A beautiful woman lowers her eyes shyly beneath a hat. In an earlier era, her gaze might have signaled a mysterious allure. But this is a 2003 advertisement for Zoloft, an inhibitory drug approved by the F.D.A. to treat social anxiety disorder. "Is she just shy Or is it Social Anxiety Disorder" reads the caption, suggesting that the young woman is not luring people at all. She is sick. This does us all grave harm, because shyness and timidness—or more precisely, the careful, sensitive temperament from which both often spring—are not just normal. Indeed, they are valuable. And they may be essential to the survival of our species. But shyness and introversion share an undervalued status in a world that prizes being sociable. Children’s classroom desks are now often arranged in pods, because group participation supposedly leads to better learning. Many adults work for organizations that now assign work in teams, in offices without walls, for supervisors who value "people skills" above all. As a society, we prefer action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. As the psychologist William Hart points out, phrases like "get active," "get moving," "do something" and similar calls to action surface repeatedly in recent books. Yet shy and introverted people have been part of our species for a very long time, often in leadership positions. We find them in recent history, in figures like Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, and, in contemporary times: think of Google’s Larry Page. Sitters and strollers favor different survival strategies, which could be summed up as the sitter’s "Look before you leap" versus the stroller’s inclination to "Just do it!" Once you know about sitters and strollers, you see them everywhere, especially among young children. Drop in on your local Mommy and Me music class: there are the sitters, intently watching the action from their mothers’ laps, while the strollers march around the room banging their drums and shaking their maracas. Relaxed and exploratory, the strollers have fun, make friends and will take risks, both rewarding and dangerous ones, as they grow. In contrast, sitter children are careful and shrewd, and tend to learn by observing instead of by acting. They notice scary things more than other children do, but they also notice more things in general. The psychologist Gregory Feist found that many of the most creative people in a range of fields are introverts who are comfortable working in solitary conditions in which they can f0CUS attention inward. Another advantage sitters bring to leadership is a willingness to listen to and implement other people’s ideas. Now, it’s time for the young woman in the Zoloft ad to rediscover her lure. It can be inferred from the text that many famous figures______.
A.tend to isolate themselves from the public B.might be too shy to become a great leader C.are successful regardless of their shyness D.tell us the importance of accepting ourselves