The evolutionary advantage of shyness? NEED LOGICAL ANSWERS

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It is surprising how shy many shy people there are that are to fearful of asking a woman on a date. It is common, probably much more common with aspies.

Considering this is very common, there must be a logical evolutionary survival reason for this level of shyness I am not curtain of the benefits, other then shyness keeps one out of trouble a little bit. But if someone is finding it really difficult finding someone wouldn’t mother nature reduce inhibitions of those people to increase their chances of them finding a mate?

I understand nature uses loneliness, particularly with aspies, as a way of getting them out of the house and look for a sole mate to have children with. But what good is loneliness if shyness stops them from taking the first move.

Does anyone in here have a good knowledge of Darwinian Psychology and give me some ideas of why this shyness is so common, especially amungst aspies. So illogical ! !! please help!! ! Ha ha ah!.

Not sure. For one it likely does not reduce shy females from
reproducing. So alot of the genes stay in the pool that way. And
I'm sure a large percent of very shy men still reproduce. And shyness will be a spectrum so those men who are just a little shy
will reproduce close to 99%. So their wil still be plenty of shy genes
in the pool.

As for why it was adaptive in the earily days of animal evolution.
Its seem rather simple a shy person would avoid danger passively
and avoid the need to fight (be strong).

In dodge ball at school I could not throw and was in terror but I was usually the last one to die. Sure I was a total wuss but I
was the last man to die. Which means there is and advantage in not
being agressive sometimes.

If you assume females choose who they get to reproduce with, then those that pick males who are likely to stay with them and take a share of responsibility in raising the child are more likely to successfully raise their offspring. I'd suggest "shy" males would most likely fall into that category, as the ones at the other extreme are likely to be off copulating with any female they can get their hands on. The females with lots of sexual partners would be less likely to raise their young to adulthood as they wouldn't have a steady partner providing for them. So, that would select for shy genes in males and genes in females that prefered shy men. However, that's an extremely simplistic way of looking at it, as there are other competing selective forces at work that would act against selecting for the shyness.

Last edited by ascan on 29 Jan 2007, 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Shy people are less likely to do something stupid... as are people with AS.

But that doesn’t explain why many people including myself, are less fearful about hostile confrontation then asking woman out. Today in Costa’s coffee bar, for a lark I decided stamp my card until it was full so that I could receive a free coffee. The bar staff thought it was funny as I was going crazy with the stamp.

Some middle aged, insane hag yelled at me thief as she left the coffee shop; one of the bar staff said she was nuts and very racist too. I look forward to getting her ass tomorrow more then I look forward to asking out the one of the very nice girl who works behind the bar.

One guess is you know asking a women out has a high chance of
resulting in failure and the negative feelings from that. But if you get in a fight with another man you know you have a 50% chance of kicking his a$$ and perhaps if you lose that is not as bad as rejection.

I don't know much about evolutionary psychology, but I don't think shyness plays much of a role in reproduction. At best it just postpones reproduction.

I think people who avoid other people will have less of a chance of reproducing and putting those genes in the gene pool.
Having AS does not necessarily mean that you are shy or avoid people, just depends on the circumstances.

Am not also convinced. Most Aspies never have children and I am sure that their chances would improve if they could overcome shyness with the opposite sex.

There is not material loss at being rejected, unlike what could happen if one was to lose a fight and end up with broken teeth. And it would not explain why don’t shy people evolve to be immune to feeling of rejection. What are the advantages of feeling hart by rejection to the extent that it stops you from trying again?

Obviously, at the extreme, if you're too shy to reproduce then your genes don't survive. Naturally, there's a spread of degrees of shyness in a population and the genes of the shyest not being passed on reduces the likelyhood of the mean tending towards being too shy. As for people with AS, I think often the shyness is secondary. It's caused by other manifestations of AS. for example, if you're not too good at reading body language, and have difficulties with figures of speech, or metaphor, for example, you'll most likely stay clear of conversation. Shyness can develop from these other problems.

Unfortunately I think much shyness in AS has to do with NOT being able to model other peoples behaviour in their head, so people end up being "empty shells", or huge question marks, and unconscously our bodies defensive anxiety/fear mechanisms go off and this prevents us from interacing with others, unless we make mark effort to adjust and dimish it by spending enormous amounts of time being social.

Shyness has to do with tribal existence, there are a few components: Submississiveness, defensiveness, and also to deal mating. Shyness is really an over-active "stranger" defense mechanism, what happens is you are very tense, anxious, fearful of a person when:

1) You are around people don't know them (anxiety disappears when you know them, and you know they like you, the more familiar, the less anxious/fearful you become)
2) Can't figure them out right away (i.e. anxiousness/stress in the difficulty of communicating with others)
3) Can't predict their behaviour or model their intentions.
4) Avoid contact with hostile unfriendly people. (defense mechanism)

Next is that in tribal society, if you were rejected by a female EVERYONE in the whole tribe knew it... so this is where approach anxiety comes from when dealing with women and why guys are afraid to approach them.

There are some more nuanced explanations but you can get a general picture of why shyness exists.

Maybe because their is no real selection pressure for that "immunity" to happen. If shy men are reproducing at rates about the same as non-shy men.

Also in the modern western world maybe AS leads to high comorbitity with social anxiety disorder but perhaps in the past that
was not the case.

it's hard to discern what kind of emotional reasons there are for shyness as emotions and such weren't that complex (or present) to begin with...

think about shy animals vs bolder animals and contact with humans....

wild animals that aren't shy towards people are then subject to people's intentions.... good or bad

shy animals will never have to worry about that risk.

my guess is that it helps to prevent predator/prey type interactions and other confrontational situations

maybe this is where aspies get their rigid routines from too... too timid to try something new.

I wouldn't say they are too timid to try something new exactly. Sure they can be, this is true... most of it is due to lack of experience and overcoming the initial inertia of taking the first step. Next I would say aspies simply attend to avoid what makes them agitated and uncomfortable and some aspies are too "weak willed" to wait for their mind to adjust to a new environment.
It really does come down to the their minds psychological reward system and how their minds process information.

Aspies more or less have a "priority list" of the things that stimulate their mind the most, and they will do those things over everything else, until they gain some perspective (mature) and learn to step back from those many hours long sessions on their special interest, be it work or leisure.

For me I was shy and timid as a kid, but I was more interested in doing my routine then anything else... biologically programmed desire just happened to get in the way of that (i.e. female companionship). Deep down I could care less about having friends really, I don't get "lonely" for friends, just for a significant other.

also... once a gene for something becomes fixed in a population... it's pretty darn hard to get rid of it unless there's a specific selection against it. that's how evolution works... random mutations to generate variety and then natural selection to cull the multitudes.

there are so many things that USED to be selected for but are now neutral... neither selected for nor against... and so they just remain within the population until some chance event occurs that either favors or discards it.

other evolutionary things should not even be considered adapations... such as males having nipples. there never was any "Advantage" for males having nipples... they just do. it's a side effect of how our genetic inheritance system works. so maybe shyness fits into this category.

it's pretty hard to tell until we finally invent a timemachine and can go back and watch the show ourselves

Well, Dave D'Angelo had a guest on one of his cd's and he mentioned why this kind of impedance is so strong. Supposedly back in the good old days when we lived in small tribes the whole male/female ratio you'd ever see was one to one at best and rejection pretty much meant sure death of your genes. Things have changed but its very difficult for us to move on from it feeling like a life threateningly big deal to us.