International Handbook of Social Anxiety: Concepts, Research, and Interventions Relating to the Self and Shyness

Kim B. Burgess, Kenneth H. Rubin, Charissa S. 1. Cheah,andLarry J. Nelson

DEFINING INHIBITION, SHYNESS, AND SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL

ATTACHMENT, BEHAVIORAL INHIBITION, AND SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL

PARENTING BELIEFS, INHIBITION, AND SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL

PARENTING BEHAVIORS, INHIBITION, AND SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL

GENDER DIFFERENCES, SHYNESS, AND PARENTING

PARENTING AND CULTURE

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

The study of children's social and emotional development requires that attention be paid to dispositional/biological factors (e.g., temperament), familial interactions and relationships, social contexts (e.g., school, neighborhood), and culture. For example, Hinde (1995) has advanced the notion that development be considered from a multi-level perspective beginning with individual characteristics and progressing to the interaction, relationship, and group levels of analysis and conjecture. At the level of the individual child, developmental scientists have studied such constructs as temperament that might lead to problematic social or behavioral outcomes. One such intrapersonal characteristic is that of “difficult” temperament—a phenomenon typically comprising high activity level and anger proneness, or high emotional reactivity combined with poor regulatory control. Difficult temperament has been thought, by some, to be an early developmental precursor of an externalizing/under-controlled behavior pattern (e.g., Bates, Bayles, Bennett, Ridge, & Brown, 1991; Rubin, Hastings, Chen, Stewart, & McNichol, 1998; Sanson, Oberklaid, Pedlow,

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