Essay --

The Continuum Hypothesis: Shyness, Social Anxiety and Avoidant Personality Disorder In today’s extroverted world, the shy temperament has become synonymous with insecurity, social anxiety, functional deficits, inhibited social skills, avoidant social behavior and impaired behavioral, somatic and cognitive symptoms in social settings. However, shyness has been suggested to lie on a spectrum ranging from normative shyness to a pathological state of extreme social phobia and avoidant personality disorder. The distinction among the varying levels of shyness on the continuum has been a topic of interest to current researchers, specifically qualifying normative shyness from highly shy, and highly shy individuals with and without social phobia. The difference between an individual with shyness and one with social phobia can be explained by comparing how the two approach social situations, and how they respond cognitively, behaviorally and physiologically. A shy person might go to a social event but feel uncomfortable and not enjoy themselves very much. However , an individual with social phobia may not even be able to make themselves go to the event at all. Differing levels on the shyness continuum differ markedly in measures of symptom intensity, daily functioning, quality of life, and anxiety and performance in social settings or conversation tasks (Chavira, Stein & Malcarne, 2002). Individuals with social phobia differ most significantly from those with high shyness and no social phobia in dimensions such as number of social fears, avoidance of social environments, negative thinking and physiological symptoms. Even people with shyness experience much higher quality of life and less functional impairment than those with soci... ...hibiting than the generalized type. However, in the highly shy group, most diagnoses were for generalized social phobia, indicating that highly shy individuals experience more interactional fears than performance based fears, which are common of non generalized social phobia and a limited type of social fears (Chavira, Stein & Malcarne, 2002). The central finding of the study was that 49% of highly shy individuals and 18% of normative shyness were diagnosed with social phobia (Chavira, Stein & Malcarne, 2002). This distinction supports the assertion that shyness and social phobia are significantly related. Additionally, the results of the study support the continuum hypothesis which dictates that higher shyness levels towards the end of the spectrum create greater susceptibility to psychiatric diagnoses such as social phobia and avoidant personality disorder.