A Study On Junior Middle School Students’ Relationship Of Shyness, Impression Management And Peer Relation

Shyness is a common feeling of everyone. Henderson thinks shyness is what one is afraidof when he or she is in front of negative evaluation in social interactions. It also goes withdepression or restrain. Shyness dramatically affects one’s participating in his or her expectedactions. If shyness is caused by a specific condition and the degree of shyness is appropriate, itis common. However, if the degree of shyness is high, it affects one’s study, life, physical andpsychological health. Many western psychologists have done many researches aboutindividual shyness and made great achievements. Studies show that shyness is reflected fromaspects of cognition, emotion and social interaction and closely related with peer relations.Studies of shyness in China are still in its infancy. The peer relationship of shy individual andadaptation still need debating.The need of self-affirmation and building ego identity is becoming more and more intensewith the development of self-awareness of junior middle school students. Because of lackingbasic communication skills, shy individuals may encounter with difficulties and barriers whenthey communicate with other people. They are concerned with basic communication skillswhich they lack, therefore, when they realize what we mentioned above, they may inevitablygive themselves or their peer negative evaluation. At the same time, that may prevent themfrom communicating with other people. That vicious circle makes shy individuals unable toadapt to society and they may be repelled by the society.An outstanding point of shy individuals is that they pay much attention to self-regard.Woody mentions that high self-regard increases the level of shyness and can’t improve socialinteraction skills. The teenage is a vital period of developing self-awareness. Teenagers mayreact differently in response to different people and situations. Impression management is acommunication skill. And it makes mental state and behavior harmonious with externalenvironment, which may be of great importance of mental health of teenagers.Recent studies show that shyness leads to the lost of social interaction skills of teenagersand doesn’t make teenagers keep good social relationship and peer group. If shyness becomesa habit, it affects social adapt of teenagers. Teenagers are in the stage of self-centered. Thedevelopment of self-awareness makes children different impression management while dealing with different people. Shy individuals can’t handle social situations appropriately. Meanwhile,they don’t have much words and body languages. Bad self-projection makes an unfriendlyimpression on others. This study focuses on the shyness of junior school students in order toarouse public concern of it. We hope that we can promote the healthy development ofteenagers through improving social interaction skills of shy individuals. This study has done adetailed literature review of shyness studies at home and abroad. We want to study therelationship of shyness of junior middle school students, peer relation and impressionmanagement through the questionnaire method under the background of Chinese culture.The questionnaires we use is called junior middle school students shyness scale and made byProfessor Zhang Deqi. It consists of four factors, which are self-accusation, the limit ofself-expression, heterosexual attention and seeking for approval. And it is with good reliabilityand validity. The target of the questionnaire is 627 junior middle school students in ShandongProvince.The conclusions of the study are as follows:Gender is of obvious difference in the total score of shyness and each factor from theperspective of demographic variable analysis. The degree of shyness of girls is much higherthan that of boys. Different grades of junior middle school students are different in the factorsof the total score of shyness, seeking for approval and the expression of self-limit. After we dothe post-testing, we find that the shyness of grade seven is non significant with that of gradeeight. The shyness of grade nine is obviously different with that of grade seven and eight.Shyness is significantly and positively correlated with peer rejection. However, shyness issignificantly and negatively correlated with peer acceptance and impression management.Shyness has a negative prediction effect on peer acceptance. However, it has a positiveprediction effect on peer rejection.Impression management performs the intermediation function in shyness, peer rejectionand acceptance.