I like smiling and a lot of people who meet me for the first time say that I like your smile, but actually, the only person who knows the truth is I, myself. I smile even constantly when being around with other people, especially if it’s the first occasion, because I’M REALLY SHY. I feel kind of uncomfortable when talking to people I’m not familiar with. My inside world is like a little baby trying her best to not act awkwardly but in fact almost shake with fear, so I can just put on smiles to cover up. But don’t worry, I don’t have autistic disorder. I’m just shy, and these are my true feelings from psychological aspect.
In fact I don’t want to act like this. I want to talk naturally with others instead of being shy, so I start keeping an eye on myself—paying attention to my own behaviors when contacting with people and every time I perform actions. I ask myself why I’m acting this way. (Conduct an experiment on myself) As time goes on, I realize that I’m zealous in texting; some times I prefer sending emails back home instead of talking straightly with the unfamiliar person; I tend to feel more uncomfortable when talking to boys than girls. (I feel more difficult talking with opposite- sex than with same- sex)
Then I came up with some ideas regarding each action and also did research on these three facets hoping to take a step forward by consulting professional studies. As for my first “symptom”, I’m curious of its reason. I found a research reveals that actually there are multiple motives for shy people to love texting, and the top among them is to increase personal contact. Additionally, decreasing loneliness plays an important role. After dwelling on the result, I think it is believable because it fits my inner feeling.
For my second behavior, I wonder if my shy personality impact the favor of types of communication media. I discovered a study shows that “Extraversion and Neuroticism are significant predictors of media preferences”, so YES– shy people’s traits do influence their communication media preferences: prefer e-mail to face- to- face conversation. However, I do think the research is not perfect because the sample is somewhat small, and I remember that Andrew told us in class: the larger the crowd being tested, the preciser the result going to be. Maybe it will be more compelling to bring in more people to conduct the study.
Regards to my third motion, I noticed an examination of “help-seeking behaviors of shy and not-shy men and women”. As a result, shy group appears to seek help less easily from opposite- sex compared to same- sex. Though this examination narrows down my scale of discussion from “general talk” to “help- seeking”, it can still tell us that there may be a correlation between shy trait and preference of same- sex when speaking to other people. Andrew’s formula jumps out of my head again: correlation ≠ causation, so at this point we can’t say shy personality causes this sex preference during talk.
To tell the truth, the most amazing fact apart from the experiments’ result I realize is that conducting studies to oneself is really a fabulous idea. By doing this, we can not only find out something interesting, also it helps us to know better of ourselves and raise our self- awareness at the same time which is an extremely significant breakthrough.
I love this topic!! I am on the opposite side of the spectrum. All my life I have been outgoing, and sometimes a little too outgoing. I always say whats on my mind and sometimes I wish I was shy! I would love to see the science behind why I’m outgoing, but it really helps to see the science of why people are shy. Interestingly enough, I hate talking on the phone but love texting. Kind of weird but cool!!
Growing up and all throughout high school, I was always known for being shy. When I got to college I knew that I wanted to step out of my comfort zone because I didn’t want to be known as the shy girl all the time. I think it is interesting as to how many personality types there are around the world. Because I was always the shy one, I never understood how some people could be so outgoing and extroverted. In this article I found, it says how shyness doesn’t have to start in your childhood and that some people go from outgoing to more shy over their lifetime instead of the other way around. I found that interesting because most of the time you see someone go from being really shy to more outgoing because they may start to feel more comfortable in their surroundings.