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After studying the topic for almost five decades, he’s learnt not to assess people on their outward appearance. When I asked Crozier if he thought I was shy, he hesitated. Shyness is not a binary yes or no, but a continuum. But far fewer would say it has a big impact on their life. a complete personality change, but you can adapt, and you can find yourself rewarded for that in different ways, and that encourages you to continue.” In a recent YouGov survey, 10 per cent of people described themselves as very shy and 47 per cent as somewhat shy. We can learn strategies of coping with problematic situations. “There’s some persistence of shyness, over time . . . it’s not written in stone. Is shyness permanent, I wanted to know, or can it be wrestled into submission? It’s “both fixed and not fixed”, he said. “You’re definitely people-oriented, but you’re finding it quite hard to find a role in certain circumstances.” His working definition of shyness is wanting to interact with other people and being disappointed with the way those interactions play out. “It is quite, quite extraordinary how it’s expanded over the years,” said Crozier. Interest in the subject grew in a number of fields beyond psychology - psychiatry, education, culture. Zimbardo viewed shyness as a self-imposed “prison of silence”, and later set up a clinic to help sufferers break free. His work was part of a growing academic interest in the field, including by Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison experiment, in which students given the roles of prison guards became increasingly sadistic. In 1979, Crozier published a paper suggesting that “anxious self-preoccupation” - an intense concern about how one appears to others - was at the heart of shyness and triggered reticence. He found it was variously referred to as introversion, withdrawn behaviour or low sociability, a jumble of terms which “led to endless confusion”. Crozier was 28 and had just completed his PhD in the science of decision-making, but the study gave him a new focus, and he began combing through the literature on shyness. It was the first time he had ever seen shyness mentioned in an academic context.
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While working in the library one day he stumbled across a 1965 study by an American psychologist, Andrew Comrey, which listed shyness alongside compulsion, hostility and neuroticism as measurable personality traits. In 1974, Ray Crozier was in his first job as a psychology lecturer at South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education in Wales, now Cardiff Metropolitan University.
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Had I accidentally become a shy role model or was it hard-wired? “You’ll enjoy the game more.” “Why don’t you?” he responded. “Why don’t you talk to the others?” I said one day. When he joined a new football club, he kept himself separate, standing to one side except during matches. At times I noticed him struggling to socialise. My son turned eight in the first year of the pandemic. ‘Why don’t you talk to the others?’ I said to my son one day. For years, I didn’t think about shyness at all. Apart from occasional bouts of public speaking or panels, I didn’t blush during social interactions, feel my heart race or hear the click of my dry mouth opening and closing. I never dominated a room but I could hold my own and, more importantly, once I became a journalist, I could forge a connection with interviewees as part of my job. I set myself small challenges: say one thing at a meeting, then two speak to the next person on my left at an event, or behind me in a conference buffet queue. Aloofness might serve the head of a company or a star employee, but not a young unknown hoping to make an impression. There didn’t seem to be any upside to the character trait here.
#Khmer sing along karaoke professional
My first professional experience was as a researcher in parliament and then in TV. Over the next three years, my social awkwardness eased before returning with a vengeance as I started work. When it came to dating, it was often misconstrued as cool indifference. On my first night at university, I stood awkwardly behind various other freshers playing Space Invaders in the games room, willing someone to turn round and say hi, unable to make the first move. I was a shy child who morphed into a shyish teenager. “ Rosso, rossa!” the teacher called out to the class, pointing at my furiously blushing cheeks. A few words, however, are lodged in my memory. I don’t remember much Italian from the abortive attempt I made to learn the language in Perugia at the age of 18.
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