What Triggers School Shooters?

Teens who have gone on shooting rampages at high schools in
the past decade share a common personality characteristic, according to a new
study.

These school shooters suffer from "cynical shyness," says Bernardo
J. Carducci, PhD, a researcher in the study and a professor of psychology and
director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast in
New Albany.

While shyness and violence don't seem to go together, they can when someone
is cynically shy, Carducci says.

"Cynical shyness is a new term," he says. "This is a variation
of shyness. Probably less than 2% of shy people are this way."

Like other shy people, these cynically shy people reach out to others,
wanting friendship, but lack social skills, Carducci tells WebMD. They often
get rejected by their peers, feel hurt, and eventually become cynical and want
to retaliate against those who reject them.

Carducci presented the study at the American Psychological
Association'sB 115th annual convention in San Francisco.

The Shyness-Violence Link

Carducci began to think about the concept of "cynical shyness" more
than a decade ago, when he did a survey asking people about their shyness.

"One of the letters we got sort of jumped out," he tells
WebMD.B "It was from a person who said his shyness not only held him
back but talked about how other people thought they were better than he was,
about how smart he really was, and how stupid they really were. There was a
vitriolic tone, and I thought, 'This guy is really cynical.'"

The process, Carducci tells WebMD, goes like this: "Shy people truly
want to be social, but they can't. When they do try to reach out, they often
feel rejected. If people start to reject you, you begin to move away from these
people. You disengage and then you start to get angry."

Sometimes those feelings against others go further, he says. "Once you
start moving away, that is when you start to berate them. In a sense you become
a cult of one."

Study Details

Carducci and his university co-researcher, Kristin Terry Nethery, evaluated
the personality of the eight school shooters who were involved in seven
shootings, including Columbine High School in 1999. They looked for indicators
of cynical shyness, such as lack of empathy, low tolerance for frustration,
angry outbursts, social rejection from peers, bad family relations, and access
to weapons.

Using information from magazine, newspaper, and online reports of the
shootings that included descriptions and information about the shooters, as
well as information from an FBI report, Carducci and Nethery evaluated 30
characteristics that pointed to a person being cynically shy. The shooters were
all male and ranged in age from 14 to 18. Seven were white and one was Native
American.

"All eight had the characteristic features of cynical shyness," he
says.

Other Shyness Experts Weigh In

The new concept of cynical shyness and violence makes sense, says Philip
Zimbardo, PhD, a long-time shyness researcher and author of The Lucifer
Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. "Cynical shyness makes
sense in that a constant feeling of being rejected can lead to fantasies of
retaliation," he says.

"The key in all of this," he says, "is that school shooters are
relatively rare, given the high proportion of kids who are shy. Our research
shows that 40% or more, almost 50% [of the population] is shy.

"Shy people spend a lot of time in their own head," Zimbardo tells
WebMD. "In some cases, where there is real rejection, the shy person begins
to develop fantasies of retaliation." In the case of the school shooters,
he says, "it's not simply revenge against the bully, it's revenge that gets
generalized to all people who in any way have slighted you."

But additional factors besides the shooter's personality come into ply,
Zimbardo tells WebMD. "Beyond the personality of the shooters are the local
class situation and the school and national system that enable such
violence."B The increased availability of weapons also plays a role,
he says.

Another expert says even if shy teens get a bit angry over getting rejected,
it may not be something to be alarmed over. "The vast majority of these shy
kids ... don't lash out in violence in a very extreme way," says Alex
Mason, PhD, a research associate professor in the Social Development Research
Group, School of Social Work, University of Washington in Seattle.

Mason calls the study interesting
but has a caveat: Online news reports may not be comprehensive enough to gather
information on a shooter's personality, he says.

What Parents, Teachers Can Do

Carducci suggests parents and teachers reach out to shy students. "What
we are proposing is that what we need to do is find ways for these people to
connect," Carducci says. "Counselors, teachers, and parents should
help."

He tells parents of shy teens to let them get a job if they are old enough
to work. "It's a semi-structured social situation," says Carducci. At a
fast-food outlet, for instance, the worker has a script to follow when dealing
with customers. "These co-workers can turn into friends."

By Kathleen Doheny
Reviewed by Louise Chang
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