conversations with stran-
gers and (horrors, horrors) asking someone for a date.
All along the line, the patient, who is acting as his own therapist and with the
guidance of the book, is learning social skills and practicing them. At first he rehearses
encounters before they happen. He plays a role to protect his ego. Later, so the theory
goes, the social skills become spontaneous. The shy person becomes more and more
confident and positive about himself. The shyness circle is broken.
Shyness therapy is aimed at giving a person control over his life, freeing him from the
prison guard which reigns in his personality and stunts his growth, according to
Zimbardo. But his strategy for doing this leaves the author, who directs a shyness clinic
at Stanford, open to criticism.
'Little is to be gained by transforming
two-fifths of society into shallow
social animals.9
His suggestions for meeting people, for starting and prolonging conversations, for
making dates, include some which are trite and superficial. Phony, by definition if you
have to rehearse first.
"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?' is a suggested line for opening a
conversation.
Shyness, while it may be painful, at least tends to be honest. Little is to be gained by,
transforming two-fifths of society into shallow social animals.
Despite this flaw, the shy do have much to gain from an effective program to
conquer shyness and raise self-esteem. However, as Zimbardo points out, therapy deah
with one person at a time, reversing damage already done. Meanwhile, the real problem
lies with a society that generates shyness.