I'll Go if You Will: Do Shy Persons Utilize Social Surrogates?

Abstract

The Social Surrogate hypothesis argues that high-shy persons utilize persons in their social network to engage in or facilitate anxiety-provoking social interactions. High-shy persons should report efforts to recruit persons to accompany them into social situations (Recruiting behaviors), report the Surrogate as engaging in the majority of the interactions (Utilization behaviors), and report a reduction of their anxiety and an increase in their participation in social situations (Performance Increase). In Study 1, questions were generated to assess these behaviors and were given to two samples along with measures of shyness, sociability and self-esteem. In Study 2, participants were given descriptions of 14 situations and 10 behaviors and reported their likelihood of engaging in Recruitment and Utilization behaviors. The two studies indicate that high-shy persons actively cope with their anxiety by recruiting persons in their social network, that this helps the persons to enter situations they would otherwise avoid, and that the Surrogate sometimes engages in social interactions in the place of the high-shy person.