Shyness, Self-Confidence, and Social Interaction

Abstract

This paper describes the behavior of shy and self-confident individuals. Although there is a literature concerning the causes and consequences of shyness and self-confidence, nobody has systematically investigated what such people actually do. This paper reports findings obtained in a laboratory about conversational strategies used by shy and self-confident men and women. Participants were chosen from introductory courses at a midwestern university and were asked to complete the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) questionnaire. Those with either high or low scores then were asked to participate in a laboratory experiment in which dyads got to know each other. These interactions were audio- and videotaped. Through conversation-analytic techniques, verbal patterns of both shy and self-confident behavior were identified. In this paper we discuss the management of conversational encounters by both shy and self-confident people. Although there exists a large literature about the causes and consequences of shyness and self-confidence, very little is known about how such people conduct mundane encounters (for a recent overview, see Crozier 1990). Thus we focus here on the conversational procedures used by people to display either shyness or self-confidence. These procedures make shyness observableand-reportable. as Garfinkel puts it (1984,