This article is adapted from Why am I shy?, an episode of CrowdScience presented by Datshiane Navanayagam and produced by Cathy Edwards. To listen to more episodes of CrowdScience from the BBC World Service, please click here.

Does the idea of mingling at a party send cold fingers of dread creeping up your spine? Or the thought of giving a presentation in front of a room full of people make you feel physically sick?

If so, then you are not alone.

Akindele Michael was a shy kid. Growing up in Nigeria he spent a lot of time indoors at his parents’ house. His parents, incidentally, are not shy. He believes that his sheltered upbringing is linked to his shyness – but is he right?

Partly, says Thalia Eley, professor of developmental behavioural genetics at Kings College London.

“We think of shyness as a temperamental trait and temperament is like a precursor to personality,” she says. “When very young children are starting to engage with other people you see variation in how comfortable [they] are in speaking to an adult that they don’t know.”

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She says that only about 30% of shyness as a trait is down to genetics and the rest comes about as a response to the environment.

Most of what we know about the genetics of shyness comes from studies that compare shyness in identical twins – who are perfect genetic copies of each other – with non-identical twins, who only share about half of the same genes.