Junior High School Students Shy Structure, Characteristics And The Influence Of Genes And The Environment

Shyness is a very common phenomenon in the process of interpersonal communication.Moderate shyness will not cause serious consequences. However, excessive shyness couldbring negative affects on individual’s adaption and development. Junior high school studentswho are in the adolescent stage are experiencing huge physiological and psychological change,accompanied by the rapid development of its sex physiological maturity and selfconsciousness. This stage is also more prone to emerge of shyness. It may bring some troubleto the individual adaptation and development. Therefore, there is important theoreticalsignificance and far-reaching practical value to paying attention to the issue of shyness at thisstage, pay attention to the composition and characteristics analysis of the shyness and furtherexplore its influencing factors. There are great theoretical significance and deep practicalvalues.Although domestic research on shyness has made many achievements, there are alsomany problems. From the perspective of the use of basic terminology, there is confusion onthe translation of "shyness" into Chinese. Some translated it into "Xiuqie", while otherstranslated it into "Haixiu". The confusion, in essence, reflected the researchers’ fuzzy andimprecise on the meaning of "shyness". From the angle of research subjects, much attentionwas paid to the study of primary school students and university students. The research onshyness in the junior middle school, a period in which the shyness incidence is relatively high,is relatively fewer.From the perspective of measurement tools, shyness scales in China are mainly revisedscales from foreign shyness scales. These scales rarely considered the influence of culturefactors, nor do they have enough age pertinence. From angle of research perspectives,although the researchers attached great importance to the influence mechanism of shyness,most of the studies were limited in psychological sociology category and focused on theinfluence of environment and individual psychological factors on shyness. In recent years,there are studies on the brain mechanism of shyness from the perspective of brain electricalactivity. However, the exploration of genetic mechanism of shyness from the perspective ofgenetics in China is still a blank.Studies on this issue have a history of nearly30years in other countries. It developedfrom early stage of Quantitative Genetics to the stage of Molecular Genetics, and obtainedsome valuable results. Reviewing existing studies in other countries indicated that there aremany quantitative genetics studies, whereas molecular genetics study is relatively less. In addition, previous studies are manly based on the analysis of single gene, investigations onthe joint, complex affect of gene and gene, gene and environment are fairly rare. Thus theimplications these studies brought are limited.In view of this, this study takes the junior middle school students as research objects, andcomprehensively applied research methods of etymology, psychometric, psychologicalsociology, and molecular genetics. The present study systematically investigated the structureand characteristics of shyness as well as the effect and mechanism of heredity and theenvironment on shyness among junior middle school students. The specific research contentsinclude the following:(1) Based on the concept of "shyness" in Western culture, the presentstudy made an interpretation and interpretation of the translation and use of “shyness” fromthe perspective of Etymology. This provided a basis for unity and accurate grasp of theconcepts of the terms in this field.(2) So as to develop shyness scale suitable for juniormiddle school students in Chinese culture, the present study took1237urban and rural middleschool students from3schools Ji’nan City and Dezhou City of Shandong Province as subjects.This scale should not only embody the universality of shyness, but also reveals the influenceof Chinese culture on shyness and the particularity of shyness in junior high school stage. Onthis basis, this study applied the scale for measuring shyness, and further alalyze thecharacteristics of shy of junior high school students.(3) With the method of random clustersampling, the present study initially selected891students from two junior high schools inWeifang city of Shandong province. The researcher selected at both ends of20%subjects ofhigh and low rank as high shyness group and low shyness group. After eliminating invalidsubjects,267subjects were left (high shyness group133, low shyness group134). So as toexplore the genetic and environmental influences mechanism of shyness, the present studyapplied genetic and parental rearing patterns as genetic and environment. DNA collectionfrom saliva was performed on the subjects.Data analysis was carried out by applying SPSS17.0and SHEsis software, and the mainfindings are as following.According to the results of etymological analysis and the requirement of ‘cultureequivalence’ in cross-cluture studies, the researchers in China translated “shyness” into“Xiuqie”rather than “Haixiu”. The translation of “Xiuqie” is closer to the meaning of"shyness", thus "Xiuqie" realized conceptual equivalence to the concept of the "shyness ".This is the basic for studies in the field of shyness.(2) The Shyness Scale for Chinese Junior High School Students consisted of five dimensions: self-expression shyness, shyness toward novelty, shyness for negative socialevaluation, shyness toward the opposite sex, unassuming shyness. The scale reveals thatshyness is a multi-dimensional structure which has universality as well as cultural diversityand age specificity. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that Shyness Scale forJunior School Students has good reliability and validity. The rich and detailed results get fromthe studies on the shyness characteristics and the effects of gene and environment by usingthis scale suggested the necessity of developing multidimensional shyness scale for specificage and culture. On the other hand, it is further proved that the validity and reliability of thisscale.(3) The shyness level of middle school students generally located in the middle level, butsome of the dimensions of shyness exhibited high level. Shyness level of middle schoolstudents on overall and sub-dimensions showed no significant difference in grade, but there isdifference in the aspects of gender, home location (urban or rural area), and weather onlychild. Generally speaking, the shyness of girls is higher than boys; the shyness of studentsfrom rural is higher than that from urban area; shyness of non-only child is higher than that ofonly child.(4) The shyness of junior middle school students has the genetic and environmental basis.The method or pathway of how heredity and environment affect shyness is very complex.There are independent effects of both genetic and environmental respectively, the interactionsof gene and gene, gene and environment, and the additive effect of genes and the environment.Moreover, in respect to different demisions of shyness, the effect of genetic is different. Somedimisions are closely related to genes. However, some demisions are rarely related to gene,while environmental factors played an important role.