The Temperamentally Shy Child as the Social Adult: An Exemplar of Multifinality

Developmental programming of shyness: A longitudinal, prospective study across four decades

“…The origins of shyness are multifaceted, with both biological and contextual influences affecting its developmental course (e.g., Poole, Tang, et al, 2018; Schmidt, Polak, & Spooner, 2005; Stevenson-Hinde, 2002). One line of evidence argues that some typically developing infants enter the world with a biological predisposition to become physiologically and behaviorally aroused in response to novelty (i.e., behaviorally inhibited; Garcia-Coll et al, 1984).…”

“…Previous work has shown that those born prematurely are more prone to be the recipient of overprotective parenting (e.g., Indredavik, Vik, Heyerdahl, Romundstad, & Brubakk, 2005; Jaekel, Wolke, & Chernova, 2012; Wightman et al 2007), victims of bullying, peer victimization, and social exclusion (see Day, Van Lieshout, Vaillancourt, & Schmidt, 2015, for a recent review), and have lower social competence and social skills (Dahl et al, 2006; Hoy et al, 1992; Ross, Lipper, & Auld, 1990) relative to their typically developing peers. These are key social influences that play a role in later developing or increasing patterns of shyness (Booth-LaForce & Oxford, 2008; Hastings et al, 2010; Karevold, Ystrom, Coplan, Sanson, & Mathiesen, 2012; Oh et al, 2008; Poole, Tang, et al, 2018; Rubin et al, 2010, Tang et al, 2017). These social factors may be particularly influential during adolescence as this coincides with the onset of puberty, increases in sociocognitive development, and an increased reliance on peers and need for social acceptance (Cheek, Carpentieri, Smith, Rierdran, & Koff, 1986).…”

“…It is important to have information on development starting in childhood and measured across repeated assessments, as this allows a valuable opportunity to examine trajectories of personality and information on the emergence of specific traits and the generation of hypotheses around factors involved in altering these trajectories. This is particularly relevant in the study of shyness, as previous work has illustrated heterogeneity in the developmental onset of shyness, including both early and later developing subtypes (Booth-LaForce & Oxford, 2008; Oh et al, 2008; Tang et al, 2017), which may have different underlying biological origins, different contextual influences, and different developmental outcomes (see Poole, Tang, & Schmidt, 2018, for a review). Thus, studying early developmental influences on prospectively and longitudinally measured shyness has implications for understanding heterogeneity in its developmental onset and course.…”

Shyness and sociability among extremely low birth weight survivors in the third and fourth decades of life: Associations with relationship status

“…Conflicted shyness is presumed to emerge in early childhood and has been linked to adjustment problems in children (Coplan, Prakash, O'Neil, & Armer, ). Although conflicted shyness and its adverse outcomes remain relatively stable across development, it can be influenced by a number of contextual factors (see, e.g., Poole, Tang, & Schmidt, ). Accordingly, it is particularly important to not only examine shyness, but also to further investigate conflicted shyness (i.e., a combination of shyness and sociability), since this phenotype appears to be particularly maladaptive and may account for additional variance in a range of adverse outcomes.…”

“…Here, we aimed to extend previous findings by examining whether the relatively higher shyness and lower sociability that characterized the ELBW survivors in their 20s (Schmidt et al, ) persisted to the their 30s in the same prospectively followed longitudinal cohort of ELBW survivors, and whether birth weight status was related to differences in conflicted shyness. Given that conflicted shyness is known to emerge early in life and its development is influenced by a number of contextual factors (e.g., Poole et al, ), it is possible that ELBW survivors exhibit higher conflicted shyness in adulthood due to their early exposure of a range of adverse pre‐ and postnatal adversities (Waxman et al, ).…”