The Shyness & Social Anxiety Workbook
10will notice their “ﬂaws” and judge them negatively. Perfectionism is discussed again later 
in this chapter.
HOW COMMON IS SOCIAL ANXIETY?
It is difﬁcult to obtain accurate estimates of the prevalence of social anxiety because 
different studies have tended to deﬁne social anxiety differently and used different ques -
tions when interviewing people about their anxiety. Nevertheless, researchers have con -
sistently found that shyness and social anxiety are common experiences. For example, in 
a survey of more than 1,000 people from across the United States and elsewhere, psy -
chologist Phillip Zimbardo and his colleagues (Carducci and Zimbardo 1995; Henderson 
and Zimbardo 1999; Zimbardo, Pilkonis, and Norwood 1975) found that 40 percent of 
those who were asked currently considered themselves to be chronically shy, to the point 
of it being a problem. Another 40 percent reported that they had previously considered 
themselves to be shy. Fifteen percent more considered themselves to be shy in some 
situations and only 5 percent reported that they were never shy. More recent surveys 
suggest that the prevalence of shyness may be even higher (for a review of studies on 
the prevalence of shyness, see Henderson and Zimbardo 1999).
Researchers have also studied the prevalence of social anxiety disorder (a condition 
associated with extreme social anxiety that will be described later in this chapter). In 
a recently published survey of more than 9,000 Americans (Kessler et al. 2005), about 
12 percent of people reported having the necessary symptoms to receive a diagnosis of