DOCTOR ZIMBARDO QUOTES ABOUT SHYNESS.-

What troubles me is the Internet and the electronic technology revolution. Shyness is fueled in part by so many people spending huge amounts of time alone, isolated on e-mail, in chat rooms, which reduces their face-to-face contact with other people.

The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.

I started studying shyness in adults in 1972. Shyness operates at so many different levels. Out of that research came the Stanford shyness clinic in 1977.

Shyness is a psychological reaction that a surprisingly large number of people experience when they imagine others are evaluating them—and they assume the worst. At the core of shyness is a fear of being rejected, not being worthy of being liked or loved. 

SHYNESS: My interest in the social and personal dynamics of shyness in adults (and later in children) emerged curiously from reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment, when considering the mentality of the Guard (restricting freedoms) and Prisoner (resisting, but ultimately accepting those restrictions on personal freedom) as dualities in each of us, and notably in the neurotic person and the shy individual. Since 1972, our research team, composed mostly of Stanford undergraduates, and graduates, Paul Pilkonis and Susan Brodt, has done pioneering research on the causes, correlates, and consequences of shyness in adults and children, using a multi-method, multi-response approach. Our findings of the extent of shyness and its many negative consequences led us to experiment with a shyness clinic where we tested various interventions among students and staff at Stanford University and then in the local community. Now our shyness clinic is housed in the clinic setting of the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology in Palo Alto, where it is both a treatment and research center.

SOURCES:

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/philip_zimbardo.html

http://www.zimbardo.com/

https://zimbardo.socialpsychology.org/teaching

https://zimbardo.socialpsychology.org/