Q&A: Psychologist Discusses Research on Shyness in Children

Since 1978, Jerome Kagan, the Starch Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, has been researching shyness in children.

Based on observations of 800 to 900 Caucasian, largely middle-class children who have ranged in age from infancy to 13 years, he and his team have determined that some very inhibited children were born that way, and that their brains react differently to the stimuli of new situations than do those of other children.

Very shy children, they have found, also are more likely than the uninhibited to be tall and thin, to have blue eyes, to be well-behaved, and to suffer from hay fever and eczema--because of higher blood levels of...