OK. We have had a good exchange. I disagree on this point and am happy to leave it there.
Are introversion and shyness the same thing? When I interviewed Wellesley College psychologist Jonathan Cheek, he said it depends on who you ask. So I next asked Louis A. Schmidt, director of the Child Emotion Laboratory at McMaster University, who studies the biological underpinnings of personality, especially shyness.
“Though in popular media they’re often viewed as the same, we know in the scientific community that, conceptually or empirically, they’re unrelated,” Schmidt says.
The two get confused because they both are related to socializing-but lack of interest in socializing is very clearly not the same as fearing it. Schmidt and Arnold H. Buss of the University of Texas wrote a chapter titled “Understanding Shyness” for the upcoming book The Development of Shyness and Social Withdrawal.
There they write, “Sociability refers to the motive, strong or weak, of wanting to be with others, whereas shyness refers to behavior when with others, inhibited or uninhibited, as well as feelings of tension and discomfort.” This differentiation between motivation and behavior is consistent with the ability many of us have to behave like extroverts when we choose, whereas shy people cannot turn their shyness off and on.