How children describe their shy/withdrawn peers

Infant and Child DevelopmentInf. Child Dev. 17: 447–456 (2008)Published online 21 January 2008 in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/icd.554

How Children Describe their Shy/Withdrawn Peers

Alastair J. Youngera,*, Barry H. Schneidera and ManalGuirguis-Youngerb

a School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canadab Faculty of Human Sciences, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

In individual interviews, 227 children from the first, third, fifth,and seventh grades described the behaviours that characterizeshyness in their peers. The categories of behaviour mostfrequently described included the following: doesn’t talk, staysby self, doesn’t play, walks/runs away from others, hides, looksaway/avoids eye contact, physical signs of anxiety, stays nearfamiliar people, cries, blushes, and gets mixed up when talking/stutters. The number of children mentioning hides, stays nearfamiliar people, and cries decreased significantly across gradelevel, whereas the number mentioning doesn’t talk, stays by self,blushes, and gets mixed up when talking/stutters increasedacross grade level. The situations in which children described theshy behaviours as occurring were classified as entailing eitherfearful shyness or self-conscious shyness. The number ofchildren who mentioned contexts involving fearful shynessdeclined across grade level grade, whereas the number mention-ing contexts involving self-conscious shyness increased withincreasing grade level. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons,Ltd.

Key words: shyness; social withdrawal; peers

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INTRODUCTION

In recent years, shyness/withdrawal has become of increasing interest toresearchers in the field of children’s peer relationships (Rubin & Coplan, 2004).Shy/withdrawn children interact less with their peers than do more outgoingchildren (Rubin & Stewart, 1996) and may consequently fall behind in thedevelopment of appropriate social interactional skills (Rubin, LeMare, & Lollis,1990). Many shy/withdrawn children are excluded from the peer group,beginning early in elementary school (Gazelle & Ladd, 2003; Hart, Yang, Nelson,Robinson, Olsen et al., 2000), and such exclusion increases across the elementaryschool years (Rubin & Coplan, 2004; Rubin & Stewart, 1996; Younger, Gentile, &

*Correspondence to: Alastair J. Younger, School of Psychology, University of Ottawa,Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1N 6N5. E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Burgess, 1993). Partly as a consequence of the loneliness and poor self-regard thatensue, shy/withdrawn children are at risk to develop a number of internalizingproblems, including anxiety, depression, and somatic symptoms (Burgess &Younger, 2006; Gazelle & Ladd, 2003; Rubin, Burgess, & Coplan, 2003).

Despite such evidence that shyness/withdrawal may be an importantpredictor of exclusion, little is known concerning how children actually viewthis pattern of behaviour. A number of studies have examined children’sperspectives on withdrawal, employing stimuli derived from current peer- orteacher-assessment instruments. Such studies suggest that shyness/withdrawal,in contrast to aggressive disruptiveness, does not constitute a well-definedcomponent of children’s views of maladjustment in their peers in the lowerelementary school grades. This changes, however, with increasing age, aswithdrawal becomes better defined in children’s views, and peers displayingsuch characteristics become less well liked (Bukowski, 1990; Younger & Boyko,1987; Younger & Piccinin, 1989). These studies have provided interesting insightinto how children perceive withdrawal and how that perception changes acrossage. However, they are limited in that they measure children’s perceptions ofwithdrawal as viewed from an adult conceptualization. That is, they assess howchildren view withdrawal as defined in terms of scales developed by adultresearchers. However, adults may not be the best source of information aboutshyness in children, and their observations may not always accurately identifyshy/withdrawn children (Spooner, Evans, & Santos, 2005). Given the associationbetween withdrawal and exclusion in childhood, it is important to understandwhat behaviours constitute shyness/withdrawal as viewed through the eyes ofchildren}that is, to ask children how shy children may behave. As exclusioninvolves the reactions of members of the peer group to the shy/withdrawn child,it would seem valuable to investigate what shy behaviours are salient to children,and whether such salience depends on age.

Moreover, shyness itself may not be a unitary construct. Theory in this areaproposes that there may be different forms of shyness that vary in importance atdifferent ages. Buss (1986) distinguishes between a shyness that reflects a fear ofstrangers and/or novel situations and a shyness that reflects self-consciousnessand is associated with embarrassment, being observed, and conspicuousness.According to Buss, fearful shyness emerges early in childhood and then tends tofade with age. Self-conscious shyness, on the other hand, emerges later as thechild acquires a sense of self as object. Buss speculates that self-conscious shynessappears around ages 4 or 5 and increases as the child ages. Crozier and Burnham(1990) locate the emergence of self-conscious shyness slightly later, at around age7 or 8, but agree that self-conscious shyness increases with age. Given thishypothesized age-related distinction between fearful and self-conscious shyness,it may very well be that the behaviours that are most salient to children at one agemight differ from those that are salient at another age.

A limited number of studies have actually examined how children viewshyness/withdrawal. Crozier and Burnham (1990) interviewed 60 children betweenthe ages of 5 and 11 years and asked them about feelings of shyness in themselvesand others. These researchers were particularly interested in whether fearfulshyness and self-conscious shyness would feature in how children view shyness.References to fearful shyness, although frequent at all ages, were more common inthe descriptions of younger children. References to self-conscious shyness, bycontrast, were rare among the youngest participants, but increased across age.

In a later study, Crozier (1995) elicited the words that children associate withshyness. He interviewed 141 children aged 8–11 years and asked them to write

A.J. Younger et al.448

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child Dev. 17: 447–456 (2008)DOI: 10.1002/icd

down all the words that came to mind when the expression ‘being shy’ wasmentioned. The 16 most common adjectives reported were scared, hide/hiding,cry/crying, new situations, quiet, go red, frightened, sad, not talking/notspeaking, unhappy/not happy, shy, blush/blushing, run away, nervous,embarrassed, and smile. Differences in the relative frequency with which theseadjectives were mentioned across age were not examined. Crozier then sorted thewords provided by the children into the two categories of fearful shyness andself-conscious shyness and examined the relative frequency of these twocategories across age. Fearful words were more common than self-consciouswords; however, no age differences were observed.

Molina, Coplan, and Younger (2003) examined children’s knowledge of socialisolation. These researchers asked first- and fifth-grade children to speculate onthe reasons, actions, and emotions of someone who ‘does not play a lot withothers’. In terms of reasons for playing alone, both first- and fifth-gradersmentioned fearful shyness, active isolation by peers (i.e. exclusion), and socialdisinterest as reasons for playing alone. Fifth-graders, however, mentioned self-consciousness as a reason for playing alone more frequently than did children inthe first grade. In terms of actions, these researchers coded children’s interviewresponses into the four categories of disruptive, anxious, solitary-passive, andsolitary-active behaviour. Only the category of anxious behaviour was found todiffer at the two grades, with more fifth-graders than first-graders describinganxious behaviours when asked to tell what the child is likely doing whenplaying alone. In terms of what the isolated child may be feeling, almost 90% ofthe sample mentioned the emotion sad. In addition, 35% mentioned the emotionhappy, whereas less than 10% said scared.

Yuill and Banerjee (2001) report asking 4- to 6-year-old children to choose which oftwo situations would be more likely cause a child to feel shy}meeting a stranger(fearful shyness) or singing in front of the class (self-conscious shyness). Virtually allthe 4-year-olds chose the fearful shyness situation, whereas more of the 6-year-oldsselected the self-conscious situation. In two later studies, Banerjee (2002) reportedthat motives of self-presentation, key ingredients in self-conscious shyness, becomeincreasingly relevant to children across the elementary school years.

Taken together, the findings of these studies indicate that children do have aconception of shyness/withdrawal. They also provide some support for thenotion that fearful and self-conscious shyness feature differently in how childrenview shyness at different ages. They do not indicate, however, what specificcharacteristics define shyness for children}that is, the behaviours by whichchildren infer that a peer is shy. Nor do these existing studies indicate whetherthese defining behaviours differ in importance to children at different ages.Understanding what characterizes shyness to children is important insofar as itmay very well be peers’ reactions to these behaviours that result in exclusion.

The goal of this study was to determine what behaviours are most salient tochildren when they consider a shy peer and whether these behaviours differ insalience at different ages. We interviewed children from grades one, three, five, andseven, asking them to think of someone they know who is shy, and then to let usknow us how it is that they can tell that the individual is shy. We recorded thebehaviours that were mentioned by the children at each of the four grade levels. Wewere also interested in the frequency with which children described shyness as afear of strangers/novelty or as involving self-consciousness. To assess this, we askedthe children about the contexts in which shy behaviour occurs and about what thechild in question was likely thinking and feeling. We classified their responses intothe following two categories: fear of strangers and concerns over social evaluation.

How Children Describe their Shy/Withdrawn Peers 449


METHOD

Participants

Letters describing the research were sent to parents of first, third, fifth, andseventh graders from three Catholic schools located in middle to upper-middleclass suburban neighbourhoods in Ottawa, Canada. Participation in the studyrequired written consent from parents as well as verbal consent from thechildren. In total, 227 children participated in the study}51 first graders (25boys, 26 girls; aged 6–7 years), 57 third graders (27 boys, 30 girls; aged 8–9 years),60 fifth graders (30 boys, 30 girls; aged 10–11 years), and 59 seventh graders (28boys, 31 girls; aged 12–13 years).

Procedure

The children met individually for approximately 15 min with a research assistantin a small room provided by the school. All children were interviewed bythe same female interviewer, whom they had previously met when she initiallydescribed the project to the class and on a second occasion when she collectedtheir consent forms. At the beginning of the interview, she spent about5 min informing them about the interview, briefly describing herself, andasking them about themselves and their favourite activities, in order to establishrapport. After this initial introduction, the participants were asked to think ofsomeone they know who is shy, and then to explain how they can tell}that is,how they know that person is shy. Once children described a behaviour,the interviewer asked about the situation in which the behaviour was likelyto occur. The children were encouraged to describe as many behaviours asthey wanted. All interviews were audio-recorded and were later transcribedverbatim.

RESULTS

Behavioural Descriptions of Shyness

From the transcripts of the children’s reports, we tallied the behaviours that werementioned by the children. An average of 4.8 behaviours was described by eachchild (range 1–13 behaviours). A 4 (grade) �2 (gender) analysis of variancerevealed no significant main effect of grade or gender, nor a significant grade bygender interaction in number of behaviours described. We then sorted thebehaviours into categories of similar items. The following 11 categoriessummarized 96% of the behaviours mentioned (4% of the behaviours wereunclassifiable): doesn’t talk; stays by self; doesn’t play or participate; runs/walksaway from others; hides; looks away/avoids eye contact; shows physical signs ofanxiety; stays close to familiar people; cries; blushes/turns red; and gets mixedup when talking/stutters. To assess the reliability of these categories, a secondassistant independently sorted all behaviours into the same 11 categories. Ks forthe 11 categories were all greater than 0.85. We analysed whether each child’sinterview did or did not make reference to each of these 11 categories. Thepercentages of participants who mentioned behaviours in each of these categoriesare shown in Table 1.



To determine whether the frequency with which these categorieswere mentioned was related to age, we compared the number of childrenmentioning each category at each grade level, using a series of w2 analyses. Fourof the 11 categories}doesn’t play or participate in activities, runs or walks awayfrom others, looks away/avoids eye contact, and shows physical signsof anxiety}were mentioned by equal numbers of children at all four grades.Another three categories were mentioned by a decreasing number of childrenacross grade. These include the categories doesn’t talk w2ð3Þ ¼ 21:01; p50:0001and stays by self, w2ð3Þ ¼ 10:57; p50:02, as well as blushes and gets mixed upwhen talking/stutters. These latter two categories had very low cell frequenciesat the lowest two grades. To avoid violating the assumptions of the w2 test, wecollapsed across grades 1 and 3, and across grades 5 and 7, for the analyses.Fisher’s exact test revealed that a significantly higher number of participants atthe combined grade 5-7 level compared to the combined grade 1-3 levelmentioned blushes (p50:001) and gets mixed up when talking/stutters (p50:02).Figures 1 and 2 show the percentage of children mentioning the behaviours thatdecreased and that increased, respectively, across grade level.

Type of Shyness

To assess whether differences exist across grade level in type of shynessmentioned by the participants, we examined the situations described in theirresponses. We recorded whether or not each participant made reference tosituations involving a fear of strangers or novelty (i.e. fearful shyness) and/orsituations reflecting self-consciousness, embarrassment, and/or concern aboutthe evaluations of others (i.e. self-conscious shyness). To determine the reliabilityof this assessment, a second research assistant independently categorized theresponses of 40 participants}10 from each of the four grade levels}into thesame two categories of shyness. Ks for both categories exceeded 0.85.

Table 2 shows the percentage of participants who mentioned situationsinvolving fearful shyness and/or self-conscious shyness at each of the four gradelevels. The proportion of respondents who mentioned both types of situationswas 35%. As can be seen, the number of children mentioning fear of strangersand/or novelty decreased significantly across grade level, w2ð3Þ ¼ 26:78;p50:0001; whereas the number mentioning self-consciousness increased sig-nificantly across grade level, w2ð3Þ ¼ 57:32; p50:0001:

Table 1. Percent of children reporting each of the 11 behaviours

Category of behaviour Percent of childrenreporting

Doesn’t talk/talks quietly 83Stays by self 50Doesn’t play/participate 36Runs/walks away from others 27Hides 25Looks away/avoids eye contact 21Shows physical signs of anxiety 21Stays close to familiar people 19Cries easily 9Gets mixed up when talking/stutters 8Blushes/turns red easily 8



DISCUSSION

This study was conducted to determine what behaviours are salient to childrenwhen they consider a peer to be shy. Results indicate considerable correspon-dence among children in how they infer that a peer is shy. The most frequentlymentioned characteristic, described by the great majority of children at all fourgrade levels, was doesn’t talk/talks quietly. Interestingly, this is the characteristicof shyness that is also most noticeable to adults (Zimbardo, 1977) and is noticed

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Figure 1. Percent of children mentioning the three categories of behaviour that decreasedacross grade level.



as well by teachers in class. In the classroom, shy children have been observed totalk infrequently, take longer to make remarks, and produce statements that aresignificantly shorter than those of their less shy classmates (Evans, 2001). Ourresults indicate that this behaviour is also salient to children as young as firstgraders.

Other behaviours, such as doesn’t play, stays by self, walks/runs away fromothers, and looks away/avoids eye contact were also mentioned by aconsiderable number of the children in our sample. Such behaviours on thepart of shy children are not only noticeable but may also have negative effects onhow others perceive them. Teachers have been reported to view such lack ofparticipation in classroom activities as reflecting poorer academic competence(Evans, 2001), and peers may view such behaviour as a sign of disinterest,unfriendliness, or even condescension (Zimbardo & Radl, 1981). How peers react,however, may depend in part on their interpretations of the motivation for suchbehaviour. It would be interesting, therefore, in further studies to question

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Figure 2. Percent of children mentioning the four categories of behaviour that increasedacross grade level.

Table 2. Percent of children at each grade level whose descriptions were classified asfearful or self-conscious

Grade 1 3 5 7

Fearful 69 68 58 27Self-conscious 33 72 83 95



children as to why they feel shy peers do not talk or play and try to isolatethemselves.

Some insights into peers’ attributions can be gained from Molina et al.’s (2003)interviews. These researchers asked children how a hypothetical child ‘whodoesn’t play much with others’ feels. Less than 10% of the participantsmentioned the emotion scared or fearful, although almost 90% mentionedsadness. It would seem, therefore, that such isolation does not automatically elicitattributions of anxiety from peers, although many peers recognize that the shychild may be unhappy. If children do not readily infer that anxiety may underliesuch non-participation, attributions of aloofness may indeed follow. Additionalinvestigation of children’s attributions for shy behaviour would be valuable toprovide further insight into this facet of why some shy children may be rejected.

It is most interesting that children at all four grade levels mentioned gazeaversion (i.e. looks away/avoids eye contact) in their descriptions. Thisbehaviour featured in the descriptions of over 20% of our sample. Gaze aversionis a salient behaviour that may be highly important for identifying shyness(Reddy, 2001). Interestingly, this behaviour has been overlooked in studies thatuse children to assess shyness/withdrawal in their peers. Yet gaze aversion isboth characteristic of shyness and also apparently noticeable even to first-gradechildren. It might be useful, therefore, to consider adding an item assessing gazeaversion to peer assessment measures of shyness/withdrawal in children.

A number of the behaviours mentioned by children in our study overlap withthe words associated with shyness by the children in Crozier’s (1995) study.Characteristics such as not talking, hiding, crying, blushing, and running awaywere mentioned by children in both studies. Such similarities in the children’sreports are interesting, given the procedural differences between the two studies.Crozier asked children to produce words associated with the concept of shyness,whereas our study focused on children’s self-generated behavioural descriptorsof individuals whom they think of as shy. It may be that both methods tap into aconceptual schema for shyness that manifests itself in children’s spontaneousresponses to questions about shyness. Our focus on behavioural descriptions ofshy individuals, however, generated additional characteristics not found inCrozier’s study: the children in our study also mentioned behaviours associatedwith gaze aversion, isolation, and staying close to familiar adults.

That these methods may tap into a schema for withdrawal is an intriguingpossibility, given that earlier research has questioned whether withdrawalcomprises a well-defined component of young children’s view of maladjustment(Bukowski, 1990; Younger & Boyko, 1987; Younger & Piccinin, 1989). It seemspossible that shy/withdrawn behaviours are more noticeable to young childrenthan previously thought. However, this study also found differences in thebehaviours that are salient to younger and older children}differences that werenot examined in earlier studies. It may well be that children’s ability to report onwithdrawal in their peers depends on the age appropriateness of the behavioursbeing assessed. It would be interesting, therefore, to replicate these earlierstudies, but to do so using behavioural descriptors that are most relevant to theages of the children in question.

Although some behaviours were mentioned by children at all grade levels,mention of other behaviours either decreased or increased across grade. Thus, thebehaviours hides, stays close to familiar people, and cries were mentioned byfirst graders but featured minimally in the descriptions of seventh graders. Tosome extent, this decline may simply represent the increased maturity of theparticipants. The reduction across grade in number of children who mentioned



crying is a good example. However, hiding, and staying close to familiar peoplemay represent behaviours associated with shyness as a fear of strangers. Hence,the fact that these behaviours were mentioned by more than 33% of first gradersbut only 10% of seventh graders may reflect the age-related decrease in fearfulshyness suggested by Buss (1986). This hypothesis is supported by our findingsof a decrease across grade in number of participants whose interviews includedreference to situations involving novelty and the fear of strangers.

By contrast, the number of children mentioning four other behavioursincreased across grade. Of these, the behaviours doesn’t talk and stays by selfwere mentioned by a considerable number of children at all grades. Indeed, it isonly at the first grade that they were mentioned less frequently. The other twobehaviours, however, blushes and gets mixed up when talking/stutters, werementioned minimally, or not at all, by first and third graders, but considerablymore frequently by fifth and seventh graders. The age-related increase in numberof children making reference to these two behaviours may represent the increasein self-conscious shyness hypothesized by Buss (1986) and Crozier and Burnham(1990). Indeed, Buss describes blushing as an obvious manifestation of theembarrassment that accompanies self-consciousness. This notion is supported byour finding of an increase across grade level in the number of participantsmentioning situations entailing self-consciousness and/or concern about theevaluations of others in their descriptions of shyness, a finding consistent withCrozier and Burnham’s (1990) and Yuill and Banerjee’s (2001) observations.

When studying children’s perceptions of the behaviour of their peers, age effectsinclude both age of perceiver and age of stimulus peer. Future research mightattempt to separate these by asking children specifically to consider the behaviourof peers of different ages. Without such a manipulation we cannot determinewhether shyness itself changes over the course of middle childhood, or whether itis children’s perceptions of shyness that change. Nevertheless, these findingsindicate that children are indeed sensitive to shyness in their peers, and that theremay be age differences in the behaviours children view as characteristic of shyness.They add further support, as well, to the notion that shyness reflecting a fear ofstrangers declines in children’s perceptions with increasing age, and that shynessreflecting self-consciousness increases. Further research would do well toinvestigate children’s reactions to the behaviours that characterize shyness andalso their perceptions of the motivations behind these behaviours.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and HumanitiesResearch Council of Canada. We thank Gina Pelley for her invaluable assistancein conducting the interviews. We express our appreciation to the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board and to all the children and teachers whoparticipated in this research.

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How children describe their shy/withdrawn peers