After my second tutorial with my tutor David, and reflecting on his feedback as well as all the work I’ve done over the summer, I realized that there are shortcomings in my intervention. For the first intervention, cognitive restructuring, I need to supplement it by collecting readers’ responses, rather than just providing them with reading material. For the second intervention, role-playing in a simulated scenario, I found myself stepping into a role similar to that of a psychological counselor, attempting to apply the psychological knowledge I’ve learned over the past two months and the conclusions drawn from expert interviews to solve problems, instead of using the intervention to gain new knowledge. Additionally, the participants I invited were limited to people I know or who know me, so this doesn’t qualify as valid external evidence. 

However, the activity wasn’t entirely without gains. Through this intervention, despite its weaknesses, I experienced firsthand the process of putting theory into practice, received feedback from the participants, and demonstrated that shy individuals could improve their shyness by rehearsing feared social situations with continual practice. In a way, this second intervention became a stepping stone towards a more refined and reasonable third intervention. Therefore, I will plan and implement my third intervention in Unit 4. Below are the details of my plan:

An experimental networking activity aimed at improving or overcoming shyness 

This is a simulated activity designed to recreate social situations for networking purposes. I will invite 6 to 8 individuals who have passed the shyness test and self-identify as shy to participate. The participants will not know me before I meet with them. I will divide them into two teams, and each team will receive a personal information collection form consisting of approximately 10 questions. Their objective will be to gather as much information about the other participants as possible within five minutes, without any restrictions on the number of questions. Following the initial information-gathering round, I will provide them with some tips based on the number of questions they answered, aimed at helping them overcome psychological barriers preventing them from asking certain questions. I will then observe if they can ask those previously difficult questions in the second round. After the activity, I will conduct individual interviews or surveys with each participant to gather information about their mental activities during the activity and their coping strategies. I believe that this approach will enable me to gather a diverse range of external data, ultimately enriching my research.

My newest research question is “How can shy individuals reduce social anxiety during social interactions?” The term “social interaction” refers to situations in which shy individuals engage with unfamiliar people or strangers.