Word: shyness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that elusive temperamental divide between those of us who thrill to the new and those of us who prefer what we know--those who seek out the unfamiliar and those who retreat into the cozy and safe. It's in that divide, many scientists believe, that the mysteries of shyness...
...things say "forget I'm here" quite so eloquently as the pose of the shy--the averted gaze, the hunched shoulders, the body pivoted away from the crowd. Shyness is a state that can be painful to watch, worse to experience and, in survival terms at least, awfully hard to explain. In a species as hungry for social interaction as ours, a trait that causes some individuals to shrink from the group ought to have been snuffed out pretty early on. Yet shyness is commonplace. "I think of shyness as one end of the normal range of human temperament," says...
...there canny advantages to being socially averse that the extroverts among us never see? With the help of behavioral studies, brain scans and even genetic tests, researchers are at last answering some of those questions, coming to understand what a complex, and in some ways favorable, state shyness...
...things shyness is, there are a number of things it's not. For one, it's not simple introversion. If you stay home on a Friday night just because you prefer a good book to a loud party, you're not necessarily shy--not unless the prospect of the party makes you so anxious that what you're really doing is avoiding it. "Shyness is a greater than normal tension or uncertainty when we're with strangers," says psychologist Jerome Kagan of Harvard University. "Shy people are more likely to be introverts, but introverts...
...Johnny knew his limitations - some called it shyness, others arrogance - and, naturally, bent it into a joke. "I will not even talk to myself without an appointment," he wrote in the late 60s. In lieu of interviews, Carson supplied all-purpose answers to journalists' probes: "Yes, I did"; "I can't answer that question"; and "As often as possible, but I'm not very good at it yet. I need much more practice...