A comparison between social-skills training, cognitive restructuring and relaxation therapies on shyness

Shyness can result in an accumulation of faulty cognitions (Bruce & Atezaz, 1999), behavioral deficits and/or excesses (Dam-Baggen & Kracimaat, 2000), and/or the physiological arousal (Schrof, Schultz, Koerner & Svetcov, 1999) that an individual experiences in, or in expectation of, social interactions. The present study compared treatments that focused on each of these three sets of symptoms of shyness separately. Relaxation training was used for treating the physiological aspects, social-skills training was used for reducing behavioral escesses and deficits and cognitive restructuring was used for the treatment of faulty cognitions. The effectiveness of these three methods was compared to performance of a control group. Participants each received one treatment. It was hypothesized that the treatments would vary in their effectiveness but overall participants would benefit from each treatment. Results indicated that the treatments were not successful in reducing overall shyness. However, on average, participants, including ones from the control group, did agree that the treatment was beneficial and that they would attempt to use such techniques in the future.