Shyness, Inhibitory Control, and Social Support Seeking in Preschoolers: Role of Familiar and Unfamiliar Contexts

The risk potentiation model of cognitive control posits that inhibitory control may heighten the risk for problematic outcomes among some temperamental styles characterized by high reactivity. Because shyness is a temperamental style defined as wariness and heightened reactivity to social novelty, we examined whether the interaction between shyness and inhibitory control predicted social support seeking differently depending on context using a between-subjects design. Typically developing preschoolers (N = 167, 52% female, M_age = 4.05 years, SD_age = .77 years) were observed during a model building task that included a familiar (i.e., with their mother) or unfamiliar (i.e., with a novel adult female) social context. In the unfamiliar context, shyness was negatively associated with social support seeking at relatively high levels of inhibitory control, in line with the risk potentiation model of control. However, in the familiar context, we found that shyness was positively associated with social support seeking at relatively high levels of inhibitory control. These results suggest that high levels of inhibitory control may potentiate social fear for preschoolers who are also shy and that these relations may depend on contextual factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).