A study in Canada involving 8- and 9-year-old children found that shy kids with low emotional intelligence displayed more internalizing behaviors (such as depression, anxiety and proneness to experience negative emotions). However, shyness was not associated with these behaviors in children with high emotional intelligence. The study was published in Personality and Individual Differences.
Shyness is a trait where individuals feel uneasy and nervous in social situations, often leading them to avoid interactions with others. It can seriously impact an individual’s ability to connect and communicate effectively with others. Due to all this, shy people are more likely to have low self-confidence, have poor relationships with peers, low self-esteem and to be lonely.
Theories of shyness propose that the main factor involved its development is an increased perception of threat in social situations. It is accompanied by an inability to regulate emotions of fear. Shy children are also more likely to develop so-called internalizing behaviors. These include anxiety, depressive symptoms and proneness to experiencing negative emotions. However, not all shy children develop these behaviors. This indicates that there are factors that modify the relationship between shyness and these adverse outcomes.
Study author Soyoung Jung and her colleagues wanted to examine whether emotional intelligence might be a factor that changes the relationship between shyness and internalizing behaviors. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and effectively use one’s own emotions as well as the emotions of others in various social situations. It encompasses skills such as empathy, self-awareness, emotional regulation, and interpersonal communication.
The researchers hypothesized that emotional intelligence might be a protective factor for shy children against developing internalizing behaviors. To test this, they conducted a study on a group of children.
The participants were 66 boys and 49 girls. Children were between 8 and 9 years of age and recruited with their parents from the Child Database in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior at McMaster University at hospitals in Hamilton, Ontario.
This database contains names and contacts of mothers who gave birth to healthy babies at local hospitals in Hamilton, Ontario and who agreed to be contacted for developmental studies. Children were primarily from middle and upper socioeconomic class families.
Parents provided data about their children participating in the study. They completed assessments of shyness (the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire), emotional intelligence (a custom-made assessment based on other emotional intelligence scales such as the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale), and internalizing behaviors (the Social Skills Rating System) of their children.
The results showed that shy children tended to have lower emotional intelligence and higher levels of internalizing behaviors. More emotionally intelligent children tended to have fewer internalizing behaviors.
Further analysis revealed that emotional intelligence indeed modified the relationship between shyness and internalizing behaviors. Shy children whose emotional intelligence was low tended to have more internalizing behaviors. However, there was no association between shyness and internalizing behaviors in children whose emotional intelligence was high.
The researchers proposed two potential explanations for these findings. First, emotional intelligence may help shy children regulate their negative emotions better, enabling them to cope effectively and communicate their feelings with others. This adaptive strategy may protect them from developing internalizing behaviors. Second, higher emotional intelligence might improve social interactions for shy children by helping them understand and predict peers’ emotions, leading to positive relationships with others.
The study makes an important contribution to the scientific understanding of factors contributing to the development of internalizing behaviors. However, it relied solely on subjective assessments completed by parents. Results of these assessments might differ from what children’s self-reports would indicate. Additionally, the study design does not allow any cause-and-effect conclusions to be drawn from the results.
The paper, “Children’s shyness, emotional intelligence, and internalizing behaviors”, was authored by Soyoung Jung, Kristie L. Poole, and Louis A. Schmidt.