Jerome Kagan Study of Shyness
When a stranger walks into a nursery full of toddlers, most of them stop playing, look at the stranger for a few seconds, and then resume playing. About 10% of the toddlers are overly shy or inhibited and will not resume play until the stranger leaves. Another 10-15% are outgoing. These “bold” children will walk up to the stranger and start asking questions.
Jerome Kagan, a psychologist at Harvard University has studied social behavior for over 20 years. He has found that shy toddlers frequently grow up to be adults with significant social anxiety. Shy children are different even in utero in that they will have a much greater increase in fetal heart rate in response to a loud noise. Bold toddlers grow up to be extroverts and in some cases may even grow up to be criminals. The bold toddler’s fetal heart rate doesn’t change in response to loud noises. These as well as other studies strongly support genetics as the primary underlying cause of social anxiety disorder.
October 5th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
I always bring up Jerome Kagan’s studies whenever someone says, “Shyness is learned, so you can unlearn it.” Someone even said “Shyness is learned by the age of two.” They usually don’t back this up by saying how something like shyness could be learned by the age of two. Just because shyness is partly genetic, however, that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it, just that we should not spend our time obsessing over the past or blaming our parents.