Culture and shyness in childhood and adolescence
Section snippets
Shyness and related constructs
Shyness refers to anxious, vigilant, and wary reactivity in challenging social settings (Asendorpf, 1991; Coplan & Armer, 2007; Rubin et al., 2009). Shy children may have the desire to engage in social interaction, but their social interaction tendency is inhibited by internal fear or low self-confidence. Shyness shares conceptual overlap, to different degrees, with related concepts that are used in developmental research to tap the experience of emotional arousal in social situations, such as
Culture: conceptualizations and research approaches
Culture has been defined as a variety of phenomena, ranging from the man-made part of the environment, the shared life style, the beliefs and values that are endorsed in a society concerning how individuals should behave (e.g., shy or assertive behavior in social interaction), to the meaning system that individuals use to understand the world (Oyserman, 2017). The definition of culture as the man-made environment may be too broad to be useful for research because human activities are present in
A contextual-developmental perspective on culture and shyness
Due to their internal anxiety, shy children are likely to display a low level of social initiative or tendency to initiate and maintain spontaneous interaction in social settings. However, shy children may exert adequate control to constrain their behavioral and emotional reactivity toward self rather than others. Values placed on social initiative and norm-based control across cultures may lead to different social evaluations of shyness and its behavioral manifestations. The culturally
Parental and peer attitudes toward shyness
In most Western societies, parents typically react to children's shy behavior with concern, disappointment, and frustration (Rubin & Mills, 1990). Moreover, parents tend to display rejection and punishment orientation and use controlling and power-assertive practices in their interaction with shy children (Rubin et al., 2009). Parental attitudes toward shyness in children may be different in other societies. Evidence on positive parental attitudes toward shyness in Chinese children came from
The display of shyness
Researchers have long been interested in cultural differences in the display of temperament and personality characteristics (e.g., Kagan, Kearsley, & Zelazo, 1978), which is based on the belief that individual experiences in socialization and social interaction may facilitate or impede the expression of the characteristics (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). Indeed, a number of studies have shown that children and adolescents in different societies may differ on shyness and related behaviors (e.g.,
Relations between shyness and social and psychological adjustment
An important argument from the contextual-developmental perspective (Chen, 2012) is that cultural beliefs and values not only affect the display of shyness but also shape its developmental significance, as indicated in its relations with adjustment. In cultures where shyness is viewed as an undesirable characteristic, children who display shy behavior are likely to receive negative social evaluations and responses, which in turn may elicit destructive reactions of shy children, such as
Issues and future directions
Research in different societies and communities has shown that cultural beliefs, norms, and values, particularly those related to socialization goals, are involved in the development of shyness in childhood and adolescence. Culture provides guidelines for individuals to judge, evaluate, and respond to shy behavior in social interaction, which is reflected in adult and peer attitudes. Culturally guided social attitudes ascribe meanings to shy behavior and, at the same time, serve to regulate the
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