Shyness Make Your Brain Work Better

Shyness Has No Influence on Whether or Not You're Single (But Does Make Your Brain Work Better)

Shyness is the curse of every teenager wishing to have anything like a normal social life. That unfounded anxiety when talking to people, the debilitating reluctance to speak up -- if minds were rock stars, shyness turns yours into the uncredited bass player, while everyone else's is friggin' Jim Morrison, man. And the worst part is there's no upside -- in no way will being shy ever be of benefit to you. After all, it's not like being popular stops counting once you enter the workplace, or that a fear of human contact is ever going to suddenly become attractive to sex partners.

Well, we have good news: A study in 2007 had subjects provide information pertaining to shyness, love attitudes, and their current relationship status, and analysis showed that a person's level of shyness had no bearing on whether or not he or she was romantically involved. If someone's shy, there's always someone else who's more than willing to make the first move.

One thing to note, however, is that shyness was correlated with two types of romantic styles: "storge" (affectionate love that develops from friendship) and mania (the obsessive, possessive kind of love that creepy people express by secretly collecting hair samples). So just keep in mind that if you fall into the shy camp and one day you happen to find yourself branding your betrothed's name onto your neck, it may be time to start reconsidering your views on love. In the meantime, there's another benefit to shyness: a little thing called sensory processing sensitivity.

Never heard of it? Well, it's a personality trait characterized by sensitivity to stimuli of any kind, including social and emotional cues. If you're shy, there's a good chance you have it, and SPS is fucking awesome. Individuals with SPS report having richer, more complex inner lives than others, and are better equipped to notice subtleties in their environment. Studies have found that SPS and the personality traits closely linked to it (which are, for the record, shyness, behavioral inhibition, and introversion) are correlated with a whole laundry list of effects that sound increasingly like the definition of spider-sense as you check them off: greater awareness of subtle stimuli, more attentional vigilance, and greater sensory reactivity.

More importantly, scientists decided to chuck some heads into an fMRI machine while their owners performed visual- and attention-based tests. Results: The brains belonging to people with SPS showed far greater activity than anyone else's in a whole bunch of areas involved with high-order visual processing. Add it all up, and you have to wonder why there aren't bald guys starting up Schools for Shy Youngsters while senators busily pen the Shy People Registration Act.

And if you're still envious of those popular girls who are constantly surrounded by a dozen chattering BFFs, you should know that.