Childhood shyness: An exemplar of the interface of cognition and emotion in human development.

Shyness reflects fear and an anxious preoccupation with the self in response to real or anticipated social interaction. Inherent in this definition is the idea that the interdependence of cognitive and emotional processes plays a critical role in shyness. This chapter argues that examining the interdependence of cognition and emotion may allow for additional understanding of the development and maintenance of shyness. It examines the independent roles of emotion and cognition, respectively, in the origins and maintenance of shyness that have been described in the extant literature. The chapter also examines the interplay between emotion (fear-related processes) and cognition (self-regulatory processes) in promoting risk and resiliency for shy children. It extends the ideas by conceptualizing and hypothesizing possible empirical relations and relative independent and interdependent contributions of cognition and emotion to shed light on the development and maintenance of individual differences in shyness across different cultural contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)