Scott, The Red Shaking Fool

The Red, Shaking Fool: Dramaturgical Dilemmas in Shyness
Author(s): Susie Scott ,

Source: Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 91-110
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The Red, Shaking Fool:
Dramaturgical Dilemmas in Shyness
Susie Scott
University of Sussex
Shyness has previously been conceptualized as an object of psychological

study, but a symbolic interactionist approach relocates the condition in its
social context. Using data from in-depth interviews and an e-mail distribution
list, this article considers the ways in which the shy role is defined and
negotiated in everyday interaction. It examines the myriad dramaturgical
strategies through which shy actors attempt to conceal their lack of poise
and competence, as well as how shyness itself can be a discrediting per-
formance. Managing this identity therefore requires complex skills of self-
presentation and paradoxically reveals a strong commitment to the inter-
action order.
In recent debates about the place of symbolic interactionism in contemporary soci-

ology, it has been argued that the perspective is of relevance to a much wider range
of studies than we have been inclined to recognize. Thus alongside explicitly inter-
actionist studies of substantive topics such as tattooing (Irwin 2001) and gambling
(Rossol 2001), we find a number of unaware interactionists (Maines 2003) who have
drawn implicitly on similar theories and methods to facilitate their analyses of
larger social trends. Similarly, it is argued that a bout of collective sociological am-
nesia (Atkinson and Housley 2003) has impaired our ability to recognize the inter-
actionist basis of contemporary accounts of identity. However, we can also extend
this argument beyond the boundaries of our discipline by considering the relevance
of symbolic interactionism to topics that appear to lie outside the realm of sociol-
ogy. For example, the work of Conrad (1980), Scheff (1966), and Smith (1990:12–
51) has shown us how labeling theories of deviance can provide new understandings
of the socially negotiated passage into “mentally disordered” roles, and other fa-
mous studies, such as Lemert’s (1967) work on stuttering, have suggested that mar-
ginal and stigmatized identities are defined as much by societal reactions to norm-
breaking behavior as by the “primary” behavior itself.
Direct all correspondence to Susie Scott, University of Sussex, Department of Sociology, School of Social
and Cultural Studies, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SN, UK; e-mail: s.scott@sussex.ac.uk.
Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 28, Issue 1, pp. 91–110, ISSN 0195-6086, electronic ISSN 1533-8665.
© 2005 by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. All rights reserved. Please direct all re-
quests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California
Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

92 Symbolic Interaction Volume 28, Number 1, 2005
In this tradition of research, this article reports on my recent study of shyness, in

which I recast an object of psychological attention in sociological terms by explor-
ing the interactional contexts in which it is experienced. My argument is that shy-
ness is not only a private state of mind but also a socially negotiated role, involving
elements of self-consciously strategic performance, dramaturgical stress, and the
anticipation of harsh and punitive social reactions. Following Becker (1963), Goff-
man (1959, 1963b), and others in the interactionist tradition, I consider the “shy
role” to be one that emerges from everyday interaction and to which some actors
become progressively committed. Elsewhere (Scott 2003), I have looked in more
detail at the idea of shyness as a deviant career, but here my focus is on the drama-
turgical dilemmas self-defined “shy” people face in their encounters with others and
the strategies they devise to manage these plights of self-presentation.
PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF SHYNESS

This work stands in contrast to the psychology of shyness, which in various ways de-
picts it as a problem of individual minds. For example, psychologists have viewed
the condition as a personality trait (Cheek and Briggs 1990), a genetic disposition
(Goldsmith, Buss, and Lemery 1997), or an innate temperament (Kagan 1994), all of
which suggest that we can empirically distinguish between “shy” and “nonshy” indi-
viduals. Similarly, other psychologists have identified distinct styles of social cogni-
tion that appear to plague the shy mind, such as negative self-attributions and ir-
rational beliefs about the standards expected of social performance (Bruch 2001;
Clark 2001); this can result in a vicious circle of physical symptoms, avoidance
behavior, and failure to acquire behavioral social skills (Van der Molen 1990).
In contrast to these models of individual differences, another influential theory is
that shyness is an emotion or affective state that many people experience (Lewis
1971; Tomkins 1962, 1963); the condition is typically associated with shame and em-
barrassment as one of the “self-conscious emotions” (Tangney and Fisher 1995).
However, whereas the latter two conditions have also attracted the attention of so-
ciologists such as Barbalet (1998), Scheff (2000, 2003), and of course Goffman (1956),
shyness seems to have remained undertheorized by our discipline. This may be be-
cause it does not appear to have the socially facilitative effects that shame and em-
barrassment have in evoking collective attempts to restore the interaction order.
For example, whereas shame signals an emotional response to an already acknowl-
edged threat to the social bond (Scheff 2000, 2003), shyness in itself can be per-
ceived as such a threat to the flow of interaction, insofar as it is sometimes misinter-
preted as rudeness or aloofness. Furthermore, insofar as people who identify with
shyness understand that this is a deviant social role, they may experience what
Scheff and Retzinger (1991) call a “recursive shame loop,” that is, feeling ashamed
of being ashamed. Shyness also represents a darker side of embarrassment, which
has been theorized in dramaturgical terms as a facilitative social emotion. Whereas
displays of abashment and chagrin may evoke team attempts to repair the actor’s

The Red, Shaking Fool 93
loss of face (Goffman 1956; Miller and Leary 1992), shyness seems irrationally to
anticipate a faux pas that may not even occur, and the ambivalent attitude that it
betrays toward interactional teamwork may in itself become a discrediting “blemish
of character” (Goffman 1963b).
Social psychologists have begun to explore the self-presentational dimensions of
shyness that might be experienced more widely (Crozier 2001; Leary 1996), and it
has been suggested that rather than shy and nonshy groups, there are various grada-
tions of shyness that can be evoked by social circumstances (Zimbardo 1977). This
would suggest that it is possible for anyone to drift in and out of situational shyness,
even though only some become committed to the shy role as a master status (Hughes
1945). However, as yet there has been no systematic attempt to examine these so-
cial processes of becoming a shy person in the context of interactional norms and
practices. Goffman’s influence is apparent in these theories at the most social end of
psychology, but as yet no one has provided an explicitly sociological account of shy-
ness. Consequently, this article suggests that we need to understand not only how
shyness is manifested in thought patterns and behaviors but also how these “symp-
toms” become socially meaningful as actors learn to manage their shyness in the
dramaturgical context of everyday life.
METHOD AND DATA

A total of forty self-defined shy people participated in the study by providing their
accounts of managing the shy identity in everyday life; these narratives were col-
lected through a combination of unstructured, in-depth interviews and an e-mail-
based distribution list. I recruited the sixteen interviewees from the South Wales re-
gion of the United Kingdom through posters and advertisements displayed at the
university and in local places, such as a general practitioner’s clinic, an arts center,
and a public library. This sample was composed of twelve women and four men, most
of whom were white, middle-class, and relatively young, reflecting the dispropor-
tionate number of students who responded. The interviews were conducted in a
quiet room in the university, lasted from forty-five minutes to one and a half hours,
and were tape recorded and transcribed in full. I then recruited forty-four people
from Internet-based self-help groups and forums about shyness to subscribe to a
mailing list, through which they could recount their experiences of shyness. Of
these, twenty participated actively in the discussions (two of whom had also been
interviewees), and six people began to e-mail me privately. From these forty partic-
ipants, I gathered a wealth of rich, qualitative data in the form of personal narra-
tives about living with shyness, which I analyzed in a two-stage process. First, I
coded by hand, developing an inductive map of “grounded” themes and concepts
from a close reading of the data (following Strauss 1987); second, I fed these codes
into the qualitative software package ATLAS/ti, with which I was able to retrieve
segments of the data that pertained to each theme.
In both the unstructured interviews and the e-mail discussion list, I assumed the

role of an active listener (Holstein and Gubrium 1997), asking relatively open-
ended, interpretive questions (in the manner suggested by Kvale [1996] and Rubin
and Rubin [1995]) about what each person thought shyness was and how it had af-
fected their lives. It could of course be argued that these retrospective accounts do
not correspond directly to the underlying reality of social encounters as they “actu-
ally” proceeded, or to the views that nonshy others “really” had of the shy. Never-
theless, the data provide a valid insight into the ways in which self-defined shy
people perform identity work and make sense of their experiences of managing
shyness in social encounters; these questions could not have been adequately
addressed by most other research methods.
Though the idea of involving shy people in social research might seem like a con-
tradiction in terms, the process of data collection revealed an intriguing paradox.
These actors who had been motivated to take part by their identification with shy-
ness as a master status (Hughes 1945) suddenly found themselves able to step out of
this role and willingly contributed long, detailed narratives that expressed strong
opinions. This may have been because the research design allowed the actors to de-
fine the interviews and mailing list as “backstage” regions (Goffman 1959) in which
they could retreat from those aspects of social encounters that made them feel shy
in the front-stage arena (for a more detailed account of this, see Scott 2004a). Here
I explain what these self-presentational concerns were and thus document the expe-
rience of living with shyness from the actors’ own perspective. These normally shy
people were able to stand back and reflect on their condition as a socially negoti-
ated identity, and their accounts suggest that rather than simply an inherent prop-
erty of individual minds, shyness is a role that emerges from everyday interaction.
THE SHY “I,” THE SHY “ME,” AND THE COMPETENT OTHER
We can reconceptualize shyness in terms of the connections among mind, self, and
society that Mead (1934) outlined. The shy self does involve mentalistic processes
of cognition and affect, but these are incorporated into a dynamic inner dialogue
between two phases of a socially reflexive agent. We might then define the Shy “I”
as comprising the impulsive, uncontrollable “attacks” of shyness that occur when
the individual confronts a social situation. These private feelings of inhibition, un-
certainty, and self-consciousness are experienced as something that “just happens”
and creates a barrier to interaction. Thus many of the research participants de-
scribed how they would recoil from front-stage encounters because they felt at a
loss as to what to say and do to create a desirable impression. For example, Lauren
described being “conscious about what you’re doing all the time, and worried about
messing up,” while Marcus said that “logic may tell us that there is nothing to fear . . .
but instinct takes over.”
As we shall see, these private feelings are translated into embodied displays such
as blushing, stammering, and avoiding eye contact, which make the shy actor so-
cially visible. Consequently, the Shy “Me” comes into play as the actor reflects on

this image of himself or herself from the audience’s perspective and considers how
such a performance might affect his or her social status. Thus Anna confessed to a
tendency to “worry about what other people think” of her, while Emily explained
that “you just become very aware of what you say, how you stand, how other people
think of you. . . . You’re suddenly more aware of how you’re acting.” The Shy “I”
and the Shy “Me” are thus mutually reinforcing, because it is this awareness of
being socially visible that makes the actor so wary of committing a blunder and cre-
ates the inhibited response on which he or she then reflects. This vicious circle of
self-consciousness may leave the individual feeling that he or she is simply an inher-
ently “shy person,” but it seems that this interpretation arises from a particular
experience of interaction.
Even those who define themselves as chronically shy will admit that they drift in
and out of the shy role, depending on who they are with and what they are doing.
The data from Zimbardo’s (1977) famous Stanford Shyness Survey suggested that
the epitome of a shyness-inducing situation would involve the performance of a
task before a large number of strangers in a position of authority, who we are keen
to impress. It therefore seems that whether or not the Shy “I” response emerges de-
pends on the actor’s perception of his or her role in relation to the audience: we
may be far less concerned with the potential for negative evaluation if we are sur-
rounded by people who know us well and will excuse the odd mistake than if we are
performing the same task under the gaze of an authority figure. The comments of
my respondents referred to situations of both focused and unfocused interaction (Goff-
man 1961) with others whom they did not know well and yet were expected to support
through practices of interactional teamwork. The prospect of improvising a per-
formance before a potentially critical audience was widely cited as a trigger of shy-
ness and was experienced in social gatherings such as parties, interaction in the work-
place, and encounters with strangers in shops, restaurants, and other public places.
More specifically, however, my respondents indicated that shyness involved feel-
ing that they were less socially skilled and poised for interaction than those around
them: they felt unable to grasp the script that other people seemed to be using, and
it was this feeling of relative incompetence that led the actors to reflect on their Shy
“Me” as a deviant team player. Though these others may not really be as skilled as
they appear (indeed, Goffman’s dramaturgical theory would encourage us to ques-
tion the idea that anybody privately lives out the public face that they present), the
shy actor’s perception of the generalized other (Mead 1934) as being better pre-
pared than himself or herself creates a powerful subjective definition of reality.
What I shall call “the Competent Other,” therefore, is a generalized image of one’s
fellow actors as being relatively well equipped for interaction, coupled with the fear
of one’s own perceived incompetence being revealed through an inadequate front-
stage performance (see also Scott 2004b). As Emma put it, “I think people are more
confident and can handle situations better than I can. . . . They don’t seem to be
worried [about] what others think.” Lauren similarly acknowledged that her shy-
ness emerged when she compared herself to the Competent Other:

People who are really extrovert and confident in themselves make you feel your
inadequacies even more, so you notice even more, you know: “Oh, I could never
do that,” . . . cuz you’re more vulnerable in a way, if they’re so confident and are
willing to do anything. And if you make a fool of yourself, then the contrast will
be greater.
THE FEAR OF EXPOSING INCOMPETENCE

Insofar as this image of the Competent Other informs the actor’s sense of himself
or herself as potentially “failing” to belong, the inner conversation between the Shy
“I” and the Shy “Me” will be fraught with anxiety. This seems to reflect a height-
ened awareness of the fragile boundaries between the front-stage and backstage re-
gions of the self (Goffman 1959), for the shy actor is excessively concerned about
the risk of hidden flaws being exposed before a public audience. This can be con-
trasted with the idea that we, as sociologists, have of interaction as a negotiated order
(Strauss 1978) based on shared background expectancies. The dramaturgical ap-
proach teaches us that the priority of all team members is to uphold a definition of
the situation (Thomas 1923) and as such that actors can expect any faux pas they
make to be covered up by the protective facework (Goffman 1967) of their team-
mates. For example, in his essay on embarrassment, Goffman (1956) argued that
embodied displays of abashment served to communicate the message that this blun-
der was an isolated episode in an otherwise trustworthy actor’s repertoire, which in
turn motivated teammates to gloss over any awkwardness and restore the encoun-
ter to normal appearances. However, it seems that from the shy actor’s perspective,
such dramaturgical loyalty (Goffman 1959) cannot be taken for granted: the indi-
vidual sees his or her incompetence as a personal failing that marks him or her out
as undeserving of team support. This in turn makes prospective social encounters
seem even more precarious, for the risk of committing a faux pas is now coupled
with the threat of being left alone to face the consequences of an interactional hia-
tus. Thus the kinds of situations that shy people dread are those in which they will
be forced to perform before the Competent Other and in which they anticipate a
lack of dramaturgical loyalty.
Shyness therefore seems to mean something more than simply worrying about
momentarily embarrassing oneself through an inept display of ability. The actor is
also deeply concerned with the consequences of giving a performance that falls
below the standard of the team and thus being rejected from it. For the chronically
shy, this risk of social exclusion pervades their approach to most situations and
makes them feel different from those who appear to be nonshy. Believing that their
underlying lack of social skills renders them unlikely to benefit from dramaturgical
loyalty, the shy carry around with them an ongoing dread that each new encounter
will be the one in which their incompetence will be revealed. Thus alongside the
concern about saying or doing the “wrong” thing in a particular situation, there is
also a more generalized sense of anxiety about performing in public and laying one-
self open to scrutiny. As Anna explained:

It’s not what I’m saying that I’m embarrassed about; it’s actually saying anything
at all, or the act of actually speaking and people noticing you—it just makes me
feel uncomfortable. . . . If they don’t notice you, they can’t make judgments
about you, but if you’re sitting there talking, they can.
Comments such as these reflect a great deal of ambivalence about social visibil-
ity. The shy differentiate themselves from those who are merely “quiet” or “intro-
verted” insofar as their own solitude feels enforced rather than chosen. Kim sug-
gested that “you’d say [someone is] ‘quiet’ if they’re just intentionally not saying
anything, or maybe they haven’t got anything to say at that time, but they don’t care
anyway.” By contrast, shy people were thought to be constantly struggling to make
their presence known by participating more actively while, paralyzed with fear
about being seen and evaluated. Thus shyness is motivated by great sociability (the
wish to be with people and to belong to a group), but this is subsumed beneath anx-
ieties about self-presentation. Shy actors long to be recognized and included but
doubt that they can make adequate, defensible contributions to the encounter.
HOVERING ON THE FRINGES

This conflict leaves the shy in an awkward position on the margins of social situa-
tions: they do not want to withdraw completely from interaction, yet they feel un-
able to take an active part in commanding social space. In Simmel’s (1908) account
of “the stranger,” we find a similar juxtaposition of two forms of interaction, prox-
imity and distance, and see how this has a potentially disruptive effect on the group
as a whole. For example, Urchin described how he would often find himself “hover-
ing on the fringes of a conversational circle, not quite part of it, and attracting suspi-
cious looks.” Thus, like the stranger, the shy person confronts his or her teammates
and demands to be recognized, but feels as if he or she has been denied access to the
common stock of background knowledge that allows others to uphold their shared
definition of reality. In Howard Jacobson’s novel, The Mighty Walzer (2000), the shy
protagonist recalls feeling as if everybody but him had been invited to a secret party
and taught the skills of socializing, an observation that fits well with the image of
the Competent Other. As my informant Hardy explained, shy people see them-
selves as outsiders to mainstream society because they cannot perceive the same
unspoken rules that nonshy actors take for granted:
It is the area of informal speaking that is difficult for me. I find it very hard to get
into conversations with strangers. I don’t know how to circulate at parties. I
don’t know how to reestablish contact with people I know vaguely. . . . How
would I speak to a stranger in a pub? Observing such places it seems that most
people are chatting with people they know already, but logically they must have
been strangers at some point in the past. How did they get acquainted?
Thus the shy actor adopts the role of a lay anthropologist, treating the familiar as
strange and questioning the ways in which social order is maintained. While many
of the participants said that they enjoyed a spot of people-watching from the position

of a detached observer, the overriding feeling they expressed was one of frustration
at not being able to participate. A number of people referred to their shyness with
metaphors such as the shell, the filter, the hole, or the bubble to emphasize the bar-
rier they perceived between themselves and others. For example, Emily said, “I
tend to climb inside myself,” and Natalie spoke of “going into a hole.” “I just shut
off sometimes, and start thinking.” Here again we find an ambivalence in the recog-
nition of shyness as both protective and constraining: on the one hand, it seemed
safer to retreat from the social gaze and say nothing than to risk saying or doing the
wrong thing; on the other hand, this made it harder to maintain contact with others
and led to feelings of isolation. As Johnboy explained:
It is a barrier between yourself and the real world. I sometimes feel like I’m in a
bubble: when I say things, it seems to stay within my bubble and people don’t
hear me. . . . I find it very hard to be myself with people I don’t know or with
large groups of people. I feel self-conscious or something and just go into my
shell. I don’t think many people have actually got to know the real me because I
have this barrier around me.
MANAGING THE FRONT-STAGE/BACKSTAGE DIVIDE

It is clear that managing the shy self in situated encounters demands complex strat-
egies of identity work. Although the dramaturgical concerns that Goffman de-
scribed may be common to all social actors, the experience seems to be intensified
in the case of the shy because of their doubts about protective facework. The conse-
quences of a slight misdemeanor are magnified when the actor assumes full respon-
sibility for repairing the situation, and so he or she must be especially careful in his
or her approach to interaction. As Kim explained, “I always feel worried about how
I come across, like the first impressions they get of me.” Art Girl added that this led
to constant self-monitoring and an anxious awareness of the embodied gestures she
might be giving off: “I’m very conscious of how my posture is and what my [facial]
expression is. I am concerned that I might give the wrong impression and people
might think I’m stand-offish.”
Perhaps as a result of this, the shy maintain a rigid division between their back-
stage and front-stage regions and are extremely wary of making the transition from
one to the other. The risk of secret “flaws” being exposed to a critical audience
seems to pervade every potential encounter and makes it difficult for the shy to relax
into a poised display of competence. Crozier (2003) suggests that blushing, one of
the most commonly cited signs of shyness, occurs when the individual believes that
“private” information about his or her self has been exposed to a “public” audience.
Many of the participants reported blushing as an uncontrollable feature of the Shy
“I,” and anticipating this seemed only to increase their dread of performing front
stage. They felt an acute awareness of the discrepancy between their private and pub-
lic selves, and some went as far as to say that no one ever saw their “true,” back-
stage selves because they adapted their behavior to the demands of each situation.

As Georgia put it, “I think I try and suss out who I’m talking to, and try and find out
what they like and what they don’t like—and kind of tailor what I say as to what I
think they’d want me to say, so that they’ll like me.”
However, this constant adaptation and tailoring of the self evoked feelings of
great frustration, as the actors understood that their audiences saw only a limited
range of “faces” from their repertoire. Though they recognized that this reduced the
risk of making an interactional blunder, the shy also expressed irritation at them-
selves for being inauthentic. Hiding behind an overly polite, self-effacing persona
might allow them to adopt a marginal role in the encounter, but it also precluded
the possibility of one’s “real” self participating in social relations and so led to feel-
ings of alienation. Here again we see the ambivalence felt by shy people about their
condition: they wanted to remain safely ensconced in their shells but longed to be
recognized as genuine, if fallible, characters. The frustration that this conflict engen-
dered was reflected in a comment from Natalie: “I think people have this impres-
sion of me at the moment, that I’m quiet and sensible, and it’s just, like, ‘I’m not!’
But I don’t know how to get that across.”
CONTROL AND PREDICTABILITY

On some occasions, it seemed that the situation’s form and structure resolved this
conflict. When an encounter was perceived to be relatively formal, with a pre-
scribed set of roles and scripted actions, the actors sometimes were able to drift out
of the shy role and play along with the team’s performance. For example, many of
the respondents said that in the workplace they felt protected by their job descrip-
tions. Natalie taught a group of young sea cadets and found that when her role and
status were clearly defined, she could perform her duties, knowing that the whole
team shared a definition of the situation: “You’re not really self-conscious when
you’re teaching people—you’re just teaching them. You know it; they don’t.” In this
situation, Natalie knew that she was behaving appropriately and that no one could
question her style of self-presentation. Similarly, Phoebe found that paid employ-
ment allowed her to practice playing a role within the safe limits of a temporally
bound encounter:
I can sit on a till at [the grocery store] and serve them, and as long as I don’t
know them, then I can just about do it, cuz, you know, you just serve them for
ten minutes and they’re gone.
In these situations, normally shy people would find comfort in the routine, pre-
dictable nature of the interaction. The anxiety that accompanied other front-stage
encounters would be removed because there was much less uncertainty about what
to say and do and which social face to present. In Irwin’s (2001) study of meetings
between celebrities and their fans, she observed that fans preferred staging their
own encounters to chance meetings or prestaged events because this gave them a
greater sense of control over the interaction. Similarly, the shy found that knowing

in advance how an encounter would unfold gave them the upper hand and allowed
them to relax considerably. Such fleeting experiences of mastery altered the balance of
power between the shy and the Competent Other and thus were deeply rewarding.
The need for control and predictability might explain another intriguing para-
dox: some of the shy respondents claimed to enjoy acting professionally in the the-
ater. There is an almost perverse irony in the fact that, after finding it so exhausting
to negotiate everyday encounters, the shy would willingly choose to perform on the
stage before a real audience. However, it seems that this context, too, allowed them
to escape to a formally scripted role. For example, Urchin explained that perform-
ing was easier when it was explicitly acknowledged that all the participants were
playing parts inconsistent with their backstage selves, for this meant that he no
longer felt like the only amateur in a group of Competent Others:
Shy people spend much of their lives trying to conceal vulnerability and weak-
ness behind a more or less confident facade which they have themselves con-
structed, but which they know isn’t the real them. Going up on stage under a
costume and makeup, and adopting a character and dialogue which someone
else has written, is just an extension of this. In fact, given that the entire thing has
been scripted in advance, an acted scene is in many ways a break from the scary
uncertainties and unpredictability of the real world.
IMPROVISATION AS DRAMATURGICAL STRESS

Apart from these isolated episodes of role distance, however, the shy found that
most routine social encounters caused them dramaturgical stress (Freund 1998). In
particular, shyness seemed to arise when a situation was neither sufficiently formal
to be controlled and predictable nor informal enough for a faux pas not to matter.
These “middle range” encounters involved sets of unspoken rules and background
expectancies that lent structure to the event but left the detailed character of the
moves up to the actors to negotiate. As the shy felt excluded from these stocks of
common knowledge, they did not trust themselves to improvise before the audi-
ence, and once more found themselves preoccupied with the scope for potential
blunders. Thus Urchin described how he would suddenly become aware of his Shy
“Me” as being poorly equipped to manage ambiguous front-stage settings:
It’s not terribly clear how they “work”—for example, bars/cafés/restaurants,
where it’s not made clear whether you order at the counter or sit and wait to be
served, or when and how you pay. (I could make similar points about libraries,
galleries, betting shops, concert venues, etc. etc.) Doing the wrong thing makes
me feel extremely small, and can ruin what should be a pleasant experience.
On these occasions of dramaturgical uncertainty, people experience shyness as

an awareness of oneself being out of place or socially dislocated. Believing them-
selves relatively unskilled at managing spontaneous encounters, these actors feel
that they have been unfairly thrust into the world of the Competent Other, where
they are constantly at risk of exposure. As the shy attempt to navigate their way

through such uncharted territory, they are aware of a great discrepancy between
what they perceive as their “real,” backstage selves, who are hopelessly incompe-
tent, and the impression of being poised and in control that they would like portray.
In Goffman’s (1963b) terms, this inconsistency between a person’s actual and vir-
tual selves demarcates shyness as a stigmatizing attribute, which has the potential to
taint their social status. However, if we examine this more closely, we can see that
the condition is in fact doubly stigmatizing, insofar as it involves both of the dimen-
sions that Goffman identified. Thus on the one hand, the respondents referred to their
perceived lack of social skills as an underlying, discreditable attribute: this threatened
to reveal itself through an incompetent performance and leave them vulnerable to re-
jection from the team. As we shall see, these fears were often unfounded because,
contrary to the shy actor’s expectations, nonshy teammates would step in to support
their efforts to participate. On the other hand, these self-presentational concerns were
translated into visible “symptoms” of shyness (such as reticence, silence, and avoiding
eye contact), which ironically made shyness in itself a discrediting performance:
these behaviors communicated a lack of sociability and an unwillingness to uphold
the shared definition of the situation, which posed a much greater threat to the flow
of interaction than any faux pas would have done. It is worth taking a more detailed
look at the ways in which shy actors managed each of these forms of stigma.
INTERACTIONAL INCOMPETENCE AS A DISCREDITABLE FLAW

When the shy approach a social situation in which they feel relatively incompetent
to perform, they are extremely concerned that this backstage flaw might be re-
vealed. Believing that they do not possess access to their teammates’ stock of back-
ground knowledge, these actors anticipate making a faux pas in interaction and
leaving themselves vulnerable to criticism. As Megan put it, “I felt like I had noth-
ing to say and nothing valuable to add to the conversation. . . . I was so afraid to
come across as stupid.” This means that social encounters are perceived as risky, not
only in terms of the threat of betraying one’s own virtual identity, but also in that
the shy fear disrupting the smooth flow of interaction. As Davis (1964) showed in
his study of face-to-face encounters between the physically disabled and the able-
bodied, interactional strain can occur if team players perceive a difference in their
status as participants. Thus insofar as the shy understand their ignorance of taken
for granted rules as a social handicap, they anticipate awkwardness in their encoun-
ters with the nonshy. To minimize the effects of such dramaturgical stress, many of
the participants described techniques of information control (Goffman 1963b) that
they had used to prevent these flaws from becoming apparent.
Backstage Rehearsals
First, the shy would often engage in backstage rehearsals before an event, pre-
paring a script and working out moves in order to minimize the amount of time that

they spent floundering in the spotlight. Thus Georgia wrote notes to help herself
telephone the gas company, Phoebe sat in seminar groups carefully planning what
to say before raising her hand, and Connie described how she prepared for the task
of catching the bus:
I always planned out what I was gonna say. Even if it was just “A single to—my
nearest town,” and always made sure that I had the right money so that I
wouldn’t have to go digging about in my purse. I just wanted to make the situa-
tion as short as possible, talking to the bus driver.
Gestures of Inaccessibility
In other situations, the course of interaction is too loosely defined to lend itself to
backstage rehearsals. These unfocused encounters (Goffman 1961) arise between
shy and nonshy actors when they find themselves in situations of copresence with-
out any pretext for conversation. Here, the Shy “Me” comes into play as these indi-
viduals feel acutely aware of having “nothing to say” and of lurking conspicuously
on the margins of a group. Fearing that they will be drawn into an improvised per-
formance that might reveal their lack of finesse, they may use their bodies to nego-
tiate social space and make themselves less visible. For example, Etta confessed
that if people were blocking her way in a supermarket aisle, she would rather walk
around to the other side of the shop than say “Excuse me” to them. Similarly, Jodie
thought that shy people used the body negatively to discourage interaction:
“They’re not waving their hands when they’re talking, they don’t have a lot of eye
contact or facial expressions. . . . I think the body more closes down instead of com-
ing into action.”
It is important to note that these gestures are not simply passive expressions of
inability leaking out but rather are indicative of the fact that shy actors use the body
actively to avoid unwelcome encounters. In Goffman’s (1963a, 1971) terms, this
means creating an “involvement shield” to demarcate their “conversational pre-
serve” and communicate a lack of accessibility to interaction. As Georgia explained,
although it might be impossible to retreat from the front-stage region altogether,
one could symbolically represent the urge to disappear through silent, embodied
gestures that “spoke” out to others:
“Usually by seeing where people sit, you can tell whether they’re shy or not. Cuz
I always try and go to the back in the corner and sit there out of the way. . . . I’d
always be sat there with my head down, thinking, Please don’t ask me. . . I think
it’s almost that [shy people] have a “Please don’t approach me” look.
Normalization
Shy actors can sometimes normalize their behavior by drawing on cultural ste-
reotypes of age, gender, and so on. A number of the participants believed that shyness
was more socially acceptable in women than in men and thus that it was possible to

incorporate symptoms into a more general display of modesty, gentleness, and

other traits traditionally associated with femininity. As Phoebe said, “With girls it’s
more accepted to be quiet and emotional,” and Etta agreed: “I do think we women
get more sympathy.” Meanwhile, shyness in men was understood to be more salient
by virtue of its deviation from cultural expectations. Callum recalled, “Many of the
kids at school used to stigmatize me for being so quiet, and for not acting loud and
laddish,” and Urchin thought that shy men were “far more likely to find themselves
being treated with suspicion, or hostility, or as a threat.” Thus when shyness coin-
cides with certain other social characteristics, the actor may be able to take the role
of the other and exploit his or her knowledge of cultural stereotypes to avoid being
stigmatized. Similarly, in terms of age, Sally recognized that her shyness was miti-
gated by displays of youth and inexperience that provided a legitimate account of
her behavior. Nevertheless, she secretly perceived her lack of social skills as a per-
manently crippling stigma:
I don’t mind too much about being perceived as shy as I think people will still
just think it’s because I am young, a teenager: I’m still unsure of myself, not con-
fident, etc., etc. But really I know that this is how I will be for life.
Techniques of Passing
Finally, in some situations the shy are able to manipulate aspects of the front-
stage setting and scenery (Goffman 1959) in order to present themselves as nonshy
people. If executed correctly, such techniques of “passing” (Goffman 1963b) pro-
vide a welcome break from performing the shy role and allow the actor to partici-
pate in social situations without feeling acutely self-aware. When the actor feels
confident that his or her nonshy face has been accepted, he or she no longer reflects
on the Shy “Me” as being in the spotlight and may drift off into a backstage reverie.
As Fazli put it:
If you can hide your shyness, that means you’re alright. . . . As long as others
don’t know too much about it, then you will never get any kind of social stigma,
anything like that, and they won’t brand you as a shy person.
Of course, this strategy can only be successful if one’s teammates can be trusted
to provide protective facework: an unconvincing display of poise may not be
enough to sustain the belief that all actors are following the same script. Neverthe-
less, as Goffman (1967) argued, there is an implicit agreement in most team interac-
tion that the members will accept the face each actor presents in order to maintain
normal appearances: it is much more disruptive to question a line of action than it is
to repair a faux pas. The individual therefore only needs to give a minimally con-
vincing performance of savoir-faire to be accepted as a team player and protected
by displays of facework. In this respect, it could be argued that most of the Compe-
tent Others we perceive are not intrinsically skilled at interaction but simply man-
age to carry off a nonshy persona in most situations: nonshyness is nothing more

than a convincing performance. As we have seen, the shy may interpret things dif-
ferently and typically expect not to receive such dramaturgical loyalty, but, never-
theless, they report that some occasions do afford strategies for passing as nonshy.
For example, one technique practiced by Jodie, Heather, and Emily was to de-
flect attention away from themselves while continuing to demonstrate a minimal de-
gree of involvement in the focused encounter. Jodie was a working-class woman
who had married into an upper-middle-class family and always felt ill equipped to
join in their conversations. Nevertheless, she found that by asking an open-ended
question that encouraged others to talk, she could move the spotlight onto them
and avoid the dangers of saying the wrong thing under scrutiny. This in turn gave
her a few moments to compose herself and conduct any backstage rehearsals that
were needed to keep her in face:
If I’m feeling shy and silent, then I’ll ask a question that I know is going to take a
long time to answer and is going to cause a big old debate around the table,
where everyone gets involved. . . . So then I can sit back and I can be consumed
by whatever it is that’s suddenly come over me . . . and then hopefully it’ll go
away and I’ll get my voice back.
Meanwhile, Pearl made use of material props in the front-stage setting to present
herself as a certain kind of social character who might be made exempt from the
moral responsibilities of team interaction. Normalization can be elicited when ac-
tors take the role of the generalized other to devise modes of self-presentation, and
these are more convincing when supported by recognized signifiers of age, gender,
and so on. Thus as an older woman, Pearl confessed that she would sometimes take
advantage of cultural stereotypes about the elderly to mislead her audience into
lowering their expectations of her. She incorporated certain material objects
into the personal front (Goffman 1959) that she presented to others, and these
were understood to extend the protective armory of the “shell” around the self,
regulating the boundaries between the private and the public:
I feel safer all wrapped up. I would love to wear a long robe and a veil, but that
wouldn’t be very popular today, would it? I compromise with coat, hat, gloves,
spectacles (which I don’t need; they belonged to my mother) and a walking stick
which I don’t need either. I like to be covered up and have something to hold. A
friend suggested the walking stick and I find it very helpful. It looks natural, too,
for an old lady of seventy to have one.
A final strategy for passing was suggested by Urchin. He said he would use what
Goffman (1963b) called side involvements during social encounters to distract the
audience’s gaze from what he thought might be an incompetent performance. Thus
alongside his dramaturgical “main involvement” of talking and using nonverbal
gestures in conversation, he would busy himself with a secondary activity such as
eating or drinking. While those who suffer from extreme shyness (or social phobia)
might find it difficult to perform any such tasks in public, Urchin was able to make a
distinction between activities that were likely to expose him as an unskilled social
actor and those that were marginal to the identity:

Although I’m not normally a big eater, eating in a social situation gives me
something to do with my hands and face, and takes the pressure off me to inter-
act with other people. So, at a drinks-party type of affair, I’ll spend much of the
time at the food table, stuffing myself with crisps and Twiglets. Or at a dinner
party, I’ll have cleared my plate when other people have barely started, because
while they’ve been chatting away, I’ve just been eating. . . . I find coping with
other people easier if I’m doing something else at the same time—if socializing
and conversation aren’t the only purpose of our being together.
Such self-consciously enacted performances indicate that while shyness may arise
as an impulsive, overwhelming response of the Shy “I,” these feelings do not simply
leak out passively through a universal set of “symptoms.” The shy actors’ ability to
take the role of the Competent Other in their approach to interaction allows them
to devise creative strategies of impression management, through which they hope
to influence the outcomes of encounters. Recognizing their lack of social competence
as a potentially discreditable flaw, the actors search for ways to present themselves
that will disguise or at least minimize the impact of this stigmatizing attribute. In
doing so, they reveal a remarkable commitment to upholding their teammates’ def-
inition of the situation, and manage their shyness as an accomplished performance.
SHYNESS AS A DISCREDITING PERFORMANCE

Nevertheless, there are numerous occasions when strategies of impression manage-
ment prove unsuccessful and actors believe that their incompetence has been ex-
posed. It is this recognition of the Shy “Me” in the eyes of the Competent Other
that leads the individual to understand his or her role as deviant and to reflect on
social reactions to his or her behavior (Becker 1963; Erikson 1964; Kitsuse 1962).
Ironically, however, it appears that what evokes this negative sanctioning is not the
unpolished presentation of self that the actor is keen to conceal but rather the strat-
egies that he or she employs to do so. That is, the performance of shyness in itself
may be discrediting, in that by withdrawing to the margins of encounters and com-
municating inaccessibility, the actor may appear unsociable and uncommitted to
sustaining the interaction order. It seems that being trapped in the shy role has far
more serious consequences than giving an imperfect but socially involved perfor-
mance, because it alienates the actor from his or her team. Displays of shyness dis-
rupt the smooth running of an encounter and make it difficult for teammates to
maintain normal appearances, not least because the actor’s apparent refusal to play
by the rules highlights the precarious nature of the negotiated order.
It is worth considering some of the ways in which shyness discredits the actor’s
claims to social membership and leads him or her further into deviance. The partic-
ipants in the study described how their shyness took various forms of expression
that broke the unspoken rules of interaction and sometimes evoked punitive social
reactions. In ethnomethodological terms, we might say that these actors performed
unwitting “breaching” experiments (Garfinkel 1967), as their behavior challenged

the taken for granted assumptions on which their team members relied. Such acts
of residual rule breaking (Scheff 1966) can pose a serious threat to the maintenance
of social order at a micro level and may evoke feelings of moral indignation in the
conforming majority. Insofar as the shy actors themselves understand these disrup-
tive effects of shyness, they feel increasingly self-conscious about embodying an
attribute that is discrediting.
The Visibility of Invisibility

Some of the most commonly reported shyness “symptoms” are embodied ges-
tures of discomfort that make the actor stand out from the group. In a paradox that
we might call the visibility of invisibility, it seems that the shy person’s dread of
being in the spotlight is expressed through behaviors that in fact attract attention.
For example, William described how he had sat on the stage at his high school grad-
uation ceremony, dreading the moment when he would have to give a speech: “I
was sweating and my heart started pounding. . . . My knees started shaking. . . . I sat
there and thought, How can I hide this now?” Similarly, blushing was cited by many
of the participants as a telltale sign of shyness that made it impossible to pass as
nonshy or to fade into the background. Emma said that she worried about “stand-
ing out as this red, shaking fool.” Anna said that despite her attempts to hide her
anxiety, blushing marked her as someone who could not be relied on to uphold nor-
mal appearances: “When I know I’m going to blush, it gets worse. . . . I just think,
Oh no . . . they know I’m nervous now, because I’ve gone red.” This self-consciousness
was often exacerbated by social reactions that confirmed that the blush had been
noticed; the teasing that ensued served only to increase the actor’s sense of social
visibility. For example, Etta recalled:
[My uncle would ask,] “How’s my shy girl?” He’d say it as if he took some enjoy-
ment in watching me cringe. He knew I was shy and would pursue it to no end.
My [other] uncle would also give me a certain look with a smile on his face. He
would just stare at me until he could get me to put that shy look on my face. We
all know the “shy look,” I think. I would turn beet red as I silently died inside.
People would wait for that look; they’d want me to show that I was shy. As a
child I remember thinking, What’s wrong with [these] people who enjoy making you
feel bad? I couldn’t understand it at all. They reacted in such a way that only made
me feel worse. The more I showed I was shy, the more they would taunt me.
Experiences like this meant that those who had lived with shyness throughout
their lives had come to understand that such behavior was deviant. Those around
them would make comments that were at best insensitive and at worst highly criti-
cal, and this left the actors acutely aware of their difference from others. Not only
did their lack of social skills threaten to expose them as incompetent performers,
but their expressions of shyness discredited their claims to social membership. Art
Girl said that people would often say to her, “You’re shy” or “You’re quiet.” “After
saying that,” she continued, “they like to point out that they were either never shy

or used to be shy and are now so outgoing. . . . When people said things like that, I
would feel especially outcast.” Megan agreed vehemently with this, arguing that
such comments defined her as a “shy person” and left her feeling powerless to
change: “That’s the worst part of being shy, I thought. People always point it out to
you and this makes you feel like crawling under a rock. People reacted to my shy-
ness by pointing [it] out as if I didn’t know.”
Vocality and (Dis)empowerment

In other cases, it is the actors’ lack of vocality that marks them out as shy and
evokes indignation in their teammates. As a number of commentators have noted
(Abt and Mustazza 1997; Morrison 2001; Shattuc 1997), contemporary Western cul-
ture is obsessed with confessional styles of talk and public self-disclosure; those
who appear unwilling to join in with this loquacious garrulity find themselves chas-
tised for being “antisocial,” aloof, or inconsiderate. Consequently, the shy find that
their tendency toward quietness and reticence marks them out as deviant and high-
lights their sense of exclusion. Heather said that the “failure” to talk was often seen
as a sign of illness or abnormality, and she would find herself accused of not partici-
pating: “Sometimes if we went out, the other adults would say, ‘What’s the matter
with you, Heather? You’re so quiet.’”
In many informal gatherings, the shy find themselves marginalized by their lack
of vocality. Occasionally, the individual’s quietness can become contagious, creating
an awkward silence as teammates begin to feel unsettled by this residual rule break-
ing (Scheff 1966). More often, however, the shy report that nonshy people maintain
a steady flow of conversation by virtue of their ability to improvise a vocal perfor-
mance, and this leaves the less confident actors feeling unable to participate. As
Toby put it, “Lots of social gatherings are just shouting matches, effectively, where
the prize goes to the loudest person.” Insofar as shy people recognize that more
vocal performers dominate conversations, therefore, they find it difficult to break in
with a remark. As Ruby complained, “They just cut me off halfway through.” This
in turn forms a reflective awareness of the Shy “Me” as someone who might be mis-
perceived as disengaged from the encounter, even though these actors feel that they
are taking part vicariously. Lauren explained:
Often I’ll just sit and I’ll listen, and I’ll be really interested and I’ll be listening,
but then I’ll realize that I haven’t spoken for about an hour and a half, and they
probably think I’m completely bored.
Furthermore, the preference these actors have for mentally rehearsing lines of
action before entering the front-stage region means that they struggle to make
spontaneous comments and keep up with the conversation. Believing that any line
of speech must be perfectly executed to avoid embarrassment, the shy find them-
selves preoccupied with the encounter as a performance and spend much of their
time in the role of detached observer. Consequently, many of the participants said

that they would deliberate for so long about what was the “right” thing to say that
the moment would pass and the conversation would move on. Anna said regret-
fully, “It happens all the time. . . . I’d think, Oh, should I say that? Should I say that?
and then the chance goes”; and Twinkle confessed, “There are still times when I have
to sit there and kick myself when someone else says the same thing as I wanted to
say.” This underlines the point that shy people are not simply reclusive introverts
who prefer to avoid interaction; they are in fact replete with ideas and opinions that
they long to share with others but struggle constantly to make their voices heard.
It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that this frustrated sociability should be ex-
pressed in a way that discredits the actor’s request for social inclusion. While they
may be highly motivated to participate and gain acceptance, the shy typically find
that gestures of withdrawal, quietness, and reticence suggest quite the opposite idea
to their teammates. For example, Art Girl sensed that people “think [she’s] cranky
or unfriendly or whatever because [she’s] not talkative,” and Johnboy agreed that
he was seen as “aloof, unsociable, maybe even arrogant.” This misperception of shy-
ness as rudeness reminds us that it is more socially deviant to appear uncommitted
to teamwork than it is to participate and make a mistake: a faux pas can be covered
up with protective facework, but a disengaged performer threatens the entire inter-
action order. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that this should evoke the moral
indignation of the nonshy. As Titus put it:
I think people don’t like the idea [that] you are listening but not contributing be-
cause it’s like stealing, like someone who uses your milk but never buys any. . . .
It must seem to these people that we are being aloof, like we won’t talk to them
because we think they aren’t worth talking to. You can see why they’d get annoyed.
CONCLUSION
A symbolic interactionist reading of shyness allows us to relocate this apparently
private state of mind in the context of social norms and practices. We have seen
from the reflexive accounts of people who define themselves as shy that managing a
shy identity in everyday life is a complex dramaturgical feat. The shy self can be under-
stood as an inner dialogue between the Shy “I” and the Shy “Me” through which
the individual monitors his or her conduct from the perspective of the Competent
Other. Thus shyness emerges as a definition of the situation when these actors feel
that those around them are more skilled at interaction than they are themselves:
the fear of such relative incompetence being exposed through an embarrassing per-
formance is exacerbated by an anticipated lack of dramaturgical loyalty. The shy ex-
press ambivalence about social visibility because they are highly sociable and com-
mitted to team interaction but feel excluded from the common stock of background
knowledge on which other people rely. Furthermore, we find that shyness is a doubly
stigmatizing condition, for alongside these concerns about a discreditable lack of
social skills being revealed, the performance of the shy role is in itself discrediting,
insofar as displays of reticence and withdrawal can be misconstrued as rudeness.

The shy therefore find themselves grappling with a multitude of self-presentational

concerns while being acutely aware of the challenge that they pose to dramaturgical
rules. Nevertheless, these actors devise various strategies of information control to
minimize the disruptive effects of their shyness and as such manage the identity as
an accomplished performance. This remarkable commitment to the interaction order
demonstrates that “shy people” are not a psychologically distinct group of outsiders
but rather take their place alongside nonshy actors in the theater of social life.
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Scott, The Red Shaking Fool

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The Red, Shaking Fool: Dramaturgical Dilemmas in Shyness

Author(s): Susie Scott ,

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Shyness has previously been conceptualized as an object of psychological

In recent debates about the place of symbolic interactionism in contemporary soci-

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In this tradition of research, this article reports on my recent study of shyness, in

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF SHYNESS

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METHOD AND DATA

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THE FEAR OF EXPOSING INCOMPETENCE

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HOVERING ON THE FRINGES

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MANAGING THE FRONT-STAGE/BACKSTAGE DIVIDE

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CONTROL AND PREDICTABILITY

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IMPROVISATION AS DRAMATURGICAL STRESS

On these occasions of dramaturgical uncertainty, people experience shyness as

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INTERACTIONAL INCOMPETENCE AS A DISCREDITABLE FLAW

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incorporate symptoms into a more general display of modesty, gentleness, and

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SHYNESS AS A DISCREDITING PERFORMANCE

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The Visibility of Invisibility

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Vocality and (Dis)empowerment

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The shy therefore find themselves grappling with a multitude of self-presentational

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