Shyness and Relationship Expectations

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Stephanie Richardson and Larry Nelson, School of Family Life

Introduction

Emerging work suggests that socially withdrawn individuals are at risk for a variety of problems during emerging adulthood (Luster, Nelson, & Busby, 2013; Tackett, Nelson, & Busby, 2013). In particular, a variety of studies link relationship difficulties to shy individuals within the context of romantic relationships (Nelson et al., 2008; Luster et al., 2013). Those who are shy tend to enter into their first romantic relationship later than non-shy individuals (Asendorpf & Denissen, 2008). Even once shy individuals are romantically involved, Nelson et al. (2008) found that shy individuals report lower relationship quality than non-shy individuals. There have been some studies that have explored for potential mediations in identifying the reasons for lower relationship quality for those who are shy, identifying difficulties such as poorer communication skills, poorer relationship maintenance skills, and lower self-esteem (Luster et al., 2013; Baker & McNulty, 2010; Tackett et al., 2013). However, while these studies have been helpful in explaining many of the processes that shy individuals experience in their romantic relationships, they do not explain other phenomena within these relationships, such as what the budding stages of the relationships look like and why shy individuals tend to remain in these lower-quality relationships. Hence, the purposes of this study concern both the beginning and ending parts of romantic relationships for withdrawn individuals. The first purpose is to compare withdrawn groups of emerging adults, their expectations, or what they anticipate, upon entering a romantic relationship. The second purpose is to explore reasons for why withdrawn individuals would stay in a lower quality relationship rather than breaking up. Lastly, we will do all of this while separating out withdrawn subtypes.
Withdrawn Subtypes
There are three types of social withdrawal (Nelson, 2013). In table 1, we list the types of withdrawal (Nelson, 2013). There are two dimensions representing social motivations that exist within each individual, an approach motivation, and an avoidance motivation (Nelson, 2013). Shy individuals frequently feel both a strong desire to approach people as well as to avoid people (Nelson, 2013). Avoidant individuals are high in avoidant motivation, but low in approach motivation. The last group of withdrawn individuals is the unsocial group, who are low in both their approach motivation and their avoidance motivation (Nelson, 2013). The last group on the table is not a withdrawn subtype, they are the social group Nelson, 2013).

Method

Partcipants
The sample included 983 participants from across the U.S., ages 18-29. We chose that age range because we were focussing on the emerging adulthood years. Regarding living arrangements, 31.6% lived with a boyfriend or girlfriend, 33.1% with their parent(s), and 35.3% lived somewhere else. 48% of our participants were male, 51.1% were female, and 0.9% were something other than male or female. Those who were caucasian comprised 52.8% of the sample, while 19% were Asian or Pacific Islander, 10% were Hispanic, 7% were American Indian, 6.7% were black, and 4.3% were either something other than those options or a combination of any of those options.
Procedure
We collected our sample using Amazon Mechanical Turk. Throughout the survey, we included attention questions. These questions measured the extent to which participants were paying attention to the questions they answered. If participants failed an attention question, they did not finish the survey or receive compensation. We warned participants of these questions. Participants received a completion code upon completion of the survey, which they turned in to receive compensation.
Measures
We used the following variables and measures in our study.

Social Withdrawal: To measure social withdrawal, we used the revised version of the “Child Social Preference Scale (Nelson, 2013). This scale measures the constructs of shyness (e.g. I feel tense in social situations), unsociability (e.g. I don’t have a strong need to be with other people”), and avoidance (e.g. I try to avoid people).

Expectations:To measure expectations that individuals had before entering a relationship, we adapted the “Friendship and need fulfillment during three phases of young adulthood” scale by Carbery and Buhrmester (1998). The original scale is a measure of relationship quality, measuring constructs such as companionship, affection, emotional worth, etc. (Carbery & Buhrmester, 1998). Rather than using those constructs to measure current relationship quality, we used the constructs to measure what people anticipated to experience in a relationship before entering one. Chronbach’s alpha for this scale was .961.

Extent to which an item keeps an individual from breaking up: This particular variable measures exactly what the title describes it to measure- why a person will stay in a lower quality relationship rather than breaking up. To measure this variable, we used a composite of three scales as well as some of our own items. The three scales were “Constrained Commitment,” “Decision to Leave,” and “University Students Leaving Relationships” (Gonzalez-Mendez, Rosaura, HernandezCabrera & Andres; 2009; Hendy, Eggen, Gustitus, McLeod, & Ng, 2003; Hendy, Can Joseph, & Scherer, 2013). We formed three factors for this scale: Fear of Lonelinesss (alpha=.866), Fear of Negative Evaluation (alpha=.749), and Hard to End it (alpha=.630).

Results

Expectations
We found that shy and unsocial individuals tend to have higher expectations, or anticipations, for their romantic relationships than the avoidant individuals, or the comparison group. The avoidant group appears to have the lowest expectations, whereas the comparison group was in the middle.

The extent to which an items keeps an individual from breaking up with someone
All three models were significant: fear of lonelinesss (R2 (4, 158)=.286, p<.001), hard to end it (R2 (4, 158)=.217, p<.001), and negative evaluation (R2 (4, 158)=.211, p<.001) Shyness positively predicted all three factors, fear of loneliness (β=.531, P<.001), negative self-evaluation (β=.362, p<.001), and hard-to-end it (β= .431=p<.001) as being reasons to stay in a poorer quality relationship. Unsociability did not predict any of the reasons to stay in a poorer quality relationship. However, avoidance negatively predicted all three reasons, fear of loneliness (β= -.243, p<.001), negative self-evaluation (β=-.342, p<.001), and hard to end it (β=-.230, p=.008) for reasons to stay in a poorer quality relationship.

Discussion

In the past shy individuals tend to report lower relationship quality (Nelson et al., 2008), however, these results concerning relationship expectations show that shy individuals anticipate better quality in their romantic relationships that other groups. These findings demonstrate that shy individuals still have a belief that their romantic relationships could be of high quality, unlike avoidant individuals. Some have argued that avoidance is an extension of shyness, but of all of the groups, avoidant individuals had the lowest expectations, compared to shy individuals having the highest expectations. The reasons may stem from shy individuals having desires to be around people, where as avoidant individuals have no such desires, and actually avoid people. Perhaps avoidant individuals avoid people because they expect little from relationships, as our data showed.

The difference between shyness and avoidance is also evident in the regressions. Shyness positively predicts Fear of loneliness, negative self-evaluation, and hard-to-end-it as reasons to stay in a lower quality relationship, while avoidance negatively predict those reasons. Here, again, we see a difference in the constructs. However, the unsocial group remains benign, in comparison. Therefore, we are still unsure as to the reasons why an unsocial person would remain in a poorer quality relationship. Overall, these results illuminate possible reasons why shy individuals would stay in lower-quality relationships. These results are important for therapists working with withdrawn individuals.

Works Cited

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