On shyness

From the Times Literary Supplement: "Shyness is paradoxical because so many people suffer from it at some time, and yet each sufferer feels uniquely alone in it. An American study, conducted in the 1970s by Philip Zimbardo (he of the Stanford prison experiment) discovered that 80 percent of Americans had been shy at some point; 40 percent currently thought of themselves as shy; and 4 percent were 'shy all the time with almost everyone.' … What the chronically shy don't realize, or refuse to believe, is that most people are somewhat shy, but some are better at hiding it than others. Nobody notices you pretending not to be shy, one writer notes, because they are too busy 'fooling you with the same trick.'"