The term ‘social anxiety’ was included in the DSM-III in 1980, confusion regarding its difference between it and shyness emerged. In fact, some people have even had the thought that psychiatrists have always taken a personality behavior such as shyness and accorded more negative features to it (Sison, 2015). Furthermore, there have been arguments that shyness and social anxiety have the same meaning. Various articles in the field of psychiatry have been published in a bid to answer to these concerns. The truth, as explained in this essay, is that there is a unique and significant difference between the terms ‘social anxiety’ and ‘shyness’. Whereas there are similarities between social anxiety disorder and shyness, they are very distinct concepts with significant differences between them.
The opinion commonly held to the effect that a person who has social anxiety disorder is shy is not the reality. Not all people who have social anxiety disorder are shy hence such a perception is not true. Individuals who have extroverted personalities are common. Their social anxiety normally makes them unable to do whatever they admire in life. However, when one recovers from social anxiety disorder, he or she starts enjoying the company of other people and embraces attention in life (Chavira, Stein and Malcarne, 2002).
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Over the past three decades, the definition of the term ‘social anxiety’ has evolved as its features became clear top researchers. Moreover, epidemiological statistics of governments has consistently indicated that a large part of the world population suffers from the symptoms of social anxiety. The latest version of the DSM-5 has changed the traits of social anxiety to include fear or persistent avoidance of people, which lasts for a period of 6 months.
On the other hand, there have been concerns and debate regarding what constitutes shyness. This debate arose from the problem of diagnosing low levels of social anxiety. The general argument by many people is that if all individuals who are merely shy are regarded as suffering from a disorder then it amounts to stereotyping. This kind of stereotyping is also a waste of resources because it makes individuals who are under-diagnosed with social anxiety to miss the required treatment.
Shyness is simply a personality trait. Shyness normally involves anxiousness, reticence and nervousness about being evaluated by others. It is vital to point out the fact that shyness is normally considered as a very part of personality. It is a combination of the experience of social anxiety and the behavior that is inhibited. Moreover, shyness is also regarded as a stable temperament.
Social anxiety refers to very high levels of fear, feelings of embarrassment or humiliation during circumstances of social performance. The affected person gets to a point where they start avoiding the social events completely. When they are forced to endure in such social circumstances, they do so with a lot of distress. Therefore, it has to be understood that huge points of fear and anxiety lead to avoidance of activities that people desire. A person who suffers from social anxiety normally avoids taking part in events he or she would like to be part of them.
A keen consideration of the definitions of these two terms must then be considered to establish the clear differences between them. One major difference between these two concepts is the fact that social anxiety is usually not regarded as a normal part of human personality. It is not considered to be personality trait, like shyness. Notably, many individuals consider their shyness as a positive personality characteristic, which they proudly associate with, but social anxiety disorder is viewed as a negative condition. Social anxiety is regarded as a negative condition because its victims normally experience high fear, embarrassment and humiliation every day. It is this high fear and feelings of humiliation that cause these victims much pain to the point of persistent avoidance of the social situations. Turner, Beidel and Townsley (2002) observe that many victims of social anxiety usually prefer avoiding participating in a social event to engaging in it and suffering the high fear and anxiety.
The way significant impairment, distress, is described determines if the symptoms of social anxiety are categorized as disordered or non-disordered. It is vital to note that what makes up distress is quite subjective hence the percentage of people who have social anxiety lies within the range of 1.9% to 20.4% of the entire population. This percentage is dependent on the varying descriptions of significant impairment. The medium amount of social anxiety is often said to be 7%. However, this is a conservative percentage.
The other debate has been on whether shyness and social anxiety differ quantitatively or qualitatively. The right argument here is that they differ both qualitatively and quantitatively. It has to be noted that social anxiety is not mere extreme shyness. Shyness is felt by a lot of people, particularly when they are in strange situations. This shyness does not last for long since once one gets familiarized with the initially strange situation, there is no more shyness. Therefore, shyness is highly tolerable. However, social anxiety is intolerable because the victims persistently find it hard to relax within the social settings. The socially anxious individuals always like staying in the background and remain silent whenever they are in social events. It is possible to find victims of social anxiety who completely isolate themselves from people.
Characteristics of social anxiety
The performance condition is the most confused element of social anxiety. Individuals who suffer from the social anxiety disorder highly fear being rejected, ridiculed or negatively judged when they are performing any activity. However, it is known that not all social events require one to perform, although there are circumstances where a person may be required to act. To a socially anxious person, every social event involves performance hence they avoid them altogether. Therefore, it can be realized that social anxiety is more than mere shyness.
It is also vital to note that people who suffer from social anxiety usually experience reverse narcissism. Shy individuals, on the other hand, do not necessarily experience reverse narcissism. The term ‘reverse narcissism’, in this case, implies that whereas individuals who have narcissism have a sense of self, which is inflated hence focus the spotlight on themselves, those with social anxiety suffer from a deflated sense of self thus avoid this illusory attention. Individuals with social anxiety disorder have a fallacious belief that all the attention is always focused on them with negative criticism on their way for any imaginary mistake, which they are likely to make hence do avoid this social situations by all efforts. If they are not able to avoid participating in the social event, the anxiety engulfs them and may lead to psychological consequences like nausea, headache, racing heart-beats, panic, stomachache sweating and hyperventilation (Yip, 2013).
Characteristics of shyness
It is common agreement that human beings desire participating in the social events. It is the reason social anxiety adversely affects victims causing sadness and depression. Moreover, just mere shyness can affect a person’s social life adversely since it bars one from interaction with others to make good friends and partners. People are advised to avoid shyness because it begets social anxiety at its advanced level. However, shyness may not give one bad life. Even shy individuals have good friends and do participate in an active social life with those they are used to interact with.
Notably, unlike social anxiety disorder, shyness cannot be diagnosed in a clinical facility. Therefore, it is easy for one to understand shyness than social anxiety since it is a common feeling. In fact, 80% of people attest that they have experienced instances of shyness in their lifetime, particularly during adolescence. Shyness is very prevalent among the children, but fades away as one grows up into an adult person. The major features of shyness resemble those of social anxiety disorder. Shy people normally feel like retreating back from social encounters and remaining silent. It is also vital to note human beings have varying levels of shyness. These levels of shyness range from the mild awkwardness to high degree of withdrawal as well as the inhibition emotions.
The big irony is that shyness is sometimes an attractive characteristic to some individuals. There are shy individuals who usually feel quite interesting and happy to have hidden their core character from people. Furthermore, people do positively link shyness to modesty. It is, thus, right to hold the view that shyness is not a negative trait.
Empirical studies to prove differences between shyness and social anxiety
Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay (2008) conducted a study to establish the difference between shyness and social anxiety. In order to find out the clear relationship between shyness and social anxiety, Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay (2008) were able to examine the features of individuals who are highly shy and compared them to those who have social anxiety, highly shy persons without social phobia and non-shy people. The outcome of this study indicates that the socially anxious group showed more functional impairment and symptomatology as well as lower quality of life than the ones without social anxiety disorder. Furthermore, approximately one-third of the group with high levels of shyness, but without social anxiety disorder did not show any social fears. However, the shy and socially anxious groups reported same levels of anxiety during speech and conversation performance, according to the results of the study done by Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay (2008). Overall, the group with social anxiety disorder performed less effectively than the one without social phobia. There was no difference among the study groups on psycho-physiological measures.
In the study conducted by Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay (2008), it was established that the sample group that had individuals with high levels of social anxiety reported a significantly larger number of the social fears, avoidance of social situations, negative thoughts and somatic symptoms than the shy group. The shy group, on the other hand, reported more symptoms than the non-shy, as shown by the results of Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay (2008). The results indicated by a number of prior studies to this one are different. According to most of the prior studies, there particular clusters of symptoms that may be more manifested among the shy people than those with the social anxiety disorder. Some prior studies, as stated by Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay (2008), suggested that shyness had a lot of conceptual similarities with social anxiety when understood from the affective perspective. However, the two have minimal similarities when understood from the behavioral perspective. On the contrary, the study done by Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay (2008) reported that all the symptom clusters were more present in the social anxiety group when compared to the shyness one.
Moreover, in the same study done by Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay (2008), the shy group showed less functional impairment within the daily life of individuals than those within the social anxiety class. Moreover, the quality of life of the shy group was also higher than that of the social anxiety one.
The results of the study done by Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay (2008) prove that the socially anxious people are qualitatively different from the shy individuals. This report gives evidence to the fact that social anxiety and shyness are two concepts, which are overlapping but quite different conditions. Shy people are more heterogeneous than the socially anxious individuals.
The outcomes from the behavioral tasks indicate that the shy individuals have more skills than people with social anxiety when in the social events. Moreover, the shy people are less anxious than those with social phobia during formal occasions (Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay, 2008). Despite the fact that shyness may give an individual anxiety during performance of formal tasks such as speeches or conversations, the shy person can still act better than the socially anxious one. This is the reason there is a difference in terms of functional impairment and quality of life between the shy and socially anxious people. The conclusion made by Heiser, Turner, Beidel and Roberson-Nay (2008) is that shy individuals normally experience less symptoms as well as minimal functional impairment than those with social anxiety.
Therefore, it has to be understood that whereas there are similarities between social anxiety disorder and shyness, they are very distinct concepts with significant differences between them. Although the boundaries that exist between social anxiety and shyness overlap, the two concepts are quite distinct with both qualitative and quantitative differences. While shyness is simply a personality trait, social anxiety is a chronic disorder that can be diagnosed in a healthcare facility. A lot of the individuals who are shy lack the negative emotions, which accompany those who suffer from social anxiety.
References
Heiser, N. A., Turner, S. M., Beidel, D. C., & Roberson-Nay, R. (2008, October 15). Differentiating Social phobia from shyness. Retrieved November 02, 2016, from ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887618508001813 ).
Yip, P. J. (2013). Social Anxiety vs. Shyness: The Difference Between Social Anxiety and Shyness. Retrieved November 07, 2016, from ( http://www.psychalive.org/the-difference-between-social-phobia-and-shyness/ ).
Turner, S. M., Beidel, D. C., &Townsley, R. M. (2002, June 6). Social phobia: Relationship to shyness. Retrieved November 03, 2016 , from ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005796790901367)
Chavira, D. A., Stein, M. B., &Malcarne, V. L. (2002, June 17). Scrutinizing the relationship between shyness and social phobia. Retrieved November 03, 2016, from ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088761850200124X ).
Sison, J. (2015, June 11). The Difference between Shy and Social Anxiety . Retrieved November 07, 2016, from ( http://www.differencebetween.net/science/health/the-difference-between-shy-and-social-anxiety/ ).
Shyness or Social Anxiety Disorder ? (n.d.). Retrieved November 07, 2016, from ( https://socialanxietyinstitute.org/shyness-or-social-anxiety-disorder ).
