Speaking of Psychology: Born bashful? Learning how to manage shyness, with Bernardo Carducci, PhD

Have you ever felt awkward, worried or tense during social encounters, especially with people you don’t know? We’ve probably all felt shy at one time or another, but for some people the shyness is so intense it can keep them from interacting with others even when they want or need to – leading to problems in relationships and even at work. In this episode, Bernardo Carducci, PhD, gives advice and tips to shy people who want to understand and manage their reticence.

Bernardo Carducci, PhD, is professor of psychology at Indiana University Southeast, where he has taught classes on personality psychology and introductory psychology for more than 35 years. He is also the director of the Indiana University Southeast Shyness Research Instituteopens in new window and author of The Shyness Workbook: 30 Days to Dealing Effectively With Shynessopens in new window.

In addition to his research into shyness, Carducci has written on such topics as teaching activities to enhance classroom instruction, student development and career opportunities for psychology majors. His work has appeared in Teaching of Psychology, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, Teaching Psychology: A Handbook, and many other publications on teaching.

Audrey Hamilton: We’ve all felt shy, right? At one time or another most of us have felt awkward or worried in unfamiliar social situations. You might have children who hide behind your legs during an entire birthday party rather than play with other kids. A 2011 report in the journal Pediatrics found that approximately half of all teenagers consider themselves shy. Shyness isn’t a disorder but it can make life difficult for children and adults. In this episode, we talk with a psychologist who has been helping shy people for more than 35 years. He tells us you can’t really take the shyness out of people but you can manage it and it might not be as hard as you think. I’m Audrey Hamilton and this is Speaking of Psychology.

Audrey Hamilton: Bernardo J. Carducci is a professor of psychology at Indiana University Southeast where he is the director of the Indiana University Southeast Shyness Research Institute. He is one of the leading experts on shyness and has published numerous books and guides, helping children, teens, parents and other adults understand and manage their shyness. Welcome, Dr. Carducci.

Bernardo Carducci: Please, call me Bernie and thank you for having me here today. This is a real honor.

Audrey Hamilton: Well Bernie, first of all I’m curious, how did you get into researching about shyness?

Bernardo Carducci: When people find out I know something about shyness, that’s the very first question that they ask me. And I tell people that in high school, I was a very, very shy kid and I had virtually no dates in high school and as I tell people if you look at my high school album, it wasn’t that I was an unattractive kid. I think that I was pretty good looking. I was athletic and played football. I had lots of friends. I went to a neighborhood school, so I knew everybody, but I just couldn’t talk to these girls. So, I read this article on shyness and I said “My gosh. That’s me.” And it said some things that what you might try to do to deal with your shyness. And I start doing those things. And then when I got into college, if I had a chance to write a paper or something, I did it on shyness and then I started doing some research on shyness. And so I tell people, I work on my shyness every day. I call myself what I refer to as being a successfully shy person. Somebody who tries to understand the nature, the dynamics of their shyness and work on that every day.

Audrey Hamilton: You often hear children being labeled as shy. You said you were a shy kid. Many times it’s not necessarily considered a positive quality when that label is put on someone. How do you define it and is it a negative personality trait?

Bernardo Carducci: First and foremost, it’s not a negative personality trait. It’s not a character flaw. It’s not a disease. It’s simply a description of the individual. How they respond – how they behave. And when I think about shyness, the way I think about shyness is that it involves – the character feature of shyness involves excessive self-consciousness and excessive negative critical self-evaluation.

We say, think about being in front of a mirror. When you look in front of a mirror – I don’t care who you are – most people don’t say “oh my god, how beautiful I am.” The first thing they do when they look into a mirror is they primp. They focus on the hair, they adjust their tie and collar, they focus on their faults because a mirror makes you self-conscious and if you’re self-conscious you focus on your negative characteristics. So we say, think about shy people as having a mirror held in front of them all day long, particularly in social situations.

So that’s what shyness – that’s what shyness is. It’s negative self-critical evaluation. And it’s not a negative characteristic. The problem with shyness is that people – shy people don’t understand the nature of the dynamics of their shyness. So their shyness holds them back from their dreams and their goals. What shy people need to do is to understand those dynamics of their shyness so that they can control their shyness instead of their shyness controlling them. So that’s the real problem of shyness is that it controls you instead of you controlling your shyness.

Audrey Hamilton: What’s the difference between shyness and introversion? Why do we need to acknowledge that?

Bernardo Carducci: Sure. There’s a really, really big difference. If you think about shyness and introversion, they may look very much the same. So at a party, as social situation, you’ll see a shy person and an introvert up against the wall. The big difference is that the introvert prefers to be there. They prefer to be away – slightly withdrawn from social situation – particularly the social stimulation allow this. Shy people are standing against that wall because they feel they have to. They don’t know what else to do. They don’t want to be there. They feel that they have to be there. Shy people have more in common with extroversion than they do with introversion. Shy people truly want to be social. They want to be around other people. They’ll go to parties, they’ll go to clubs, they’ll go to bars. The problem is they show up, they don’t know what to do, they get frustrated and they leave.

A critical dynamic of shyness is what we call the “slow to warm up” effect. It takes shy people a little bit longer to warm up. And as a result of that, a big mistake that shy people make – a huge mistake is that they’re going to go to a social function. They think, okay, I’ll show up late – party starts at 9 – I’ll get there at 10:30 – they’ll be lots of people there, I’ll be able to mingle, nobody will notice me because I’ll just kind of blend in – that’s the worst thing that you can do. You do that because you don’t understand the real dynamic. Rather than showing up late, what you should do is you show up early. When you show up late, the noise level is already high. If you’re anxious, that’s going to make you even more anxious. Plus, if you have difficulty talking to people, if you show up late people are already mingling together. Groups have already started to form. So it’s much harder to break into that group. So we say don’t show up late, you show up on time. Show up early. So, when you show up early the noise level is low so you can adapt to that noise level as it gets louder. You can meet people one on one when they come in so you introduce yourself and as other people come in you introduce these people to others, as well. You become the social facilitator. That’s much easier to do.

Another tip that we recommend is engage in a quick talk. Talk to lots of different kinds of people for very brief periods of time. The big mistake that shy people make is that they think that when they get into a conversation, they have to be brilliant. That they have to be witty. That they only get one shot at this. And if they don’t have that dynamic opening line it’s over for them. Instead of having that kind of thought, make it a point to talk to lots of different kinds of people for very brief periods of time. You can always come back to somebody. But when you talk to lots of different people for very brief periods of time, you take the pressure off of yourself. Plus, when you talk to lots of different people for very brief periods of time, you start to be perceived as the kind of person who can talk to lots of different kinds of people and more importantly, lots of people can talk to you. So people start to notice that and then they come to you and you’re the person that people are talking to now.

And then when you’re at a social function be the social facilitator instead of focusing on yourself, focus on other people. You be the person that introduces others to other people. You become what we call the host to humanity. Minimize your consumption of alcohol. Alcohol, people think well you drink and it’s going to make them more interesting -- it’s going to make them more witty. Alcohol is a depressant, so it slows things down. It makes you think slower. It actually sort of works against you. Plus, when you drink to be social the problem is you begin to attribute the success to the alcohol so you feel that the only time you can be likeable, the only time that you can be social is when you’re drinking. And so what generally tends to happen is people tend to drink more and more and more. So if you know the kinds of things that you need to do, the kinds of things that we recommend you practice these kinds of things and if you do them and achieve a certain success, you get to take credit for that social success instead of attributing it to the alcohol. That gives you self-confidence. That gives you a certain sense of advocacy and when you begin to start feeling that way, you’ll want to be more social. Just like when you play tennis, if you get better at tennis, you’re going to want to play tennis. You’re going to want to play different people at different levels. The same thing is true with dealing with your – with your shyness.

Audrey Hamilton: I’m a parent of a young girl. She’s five. She’s been labeled shy many times, even when she was a baby. What sort of effect does that have on children? How do parents deal with that?

Bernardo Carducci: The effect can be how you respond to that. Typically what parents do, they tend to overprotect the child. So, they’ll intervene in social situations and kind of take over for the child. And when you do that the child doesn’t learn frustration tolerance. They don’t learn how to deal with the particular situation that they find themselves in. So, we say there are lots of things you can do and those things that we mentioned before is to understand the nature and the dynamics of shyness. First and foremost, we tell parents of shy children you need to love that child for who that child is, not for how outgoing you want that child to be.

Secondly, never ask that child to do anything that you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself. Never tell your child “oh, just go up there and talk to that kid. Don’t be afraid.” Again, we ask parents, would you go up to a total stranger and talk? Well, I would never do that. Then, how can you ask your child to do that? When you do those kinds of things, you trivialize their feeling of shyness. We say take that into consideration.

Also, go to the child’s strength. Remind them of their successes in social situations. So, they’re going to go to a party – somebody’s birthday party for the first time – say, you know you’ve been to birthday parties before – at Uncle Ralph’s house, you know. There, we play games, we have presents, we have cake. You know, we’re going to do this at Sally’s party, next week. We’re going to do the same kinds of – it’s just a different location. So, you know what to do. There’s going to be new kids there, but, if you remember when we were on vacation last year, you didn’t know kids, but at the end of the vacation you were playing with these kids. Well, the same thing is going to happen at this party. You’re going to start playing with them.

So, you’ve done these kinds of things before. So create a sense of similarity with their strengths. Give them time to warm up. So, if you’re going to drop your child off at a birthday party, make it a point to stay there until she feels comfortable with the situation. Give her a chance to warm up. Let her get used to the noise and the environment. Stay around until she can feel comfortable with the group. But then walk away. Don’t stay the whole time. Let her know that you’re going to be back – that she’s going to be fine.

Another thing that you can do too, is engage in what we call the factorial approach. So again, changing one or two factors at a time so if you want your child to be more free, bring a child over to your house where your child feels comfortable so you have a new friend in a similar environment and do that until they get comfortable with that. And then you change the environment. You have this new friend and then you go to the park. Now it’s a new friend in a new situation. So they feel comfortable with that. Then what you can do is introduce another child into the familiar situation. So, don’t push things too quickly. Give them time to adjust and engage in this factorial approach. That’s what we do as adults, as well. But again, the problem is because things are easy for us, we expect them to be easy for the child, as well. So we get impatient. We push. We fail to consider that warm-up effect. So, there’s many things that parents can do to help their child be social and deal with frustration tolerance.

Audrey Hamilton: We now live in the age of Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat. You know, communication is moving at lightning speed. How do – you’re talking about warming up – going into situations where they feel comfortable – but how do shy people keep up in these situations?

Bernardo Carducci: First and foremost, what we have to remember always, and it’s been this way forever, okay. First and foremost, we have to remember that it takes all kinds of people to make this world work. It takes people who are going to move really, really fast. It is going to take people who are going to move really, really slow. And it’s going to take a lot of people in between. So we say, it’s not necessary that everybody keep up with that same pace. So we tell shy people, find the pace that’s comfortable for you. Go to your strengths. And what’s going to happen is as you begin to build on these kinds of things – as you begin to feel more comfortable, you’ll pick up the pace that’s comfortable for you. Think about driving on the interstate and everybody drove really, really fast. It would be impossible. For everybody who drove really slow, it would be impossible. You need all kinds of different drivers to make this work – some fast, some slow and a lot in between. And the same is in digital technology. So again, there's no need for everybody to do the same thing the same way. What we need is diversity. And shy people truly represent that. We need shy people to make the world work. I’ve said that we don’t need less shyness – what we need is more shyness because shy people are generally great.

Audrey Hamilton: Well, Dr. Carducci, Bernie, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a pleasure.

Bernardo Carducci: Listen, I want to thank you on behalf of all the shy people you’re going to help by airing this program.

Audrey Hamilton: Thanks for listening. To hear more episodes, please go to our website. With the American Psychological Association’s Speaking of Psychology, I’m Audrey Hamilton