Bringing up bashful baby - Developmental pathways to social phobia

Shyness is a complex personality trait with interesting links to psychopathologic disorders. Foremost among these is social anxiety disorder (SAD), a condition with its origins usually in childhood or adolescence. SAD is seen as emerging from a developmental template that includes genetic predisposition and specific experiences (or the lack thereof) as critical components. Twin studies support the existence of strong genetic influences on childhood anxiety, although specific data about social anxiety are sparse. Familial experiential factors probably have more modest effects. The capacity of individual-specific events, such as serious traumatic or early conditioning experiences, to affect the developmental trajectory of social anxiety remains to be explored.