The Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale (RCBS)

Abstract

The Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale (RCBS) is a widely used psychological instrument designed to quantify dispositional shyness. Developed by Jonathan M. Cheek in 1983, this 13-item scale is an expansion and refinement of the original 9-item version co-authored with Arnold H. Buss in 1981. The RCBS specifically assesses the extent to which an individual experiences feelings of tension, discomfort, and inhibition in various social situations, functioning as a robust measure of shyness conceptualized as a stable personality trait.

Keywords

Shyness, Social Anxiety, Social Inhibition, Social Competence, Personality Assessment, Psychological Scale, RCBS.

Authors

Jonathan M. Cheek, Arnold H. Buss (Original 9-Item Version).

Purpose

The primary purpose of the RCBS is to provide a reliable and concise measure of an individual’s chronic tendency toward shyness. It is intended for use in research settings to differentiate individuals based on their level of social discomfort and avoidance behaviors. The scale captures self-reported feelings and behaviors characteristic of shyness, such as feeling awkward or tense when interacting with unfamiliar people, or exhibiting difficulty engaging in conversation.

The scale aids researchers in understanding the affective, cognitive, and behavioral correlates of shyness. While the initial 13-item version focuses on general shyness, later work by the authors led to a 20-item version (1985) which further refined the measurement by exploring specific components of shyness, such as anxious self-preoccupation and behavioral inhibition.

Construct

The RCBS measures shyness, defined in the context of Social Psychology as the tendency to feel distressed and inhibited in unfamiliar or threatening social interactions. This construct is characterized by internal discomfort (tension, nervousness) and observable behavioral inhibition (difficulty initiating conversation, avoiding eye contact, feeling awkward). The scale items are designed to capture these various facets, assessing discomfort in new social settings, difficulty with social initiation, and feelings of inadequacy regarding social competence.

Validity

The validity of the RCBS has been established through strong correlations with precursor instruments and external criteria. The 13-item RCBS demonstrated high convergent validity with the original 9-item Cheek & Buss Shyness Scale, reporting a correlation coefficient of .96. This indicates that the revised scale effectively measures the same construct as its predecessor while offering improved breadth.

Furthermore, criterion-related validity was supported by correlating RCBS scores with aggregated ratings of shyness provided by participants’ close friends and family members, yielding a correlation coefficient of .68. This external validation confirms that self-reported shyness aligns meaningfully with how the individual is perceived by their social network.

Reliability

Psychometric evaluation confirms the high reliability of the RCBS, primarily tested within college student populations. Internal consistency, measured using the alpha coefficient, was reported at .90 for college students, suggesting strong homogeneity among the 13 items. This high alpha value indicates that the items consistently measure the same underlying construct of shyness.

Stability over time was demonstrated by a 45-day retest reliability coefficient of .88. This figure confirms that shyness, as measured by the RCBS, is a highly stable personality dimension, resisting short-term fluctuations. The subsequent 20-item version maintained and slightly improved these figures, reporting an internal consistency alpha of .94 and a test-retest reliability of .91.

Factor Analysis

The high internal consistency (alpha = .90) reported for the 13-item RCBS strongly suggests that the instrument functions effectively as a unidimensional measure of general shyness. While the scale does incorporate items reflecting affective, cognitive, and behavioral aspects of social discomfort, the overall scoring structure aggregates these into a single dimension.

It is important to note that later work utilizing the 20-item scale (Cheek & Melchior, 1985) was aimed at isolating the specific components of shyness, implying that a more detailed factor analysis of the expanded instrument suggested a multi-component structure. However, for the 13-item RCBS, the primary use remains the calculation of a global shyness score.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-Report Questionnaire

Format: 13 items scored on a 5-point Likert scale.

Language Available: English (Original)

Population Group: General population, primarily validated on college students.

Age Group: Adolescents and Adults (College age and older)

Population Details: Validation samples included college students. Reported mean scores for college students on the 13-item scale were 33.3 for men and 32.4 for women.

Test Methodology: Respondents rate the extent to which each item is characteristic or true of their feelings and behavior, using a 5-point scale. Scoring requires the reversal of four specific items before calculating the total score.

Keywords

Social discomfort, Inhibition, Personality measurement, Social evaluation anxiety, Psychological scale, RCBS, Cheek and Buss.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source, but associated with Wellesley College.

Correspondence Address: Wellesley College, Wellesley MA 02181 (Associated with J.M. Cheek, 1983).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale (RCBS) is copyrighted 1983 by Jonathan M. Cheek. The scale may be used in non-profit educational research without further explicit permission. Users seeking to employ the scale in commercial settings or for purposes outside of non-profit educational research should contact the author for current licensing requirements. The original test year for this revised version is 1983.

Reference’s

• Cheek, J.M. (1983). Unpublished, Wellesley College, Wellesley MA 02181.
• Cheek, J.M., & Buss, A.H. (1981). Shyness and sociability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 330-339.
• Cheek, J.M., & Briggs, S.R. (1990). Shyness as a personality trait. In W.R. Crozier (Ed.), Shyness and Embarrassment: Perspectives from Social Psychology (pp. 315 – 337). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Cheek, J. M., & Melchior, L.A. (1990). Shyness, self-esteem, and self-consciousness. In H. Leitenberg (Ed.), Handbook of Social and Evaluation Anxiety (pp. 47-82). New York: Plenum Publishing.
• Cheek, J.M., & Melchior, L.A. (1985). Measuring the Three Components of Shyness. In M.H. Davis & S.L. Franzoi (Co-chairs), Emotion, Personality, and Personal Well-Being II. Symposium conducted at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles.
• Cheek, J.M., & Krasnoperova, E.N. (1999). Varieties of shyness in adolescence and adulthood. In L.A. Schmidt & J. Schulkin (Eds.), Extreme Fear, Shyness, and Social Phobia: Origins, Biological Mechanisms, and Clinical Outcomes (pp. 224-250). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Leary, M.R. (1991). Social anxiety, shyness, and related Constructs. In Robinson, J.P., Shaver, P.R., & Wrightsman, L.S. (Eds.), Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes (pp. 182-184). San Diego: Academic Press.
• Melchior, L.A., & Cheek, J.M. (1990). Shyness and anxious self-preoccupation during a social interaction. In M. Booth-Butterfield (Ed.), Communication, cognition, and anxiety (Special issue). Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 5, 117- 130. (Reprinted by Sage in book form, 1991).
• For further research information: http://www.wellesley.edu/Psychology/Cheek/research.html

Items of the The Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale (RCBS)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

INSTRUCTIONS: Please read each item carefully and decide to what extent it is characteristic of your feelings and behavior. Fill in the blank next to each item by choosing a number from the scale printed below.

1 = Very uncharacteristic or untrue, strongly disagree
2 = Uncharacteristic
3 = Neutral
4 = Characteristic
5 = Very characteristic or true, strongly agree

1. I feel tense when I’m with people I don’t know well.
2. I am socially somewhat awkward.
3. I do not find it difficult to ask other people for information.
4. I am often uncomfortable at parties and other social functions.
5. When in a group of people, I have trouble thinking of the right things to talk about.
6. It does not take me long to overcome my shyness in new situations.
7. It is hard for me to act natural when I am meeting new people.
8. I feel nervous when speaking to someone in authority.
9. I have no doubts about my social competence.
10. I have trouble looking someone right in the eye.
11. I feel inhibited in social situations.
12. I do not find it hard to talk to strangers.
13. I am more shy with members of the opposite sex.

Items 3, 6, 9 & 12 are reversed, recode before scoring. (1=5) (2=4) (4=2) (5=1)