The Habit of Shyness - Essay Example

? Insert Insert Insert 4 December Analyzing the Formation of Habits using Behavioral and Social/Cognitive Approaches. My Habit of Shyness Habit formation remains a fundamental element in human growth and development. Behavioral and social cognitive approaches have developed to provide insights into the formation of habits. Habits comprise of qualities that an individual displays in most situations. External conditions or settings of a given situations significantly influence one’s habits thereby determines how a person would act. Habit formation begins from childhood and continues to develop into adulthood. Personality involves consistencies in personal behavioral patterns that reveal individual differences in predicting future behavior (Coon & Mitterer, 2008). This paper seeks to analyze how I developed shyness and factors that influenced the adoption of this habit using the components of behavioral and social cognitive personality theories. This paper would also address attempts I have made to break this habit. Shyness refers to the tendency to strain and feel uneasy or avoid other people when socializing. Elements of shyness include a feeling of social anxiety in the presence of others, and a lack of knowledge or skills on how to interact and initiate conversations with people and keep it going. In addition, feelings of nervousness and rejection, blaming of self and self-critical tendencies in social situations comprise elements of shyness. Shyness resulted because of exposure to different social situations of school environments after receiving a scholarship award following my outstanding performance in final elementary grade. The change of learning institutions from a district school to a national school created in me the tendency to worry about what and how pupils from high socioeconomic backgrounds would think about my poor background. Some students would label me making me to develop shyness, and this consequently affected my self-esteem (Coon & Mitterer, 2008). On getting admission to the university, I decided to attempt to break this habit of shyness. I became active in social situations such as team projects, church and club activities among other social gatherings in the university programs. Moreover, I established goals for expanding my social skills and experience. With the realization and belief that not all people could be 100 percent successful socially, I have managed to eliminate self-blame when a social encounter fails. I also began crediting myself for success achieved instead of being hard as I did earlier on. Despite my attempts at breaking this habit, I have not successfully managed to eliminate all the elements of my shyness but still endeavors to break it wholly. I still experience some level of anxiety in certain situations especially when meeting persons from higher status or participating in significantly high social gatherings. Behavioral personality theory, also known as learning theory, encompasses the basic principles of learning in the acquisition of complex human behavior. This theory focuses on specific observable behaviors of an individual. According to behavioral personality theory, I acquired or learned the habit of becoming shy. In this case, shyness became strengthened or increased by receiving negative reinforcement. Labeling acted as a negative reinforcement for my shyness. The formation of shyness occurs in the social context, which remains true for the school setting in my case. An individual’s ability to make choices, think, and discriminate would be attributed under this theory. My lack of social skills, feeling of social anxiety and inability to initiate conversations with people and keep it going contributed to the development of shyness. In addition, feelings of nervousness and rejection, blaming of self and self-critical tendencies incorporate this habit formation (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2010). The components of social cognitive theory consist of both cultural and social situations and expectations present in the environment, and their impact on how individuals develop differently. Individuals learn as they observe and interact with others. Development would thus be framed by the use of language. The potential for individuals to promote their own cognitive development and appreciation of diversity would be attributed to this theory. In addition, individuals develop as they are exposed to different social situations and changes that require mandatory responses. Private speech, scaffolding, and the zone of proximal development constitute the components of social cognitive theory. Private speech involves how an individual internalizes words and their meanings in a social situation. The initiation of speech would, therefore occur after an individual assimilates the meaning of words (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2010). The zone of proximal development involves the interaction of an individual with individuals of high and profound social skills. This interaction enables an individual to attain high levels of functioning, hence, promoting their own cognitive development. On the other hand, the social activities and conversations that individuals actively participate in remain the basis for their development. This would be the component of scaffolding where society and individuals poses mutually balanced influential roles. Individuals would be capable of acquiring, as well as transforming and modifying, culturally accepted practices from social activities and conversations (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2010). Operant conditioning, also known as instrumental conditioning, bears a methodological benefit that allows for the analysis of habits displaying learning conditions. Behavioral analysis of habits creates the likelihood of predicting explanations for habits, as well as managing them. Responses in operant conditioning remain controlled by the stimulus. Directive stimulus refers to the situation whereas reinforcing stimulus would be either positive or negative. Operant conditioning in behavioral theory involves the process where an individual learns to make responses to stimuli since response would be reinforced by the presence of the stimuli. The use of either a positive or negative reinforce could be used to weaken shyness (Staats, 1996). A class debate activity could be used as the directive stimulus in this case. The allocation of a topic to me for presenting an argument against the topic of debate would constitute a negative reinforce that weakens shyness in this situation. Motor behavior response would involve courage and confidence during presentation of facts against the topic without displaying shyness. Alternatively, the presentation of an award after the presentation for an outstanding presentation becomes a positive reinforcing stimulus. The award would strengthen the behavior or maintain it if it had already become established (Staats, 1996). In conclusion, the study of an individual’s behavior remains a complex endeavor with respect to habit formation. It would be challenging to restrict such studies to a specific phenomenon of personality theory. In addition, the study of habit formation requires a multidisciplinary approach that involves several sets of principles and concepts in the study. Behavioral personality theory involves the systematic construction of human behavior theory. This construction builds from the basic level of learning into the human levels of cognitive learning, development, and socialization. The theory goes further to illustrate these levels of personality development in conjunction with levels of personality measurement. In this regard, behavioral theory best explains my personality. References Coon, D. & Mitterer, J. O. (2008). Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior with Concept Maps (12th edition). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. Staats, A. W. (1996). Behavior and Personality: Psychological Behaviorism. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Zastrow, C. & Kirst-Ashman, K. K. (2010). Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment (8th edition). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. Read More