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The purpose of this study was to examine the differentiation and correlates of shyness and unsociability during early adolescence in urban and rural China. Participants were 93 urban and 229 rural Chinese sixth- to eighth-graders. Students rated their shyness, unsociability, fear of negative evaluation, self-efficacy for peer interactions, and perceived peer exclusion. In both urban and rural adolescents, shyness and unsociability were separate, but correlated, factors, and shyness was more strongly related to fear of negative evaluation (positively), self-efficacy for peer interactions (negatively), and perceived exclusion (positively), than unsociability. There was some evidence that shy adolescents perceived more peer exclusion in the urban context. The findings provided preliminary evidence for the differentiation of shyness and unsociability in urban and rural Chinese adolescents, and highlighted the role of social-cultural context in the implications of shyness.
Li et al. (Sun,) studied this question.