This always-growing, up-to-date list summarizes what I consider to be the best recent research on high sensitivity, sometimes also referred to in the scientific literature as Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) or high Environmental Sensitivity (not Sensory Processing Disorder). Please note the varying terms as you read through the articles.. The articles are listed with the most recent research at the top. They go back to 2010 (although the research on SPS goes back to 1997, see below for reviews that cover that earlier research.) I will continue to add to this as more research appears that I think is of interest and methodologically well done, or at least adequately done for a first attempt at a topic.
You may like just browsing. Every article description has a title, the correct reference to it, some text about it, and a “bottom line” which you can always skip to. Or, if you are interested in a particular subject or author (for example “pets” or “holidays” or “Pluess”), you can use the “search” box to the right. This will search the entire website.
A SUMMARY OF THE MOST INTERESTING RESEARCH ON HIGH SENSITIVITY
This Is NOT a “Review” of ALL the Scientific Literature on High Sensitivity
Is this a “review of the literature”? No, because normally a review would be complete, covering everything published on the subject. But there is too much research as of now for a complete review.
The last review to cover everything was published in 2019:
See Greven, C. U., Lionetti, F., Booth, C., Aron, E. N., Fox, E., Schendan, H. E., … & Homberg, J. (2019). Sensory processing sensitivity in the context of environmental sensitivity: A critical review and development of research agenda. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 98, 287-305.
While comprehensive, the 2019 review is quite dense. Here is a more accessible, older review: Aron, E. N., Aron, A., & Jagiellowicz, J. (2012). Sensory processing sensitivity: A review in the light of the evolution of biological responsivity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16(3), 262-282.
There is also a brand new review coming soon, also by Greven and her collaborators. I will add it here when it is published. But while quite interesting, it is even more dense. There is now simply too much research for a single review to cover all that has been published and discuss it adequately. This article hopes to fill that gap by providing the studies since 2012 that I thought were most important or interesting.
Many of the studies listed here also have blogs about them at www.sensitiveresearch.org, written by one of the article’s authors. These are very complete and an easy way to learn more without going to the article itself. When there is such a blog, I will provide the link at the end of what I have written.
2026
HOW CERTAIN GENES MAY MAKE SOME HSPS MORE RESILIENT
Dong, Y., Li, J., Wu, J., & Luo, Y. L. (2026). Highly sensitive persons’ responses to acute and post-earthquake stress: Exploratory insights into genetic moderation. Journal of Affective Disorders, 121382.
In this paper the authors looked at stress in two situations that they saw as previously understudied—experimentally induced stress in a laboratory and stress due to a natural disaster, an earthquake. Plus, they wanted to see how two genes might affect the stress response in HSPs in particular. Study 1 measured psychological (perceived stress) and physiological (salivary cortisol, heart rate) responses to experimentally induced acute stress in 121 male undergraduates. The acute stress is a standardized procedure, in which participants are told to imagine they had been caught shop lifting and to prepare a speech to defend themselves. Then they give it to three people playing the role of store managers. It is recorded and evaluated. After that they have a difficult math task to do (subtract 13 from 1022, then 13 again from that result, etc. and if they made an error they had to start over). Pretty stressful. HSPs had higher cortisol responses than others after doing this, but not higher psychological stress. This may have been because of the number of HSPs in their sample who had the protective genes I will discuss in a moment.
Study 2 involved 99 undergraduates, measuring perceived stress at baseline and after to an earthquake that the researchers just waited for, that finally occurred 6 months later (level 6.4, with 47 aftershocks). At that time the students were assessed for objective losses (of property, etc.) and the psychological stress from it. Not surprisingly, of course, HSPs had higher post-earthquake stress levels.
Both studies assessed SPS and analyzed their saliva for genetic variants associated with stress resilience: the catechol O-methyltransferase (COMT) rs4680, which is related to dopamine, and an oxytocin receptor (OXTR) rs2254298 polymorphisms. (Both dopamine and oxytocin act as both hormones and neurotransmitters, so having more or less of them, what these variants determine, will affect behavior in some ways. If you do not know what they can do, look them up.) In both studies, although all HSPs were more affected by the stressors than those without the trait, the HSPs carrying either the COMT GA/AA genotype or the OXTR GG genotype were less affected by the two stressors in the study than other HSPs.
To me this study highlights the way that SPS is governed by many genes. I often say it is like being dealt a hand of cards—enough of a certain suit, high cards especially, will make you an HSP. But all your genetic cards play a role, and now we know of two more that do.
Bottom Line: Previously differences in an HSP’s response to stress has usually been attributed to things like their childhood environment, but now it seems that certain genes can also make a difference. I doubt it would be easy to be tested for these genes, but if you seem to handle stress better than other HSPs, your genes may be one reason for it.
YOUR DIFFERENTIAL SUSCEPTIBILITY APPEARS TO BE GENETIC
Torrecilla Gonzalez, P., Lavín Gutiérrez, V., Arias-Magnasco, A., Danae Lin, B., Menne-Lothmann, C., Decoster, J., van Winkel, R., Collip, D., Delespaul, P., De Hert, M., Derom, C., Thiery, E., Jacobs, N., Os, J. V., Rutten, B., Guloksuz, S., & Barrantes-Vidal, N. (Accepted/In press). Genetic Sensitivity to the Environment Moderates the Impact of Positive and Negative Childhood Experiences on Psychological Adjustment “For Good and for Bad”. European Psychiatry. Only the abstract is available here.
This study aimed at replicating previous differential susceptibility (DS; the finding that HSPs are more affected by both positive and negative environments) by looking at a set of genes typically found in HSPs along with their positive and/or negative early life events to see how these two factors taken together affected their scores on various measures of functioning and wellbeing. The sample consisted of 638 adolescent twins. Those with high genetic sensitivity, if they experience childhood adversity, were found to be more “eccentric” and less functional, but with a favorable childhood, they were rated as less eccentric, better adjusted, and having better social coping skills. For no reason given, there was no effect on measures of internalizing problems (depression, anxiety, etc.) or wellbeing.
Bottom Line: Genetic measures of sensitivity to the environment operate in a “for better and for worse” manner depending on what you were exposed to as a child. Not exactly new, but good to see it replicated with genes rather than only self-report measures.
THE HSP’S BRAIN IS MORE COMPLEX, MAKING IT BETTER ABLE TO PROCESS INFORMATION
Walter, N., Meinersen-Schmidt, N., Kulla, P., Loew, T., Kruse, J., & Hinterberger, T. (2023). Sensory-processing sensitivity Is associated with increased neural entropy. Entropy, 25(6), 890. View article here.
This study sought to find out if differences in HSP Scale scores were associated with complexity or “criticality features” of the brain as measured using electroencephalogram (EEG) during a task-free resting state. In a second similar study, the authors compared the EEGs of those with very high and low scores on various measures of criticality.
What is criticality? Here is where it gets complicated. The brain-criticality hypothesis suggests that neural networks, and thus many aspects of brain activity, self-organize into a “critical state.” Critical states are unique configurations of physical systems that have been a central focus of statistical physics for more than a century. Criticality, another term for the topic, is the transition point or critical point between ordered and disordered states. In brief, the brain organizes itself so that it is often on the brink of being too disordered, but not quite.
Why should you be interested in criticality? Neural networks in the brain, by being at criticality–in that critical state–can process information, transmit it, and store it optimally. Criticality means there is a balance between the disordered aspect, which keeps allowing more new information, and the ordered aspect that keeps it all, well, organized. (You can imagine that when you are overstimulated you go through a phase transition from criticality to a completely disordered state!)
What does this have to do with neural entropy, the term in the title? Entropy refers to randomness or disorder in general, so in this case they were measuring the disorganized aspect of a brain’s critical state. Without some entropy or disorder, that is some taking in of new information that we do not yet have organized, we would be brain dead (or under anesthesia). At the other extreme, high entropy can occur when taking psychedelic drugs, for example, when there is too much to comprehend.
Again, a living system, including a brain, must balance order and disorder, and the better it can do this, the better it can handle new information. Now I think you can see why these researchers were interested in HSPs. We are, at least in theory, genetically predisposed to take in more information than others and process it more deeply. And this is indeed what they found. “The increased sample entropy [samples of the degree of entropy of neurons over time] in the highly sensitive group was most pronounced in the central, temporal, and parietal regions.” They were allowing more disorder and thus more new information than others in some of the most important parts of the brain.
Bottom Line: For the first time, neurophysiological complexity was associated with SPS during a task-free resting state. As the authors stated, “The findings support the central theoretical assumption of enhanced information processing” in HSPs.
HSPS NOTICE SUBTLE CHANGES WITHOUT EVEN TRYING
Yu, C. Y., Chiu, C. C., Huang, C. M., Lu, H., & Cheng, C. H. (2026). Neurophysiological correlates of sensory processing sensitivity: Altered alpha oscillations during auditory change detection. Personality and Individual Differences, 255, 113676. Read article here.
An early brain study of HSPs (Jagiellowicz, J., Xu, X., Aron, A., Aron, E., Cao, G., Feng, T., & Weng, X. (2011). The trait of sensory processing sensitivity and neural responses to changes in visual scenes. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 6(1), 38-47. (read article here), found that, when asked to notice differences between two photos, they used more “higher order” brain functions than those without the trait. That is an example of what is called top-down processing—we take some familiar information, like the words in a speech, and understand what the speech means. In the study I am referring to, study participants looked at a photo of some bales of hay and had to decide if it was the same or different from another, very similar photo. So, they examined the two photos (more carefully than those without the trait), breaking each photo down into parts (number of bales of hay, number of fence posts, number of trees, etc.) to see if they were actually the same or slightly different photos. That is top-down processing at its best.
But are we better at bottom-up processing? That is the kind of processing where you are taking in differences that you have not thought of as important, at least not yet. You smell smoke, then begin thinking about the kind of smoke it smells like or where it might be coming from. Or you hear a speech that’s in a foreign language and you have to guess the meaning of what is being said depending on the similarity of some of the words to words that you do know.
In this study, participants heard various tones and maybe noticed, without even being conscious of it, if the tones differed. How do you measure whether someone noticed something if they are not conscious of doing so? You can look at what are called “evoked potentials,” or little bursts of energy that take place in the brain when something is perceived as a little bit different than what came before or after.
The participants were high and low scorers on the HSP Scale who also had the short serotonin allele (often but not always associated with being highly sensitive). Each participant was put in a quiet room and chose a video to watch, with subtitles, while the various tones were played in their ears, but they were told to ignore those sounds. As expected, HSPs differed from those without the trait in the way their brains handled the variations in sounds. Even though they were not paying any attention to the sounds, their brains showed that they were not ignoring these seemingly irrelevant stimuli. So they had engaged in the first step of bottom-up processing, noticing what could be processed if it was relevant, while the brains of the others were not bothering.
Sometimes I joke that HSPs at the horse races might notice the color of the jockeys’ outfits in each race, and if the winning jockey is wearing some red while in two races in a row, only HSPs would notice and bet on whichever jockey is wearing red in the third race—losing money of course, as the color of the jockey’s clothing has nothing to do with the ability of the horse they are riding. But that would be bottom-up processing (as opposed to having been told that the color of the jockeys clothing can sometimes predict the winner, and using that top-down information to choose a winner).
Bottom Line: While there is already evidence that we process more from the top down (noticing more details than others in the information we already have), we also seem to process more than others from the “bottom up,” taking in random information in case we need to find the meaning in it.
2025
HS PARENTS, ‘FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE”
Lionetti, F., Spinelli, M., Bosmans, G., D’Urso, G., Fasolo, M., & Pluess, M. (2025). Is environmental sensitivity relevant to understand parenting? Observational studies with mothers of young children. Journal of Family Psychology. View abstract here.
When studies use self-report measures of parenting, HS parents often come out looking less competent, but these researchers wondered if the deeper processing of HS parents causes them to describe their own parenting as worse than observers might. To avoid that problem, two studies in Italy observed mothers with infants rather than asking them to describe in a questionnaire how they parent. In the first study, HS mothers were a bit more intrusive when their infants were 3 months old and less intrusive than other parents at 9 months. That was the only difference observed. In the second study, HS mothers with a history of “Adverse Childhood Experiences” (ACEs) were found to be less attuned to their 3-month-old infants and more stressed. But in the same study HS mothers had more adaptive parental responses than others if they had higher physiological self-regulation, something on which HSPs can vary. In this study they looked at “respiratory sinus arrhythmia,” a good thing to have, in that it is a measure of the coordination of your heart and breathing, and similar to vagal tone, measured in this study, which I have also discussed: Moscardino, U., Scrimin, S., Lionetti, F., & Pluess, M. (2021). Environmental sensitivity and cardiac vagal tone as moderators of the relationship between family support and well-being in low SES children: An exploratory study. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Link to study here.
That is, high sensitivity was not directly related to worse parenting, but rather it made mothers more receptive to environmental (ACEs) and inner physiological factors, for better and for worse.
Bottom Line: Understanding HS parents is complicated because they may differ from other parents in systematic ways when they are asked to fill out a questionnaire about how they parent. Additionally, differential susceptibility enters in—with poor childhoods they may parent worse than others. But certain physiological factors looked at in this study, among many other things, may make them better than others at parenting.
HSPs FLOURISH WHEN CONNECTED TO NATURE
Carroll, S., O’Brien, A., Lionetti, F., O’Reilly, A., & Setti, A. (2025). Flourishing as a highly sensitive person: a mixed method study on the role of nature connectedness and chaotic home environment. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1480669.
Here is yet another study of how HSPs do better if connected to nature, this time with 856 participants over 40, surveyed for their level of SPS (high means being an HSP), “flourishing,” current chaos in the home, and nature connectedness. Flourishing was positively associated with nature connectedness and age and negatively with higher SPS. But if you were over 50, nature connectedness increased the chances of flourishing if you were an HSPs, while it did not affect how chaos affected HSPs. When 12 participants were interviewed, they reported significant benefits from nature. The authors conclude that, “overall, the results showed that connecting with nature significantly contributes to flourishing in highly sensitive individuals, particularly in middle to older age.”
Bottom Line: Again and again we see, get out in nature if you want to flourish! The older you get, the more true it is.
CLARIFYING SPS, AUTISM, AND ADHD–AND MUCH MORE
Damatac, C. G., ter Avest, M. J., Wilderjans, T. F., De Gucht, V., Woestenburg, D. H., Landeweerd, L., … & Greven, C. U. (2025). Exploring sensory processing sensitivity: Relationships with mental and somatic health, interactions with positive and negative environments, and evidence for differential susceptibility. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences, 8, 100165.
We are often asked about the relationship between Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and SPS as well as its relation to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD). This complicated, ambitious study looked at both these issues as well as differential susceptibility to mental and physical health and life satisfaction. In case you get mired down in the details, here is what you probably most want to know: This study did not find that overall the measures they used for autism, ADHD, and SPS were all measuring something similar. However, factors within the measures overlap. That is, there is an overlap in some areas but not all. That is, some of the same people answer yes to items on two or three of the measures.
The participants were 252 adults from the Netherlands’ Healthy Brain Study, which includes 1000 persons selected to be a good representation of the larger population, except all are aged 30–39 years (in the midst of life, past thresholds like marriage, first child, and first job). They filled out several measures, but most important for us, they took De Gucht’s measure of SPS, involving six factors. These are similar to the HSP-R’s six factors, except the De Gucht measure (the Sensory Processing Questionnaire or SPSQ) does not include depth of processing. To make sense of the rest of the study, you need to know what these six are: Sensory Sensitivity to Subtle Internal and External Stimuli, Emotional and Physiological Reactivity, Sensory Discomfort, Sensory Comfort/Pleasure, Social-Affective Sensitivity, and Esthetic Sensitivity. (Clearly this is very similar to the revised HSP Scale, the HSP-R.)
Importantly, there was no statistically significant association between De Gucht’s overall measure of SPS and the six-item ADHD measure or the longer measure of ASD. That is, this study does not support the idea that SPS is simply either ASD or ADHD. There were however associations between SPS, ASD, and ADHD on some SPS factors: “Sensory sensitivities” and “emotional and physiological reactivity” from the new measure and “ease of overstimulation” from the old HSP Scale are features that high SPS, ASD, and ADHD have in common. That is, these specific traits or experiences are common for all three to some degree, which is why they can seem to be the same trait if one only looks at being easily overstimulated.
As for ASD in particular, among the subscales of the ASD measure (which were attention to detail, childhood behavior onset, limited imagination, limited social skills, and rigidity), “limited imagination” was especially not associated with SPS and among the SPS factors, “sensory comfort” and “social affective sensitivity” were not associated with ADS. That is, these are ways SPS is not like ASD. Regarding ADHD, only the “inattention” aspect of that measure had small associations with subscales of SPS, mainly, again, “higher emotional and physiological reactivity.”
The study also tried to look at both positive and negative environments, in childhood and in the present, in order to continue to understand differential susceptibility, the tendency for HSPs to be more affected than others by both good and bad environments. As expected, HSPs with positive histories and present situations reported more life satisfaction than those without the trait, while those with negative histories and present situations were more likely to have autistic traits (that is, they answered yes to more items on the ASD measure).
An odd result was that HSPs who had more of what were called “uplifting” events during a given week were more likely to exhibit autistic traits! But most of these uplifting events were very stimulating: Relating well with your spouse or lover; relating well with friends; completing a task; eating out; visiting, phoning, or writing someone; or spending time with family. These all could be a source of overstimulation and increase emotional and physiological reactivity, an SPSQ subscale correlated with autistic traits. My guess is that by the time an HSP has been “uplifted” by some of these, they will want to withdraw, as measured by items on the autism scale such as “not liking parties” or “not liking having your daily routine disturbed.” I think the point is that it can be difficult to find the right measures of positive outcomes for HSPs—what is “uplifting” for others may not be for us.
The authors also looked at health, and found that higher SPS related to more burnout, anxiety, depression, stress, health complaints, and nonprescription medication use, even after controlling for neuroticism. However, other studies I have cited [link to that blog https://hsperson.com/are-highly-sensitive-people-more-prone-to-illness/ ]indicate that stress may be the main underlying cause of health complaints in HSPs, but this study did not separate out stress.
This is a complicated study, and I am sure I have not done it justice. But it is a fine example of what is to come in research with SPS—for example, more teasing out of the differences among ASD, ADHD, and SPS, and more detailed studies of differential susceptibility.
Bottom Line: Again, this study did not find that overall measures of autism, attention deficit disorder, and SPS were correlated. That is, SPS did not appear to be the same as either trait. However, factors within the measures did correlate with SPS. That is, there is an overlap in some areas but not all. And if an HSP had a negative history, or too many “uplifting” experiences in a week, they scored higher on some aspects of the measure of ASD. (And remember, it is possible to be an HSP AND in addition to having ASD or ADHD.) But they are not one, single trait or condition.
HIGHLY SENSITIVE ADOLESCENTS FEEL MORE PHYSICAL PAIN THAN OTHERS
Hochreuter, J., Wehrli, S., Locher, C., Lionetti, F., Kossowsky, J., Pluess, M., & Koechlin, H. (2025). Painfully Sensitive: How Sensory Processing Sensitivity Affects Healthy Adolescents’ Perception of Pain. Journal of Pain Research, 719-733.
A hundred healthy adolescents, aged 16 to 19, completed questionnaires and participated in an experimental heat pain paradigm. As a direct measure of pain, participants were asked to raise the intensity of the heat on their hand until it became “painful,” and then to stop. How high that level was and how long it took to reach that level was the direct measure of pain. This was done three times, and after each time all participants were asked to report how painful the whole thing had been, from zero to ten. Highly sensitive adolescents were more sensitive to pain than others as measured during the procedure itself, However, they did not report experiencing more pain than others.
In another part of the experiment, all participants were shown photos intended to make them happy, sad, or neutral, to see if this affected their experience of the pain, but these had little impact on any participants (the authors realized the photos they used were so dated—puppies, birthday cakes, snakes, auto accidents—that they were not likely to affect any modern adolescent!). Finally, the authors used questionnaires to look at the quality of parenting these teenagers were receiving, their social support, and their emotional regulation. None of this had very much effect on any participants’ experience of pain, even HSCs. That is, regardless of other factors, HSCs simply physically felt more pain.
Bottom Line: I repeat, HSPs, at least in adolescence, seem to be more sensitive physically to pain, even if they do not report it. (This makes me think of the many HSPs who have told me that they know they are more sensitive to pain than others are, but are not very inclined to admit to it—that is, complain about it. How many times have we been told “Don’t be so sensitive? It’s nothing. It’s all in your head!”)
HARDLY “BREAKING NEWS”: GOING TO THE DENTIST IS MORE STRESSFUL FOR HSPS
Golonka, K., Gulla, B., Kościelniak, D., Darczuk, D., Cienkosz-Stepanczak, B., Bystrowska, B., … & Krzyściak, W. (2025). Sensory processing sensitivity in adult dental patients and its relation to perceived stress, cortisol, and serotonin secretion. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 1-14.
This study looked at 157 adult dental patients on the day of a routine dental visit. Patients took the HSP Scale, a measure of feeling stressed, and one of positive and negative emotions, plus various biochemical tests. The higher the patient’s score on the HSP Scale, the more they reported feeling stressed and having negative emotions, plus they had higher levels of cortisol (a sign of stress) accumulated over the last few months as measured by hair samples. The authors saw various reasons why this would be so and suggested some effort could be made to help HSPs during dental appointments.
Okay, I will make this personal. Thank goodness and amen. For me, going to the dentist has always involved stress, how much depends on what is being done and the kindness of the dentist. To keep the stress from ruining my life for weeks in advance of the appointment, I learned not to think about it until the day I was going. And I have always taken crazy care of my teeth to avoid anything difficult. But just getting my teeth cleaned is painful. (It is not painful for my non-HSP husband, who falls asleep during teeth cleaning). The last time I had my teeth cleaned I took two acetaminophens beforehand and it actually helped. I’m not saying you should. It was probably just a placebo effect. But the big point is, if going to the dentist bothers you, it’s probably your sensitivity—to pain, to anxiety about the condition of your teeth, to fear of criticism for not taking proper care of your teeth, and all the rest. Once again, high sensitivity explains us to ourselves.
Bottom Line: Especially given that HSPs are usually physically more sensitive to pain (see above), it might not be surprising that going to the dentist makes them nervous.
HSPS MAY BE ABLE TO ACHIEVE A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE THAN OTHERS WHEN DEALING WITH CHRONIC ILLNESS
Bakhshayesh Eghbali, B., Hosseini-Nejad, M., Saadat, S., Babaee, M., Eyvani, K., Kohandel, K., & Shabani Chobe, M. (2025). The Role of Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Self-management on Quality of Life in Multiple Sclerosis. Caspian Journal of Neurological Sciences, 11(1), 67-76.
This study provides a sense of how being highly sensitive can actually help a person living with a serious illness. Multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms lead to all sorts of impairments that predict limitations, unemployment, and withdrawal from social and leisure activities. This study used questionnaires to measure SPS, health related quality of life, and “self-management.” These were given to 320 “relapsing-remitting” MS patients registered in the nationwide MS registry of Iran.
I found self-management an interesting concept. It refers to how much a person actively copes with a chronic illness through, for example, adherence to treatment and medication, participation in medical decisions, self-care, maintaining social relationships, and keeping one’s emotional balance. That is, it is learning and using the skills necessary for an active life and a satisfactory mental state while living with a chronic disease. The measure tapped five areas of self-management, including communication with health care providers, treatment adherence, knowledge of MS, and overall health maintenance behavior.
The findings showed that the quality of life in people with MS was higher if they were highly sensitive and if they scored high on self-management. They did not report the correlation between the two, but I would guess it is high. They studied SPS because they thought people who are more aware of sensations in their bodies might manage their illness better, and if being overstimulated bothers them, that they might be better at reducing it and thus improving their well-being. But we know HSPs would also process everything about the illness more deeply, which would certainly lead to better self-management. I hope someone repeats this research looking at other long-term illnesses, to see if being an HSP improves outcome.
Bottom Line: This opens a new avenue of research, into whether and how HSPs might be better patients, by paying more attention to their bodies, to professional advice, to details about any illness they are dealing with, and to their own individual needs.
ONCE AGAIN—HSPS BENEFIT MORE THAN OTHERS FROM BEING CONNECTED WITH NATURE
Wigley, I. C. M., Nazzari, S., Pastore, M., Provenzi, L., & Barello, S. (2025). The contribution of environmental sensitivity and connectedness to nature to mental health: Does nature view count?. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 102, 102541.
This is yet one more study about HSPs benefiting from being in nature—in this case, living with a view of nature (trees, a garden, or a park)). In a sample of 807 Italian citizens, it was found that those high on the measure of SPS were more at risk of reporting symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, but feeling connected with nature reduced this risk for them in particular. Being connected with nature was of course associated with exposure to nature, so this study tested whether, particularly for HSPs, having a view of nature would have this same positive effect on connectedness with nature and on mental health, and it did. That is, routine, daily visual exposure to nature appeared to enhance the feeling of connection to nature, particularly among HSPs, thereby mitigating the risk of psychological distress.
Bottom Line: Most HSPs know this very well, but the research continues to show it: Feeling connected to nature really helps us, and we learn from this study that just being able to see it in our daily lives can do that. So try to make it a priority to live or work, preferably both, where you have a view of nature. And while they did not study it, having plants in your house or pets, even goldfish, may help too!
HSPS STUDY ALL THE CLUES BEFORE CHOOSING THE RIGHT ANSWER
Xiao, L., Baetens, K., & Deroost, N. (2025). Adaptation in attentional cautiousness among highly sensitive persons: Evidence from spatial cueing paradigm. Personality and Individual Differences, 237, 113042.
In this study, HSPs and others were given tasks in which they had to choose the right answer, and first were given a cue that might or might not provide the correct answer. The likelihood of it being a correct cue was varied from 50% to 100%. HSPs were slower than others on all of these tasks, as if wanting to carefully study every cue before deciding—which describes well our trait and various findings about our brains: We like to observe more than others do before acting. However, when the correctness of the cues was increased to 100%, we adapted and speeded up our making use of the cues and answering.
Bottom Line: One more study confirms that our basic trait is to “pause to check” before acting.
HYPERSENSITIVE PERSONALITY, EMPATHY, AND HELL ANXIETY: A CALL FOR PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL THERAPY
Akawu, M., Oladesu, O. R., Itse, Y. I., Yahaya, I., & Uzoigwe, T. L. (2024). Hypersensitive Personality and Empathy as Predictors of Hell Anxiety among Undergraduate Students: The Need for Psycho-Spiritual Therapy. International Journal For Psychotherapy In Africa, 9(3).
This might seem like an odd study, but it is one of the few or only studies of HSPs and spirituality or religion. It focuses on the fear of Hell or the problem of Hell anxiety. The participants were 354 college students in Nigeria (about two thirds Christian, one third Muslim), but according to the authors, the issue is described all over the world. Some people become extremely obsessed with images of hell and the sins that cause someone to be left in Hell forever if they do not behave perfectly. They may engage in behaviors to avoid the fear, but mostly they focus their life on avoiding hell.
No one has studied why some people in particular develop hell anxiety, but the authors wondered if “hypersensitivity,” as measured by the HSP Scale, might be associated with this fear, due to vivid imaginings of descriptions of Hell that HSPs have heard. The authors also measured empathy, since that might cause one to imagine more vividly the suffering of those forever in Hell. About 9% of their sample reported hell anxiety, and not surprisingly, both SPS and empathy were associated with having more of this fear. Having dogmatic or fundamentalist-religion views were not especially associated with this fear.
Bottom Line: Not surprisingly, HSPs more than others, or at least HS university students in Nigeria, take their beliefs very seriously.
HSPS MORE OFTEN DEAL WITH “EMOTIONAL” BUT NOT “SOCIAL” LONELINESS
Meckovsky, F., Novak, L., Meier, Z., Tavel, P., & Malinakova, K. (2025). Highly sensitive persons feel more emotionally lonely than the general population. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 2707.
This study included 3247 Czech participants, aged 18 to 80. The authors used a measure of loneliness that included overall loneliness, social isolation, social loneliness (e.g. not having many friends) and emotional loneliness (not being as close to others as you would like). HSPs were not any more socially lonely or isolated than others, but they did feel more emotionally lonely. It is nice that the study made this distinction, as I think many HSPs have felt this way—that you can talk to people, but those you talk to have no sense of the depth of your inner life, and it may feel futile to try to explain yourself. Or as the authors put it, “Thus, HSPs appear to have a higher need for intimacy in close relationships, which they lack. In terms of ordinary social relationships, they interact like the general population.”
The authors did not look at how one’s childhood might affect these results—for example, having an insecure attachment style–but thought this would be important to look at in the future.
Bottom Line: This study is very helpful in the way that it reaffirms the experience of many HSPs, that one can feel lonely when spending time with those who do not think as deeply as we do, no matter how kind they may be.
HSPS EXERCISE AS MUCH AS OTHERS, BUT DO NOT CHOOSE INTENSE ACTIVITIES FOR THEIR EXERCISE
Webb, B. L. (2025). Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Its Relation to Exercise Behavior and Preferred Exercise Intensity. Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, 10(1), 18.
Participants in this study were 320 college students and employees, age 18 to 70, mostly female, who completed the 12-Item Highly Sensitive Person Scale, the Godin Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire, and a question related to preferred exercise intensity. HSPs were as likely as others to engage in exercise, but they exercised less intensely than others. Intense exercise meant those activities during which the heart beats rapidly, such as running, jogging, hockey, football, soccer, squash, basketball, cross-country skiing, judo, roller skating, vigorous swimming, and vigorous long- distance bicycling. (You can imagine various reasons why HSPs might not engage in some of these.)
Bottom Line: The good news, since exercise is healthy, is that we exercise as much as others do. Also good news, and maybe why we exercise, is that we choose what we like!
2024
A REVISION OF THE HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSON SCALE
Pluess, M., Aron, E., Kähkönen, J. E., Lionetti, F., Yuanyuan, H., Tillman, T., Greven, C., & Aron, A. (2024). Evolution of the Concept of Sensitivity and its Measurement: The Highly Sensitive Person Scale – Revised. PsyArXiv https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/w7bqu
The revised version of the Highly Sensitive Person Scale, first published in 1997, is finally available. This is after several years of work and research, and has finally been unveiled for all to see, at least in preprint form. Being a preprint means that it has not yet been officially accepted for publication by a journal. It is on our websites, however.
If you look on pages 25 and 26 of this article, you will see that this new measure is shorter, eighteen items, and has six factors, with a nice balance of positive and negative factors and items. The six factors, with three items in each, are Sensitivity to Details, Depth of Processing, Social Sensitivity, Sensitivity to Positive Experiences, Emotional Reactivity, and Overstimulation. Nice, yes?
To quote from the article,
The new items were drafted, carefully considered, and continuously adapted in an iterative process through a series of team meetings. This process resulted in 65 new items. To acknowledge the relevance of participatory research (Cornwall & Jewkes, 1995), these 65 items were then rated further in an online survey by a group of 34 international experts on sensitivity (including academic researchers as well as practitioners), regarding how well these items reflect sensitivity and how understandable they are. After dropping some items and modifying them further based on expert feedback, the final selection was 61 new sensitivity items (see Supplementary Materials for a list of all 61 items). The 61 new items together with the 27 original HSP items were then included in the current study, resulting in a total of 88 sensitivity items [tested for inclusion].
Then 1000 participants answered these items plus items on other questionnaires to provide the various inputs we needed to know how to reduce the 88 to the very best 18.
Bottom Line: People score about the same on the old and the new HSP scale, which means research done with the old scale is still valid. But the old one had mostly negatively worded items. The new one includes the positive aspects of sensitivity, which means it correlates less with negative traits like neuroticism, depression, and anxiety.
INTUITION AND HIGH SENSITIVITY—AN INTUITIVELY RIGHT RESULT
MALEWSKA, K., CHOMICKI, M., & NOWAK, P. (2024). INTUITION IN DECISION-MAKING IN THE CONTEXT OF HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSONS. Scientific Papers of Silesian University of Technology. Organization & Management/Zeszyty Naukowe Politechniki Slaskiej. Seria Organizacji i Zarzadzanie, (205).
These researchers found that HS managers use intuition more than others to make decisions. Less expected, was the result that HSPs in general who score higher on items the authors determined to be negative on the HSP Scale, reported using intuition more often than others to make a decision, while those scoring higher on positive items used less intuition. “Counter-intuitive,” right? But if you think of intuition as making decisions without processing the details very long, it might make sense that stressed HSPs use intuition to decide quickly and get past the discomfort of uncertainty. But ordinary HSPs, preferring to process before jumping to a conclusion, might, as the study found, use less intuition in making a decision. As for the result that HS managers use more intuition, they of course may be forced to use intuition more often than the rest of us because they may be often faced with a decision for which there is simply too little information to be certain about what to do.
However, like all the research up to now, this study used the old HSP scale. While the old scale correlates well overall with the new one, the explicit factors in the new one are going to be much more useful in research.
Bottom Line: Intuition can be a good way to make a decision and is often used by HSPs, especially HS managers. However, in general HSPs prefer to process information carefully, somewhat the opposite of “just” using intuition to decide.
PARENTING OF HIGHLY SENSITIVE CHILDREN DETERMINES THEIR EMOTIONAL REGULATION
Sperati, A., Acevedo, B. P., Dellagiulia, A., Fasolo, M., Spinelli, M., D’Urso, G., & Lionetti, F. (2024). The contribution of Sensory Processing Sensitivity and internalized attachment representations on emotion regulation competencies in school-age children. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1357808.
In this valuable study, the researchers wanted to know, once again, how highly sensitive children, compared to other children, are affected by parenting—specifically, how feeling securely attached and loved affected their emotional regulation. Roughly speaking, emotional regulation means the ability to have the right emotion, in the right amount and at the right time. If you have ever been around children, you know they differ widely in how well they do this, and how old they need to be to have developed this skill, and of course how tired and hungry they are can also mpact their ability to regulate emotions.
The study, done in Italy, involved 118 children, 6-8 years old, and their mothers. The quality of the mother-child attachment was measured in individual videotaped playtimes at school, where the researcher had the children play with a doll, responding to four story stems that relate to specific attachment stressors (i.e., nightmare, hurt knee, illness, lost in a shopping center). In the process of telling the story, the child describes the mother’s or caregiver’s response in the story, presumably reflecting the child’s experience of Mother (e.g. warm, sensitive, cold, unresponsive). The quality of the attachment itself was not statistically different according to scores on the HS measure. Nor was emotional regulation. That is, compared to other children in the study, HSCs were not more or less positively attached to their mothers, and they were not more or less emotionally regulated.
However, exactly as differential susceptibility would predict, HSCs with better attachments to their mothers showed better than average emotional regulation. Those with poor attachments showed worse than average emotional regulation. (I wrote much more about differential susceptibility in the April blog on depth of processing, because it is our depth of processing that causes our differential susceptibility). Presumably, compared to children without the trait, the HSCs were processing more carefully their mother’s caregiving behaviors.
Bottom Line: Our sensitivity to everything, especially our sensitivity to our parents in our childhood. It determines so much about us that it really defines who we are—that we are varied, malleable, and unique, even among other HSPs, because we each had different childhoods that we attended to so carefully. (Happily, remember that we also respond well to helpful interventions that can improve emotional regulation.
FATHERS EVEN MORE THAN MOTHERS AFFECT HS ADOLESCENTS
Dong, Q., Ma, Q., Wang, W., Wang, J., Pluess, M., & Ma, X. (2024). Environmental sensitivity moderates the longitudinal effect of fathers’ positive parenting on mental disorders in Chinese adolescents. Journal of Affective Disorders, 366, 153-161.
This study, in China, looked at whether better relationships with one’s mother, father, or both reduced depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, suicidal ideation and increased well-being in Chinese adolescents, and whether being an HSC affected this. They found that the effect of fathers’ positive parenting more than mothers’ tended to alleviate mental problems in adolescents, and this was especially true for HS teens.
Bottom Line: This should be no surprise—all teenagers, but especially the highly sensitive ones, benefit from the special effect of a father’s attention, warmth, and acceptance.
HSPS’ PERCEPTUAL ADVANTAGE, DETECTING “VISUALLY DEGRADED WORDS” BETTER THAN OTHERS
Williams, J. M., & Blagrove, M. (2024). An investigation testing the perceptual advantage of Sensory Processing Sensitivity and its associations with the Big Five personality traits. Journal of Research in Personality, 104539.
For this study, 222 participants in Wales were tested on detection and identification of visually degraded words at three levels of difficulty and completed the Highly Sensitive Person Scale (HSPS). The positive aspects of the HSP Scale in particular were associated with better detection. None of the Big Five personality traits (Introversion, Neuroticism, Consciousness, Agreeableness, and Openness) showed a relation to this ability.
This replicates results in an earlier study by Williams and Blagrove: Williams, J. M., Carr, M., & Blagrove, M., 2021, Sensory processing sensitivity: Associations with the detection of real degraded stimuli, and reporting of illusory stimuli and paranormal experiences. Personality and Individual Differences, 177. You can download both of these studies as pdfs by finding them on Google Scholar and entering just the title of the article.
Bottom Line: The authors hope that by describing the perceptual advantages of the trait, this will help the general public as well as HSPs in psychotherapy to realize that there are clear advantages to the trait. In this case, as one would expect, HSPs can outperform others perceptually.
HSPS AND AGING, A SMALL BUT POSITIVE STUDY
Casanova, L. H., Luhr, J. H., Aguilar, M. A. C., Chacón, A., Chacón, M. P., King, K. H., … & Espinosa, C. N. (2024). The High Sensitivity of Sensory Processing and its relationship with postural balance in older people. Retos: nuevas tendencias en educación física, deporte y recreación, (58), 308-314.
This study was done in Chili, with 77 persons over age 60. This age group is important because of the greater danger from falls as we get older. There was a significant association between scores on the HSP Scale and ability to maintain one’s balance while eyes were closed. Participants stood on a special platform for measuring their balance, told to stand looking straight ahead for 10 seconds, then to close their eyes and do the same. This was repeated with an unstable platform of foam. There was no difference when eyes were open, but HSPs performed better on the harder eyes closed task.
Bottom Line: You may not have their fancy platform, but try standing on one foot next to something you can hold onto if you start to lose your balance. You’ll notice that maintaining your balance with your eyes closed is particularly challenging. This requires using all your ability to sense subtle changes in your body—one of the gifts of being highly sensitive, especially as we age.
Holzer, Jennifer M., Gillian Dale, and Julia Baird. “People with sensory processing sensitivity connect strongly to nature across five dimensions.” Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 20, no. 1 (2024): 2341493.
These authors assessed the nature connections of this group across five nature-connection types: material, experiential, cognitive, emotional, and philosophical. They found that HSPs hold deeper nature connections than less sensitive individuals with respect to all five connection types. Additionally, variability in nature-connection scores decreased as sensitivity increased, showing a significant trend.
Bottom Line: Again, no surprise, but I am sure nature is happy that this result was found again.
2023
HSPS ARE NOT “UNHEALTHY,” BUT THEY ARE MORE AFFECTED BY STRESS
Kenemore, J., Chavez, J., & Benham, G. (2023). The pathway from sensory processing sensitivity to physical health: Stress as a mediator. Stress and Health, 39(5), 1148-1156.
For two decades, it has appeared that HSPs were more prone to poor health. In 2006 Benham found an association between SPS and physical symptoms—including back pain, diarrhea, heartburn, and sore throat—in American university students. Imura and Tagasugi (2022) used a large adult sample and tried to control for more socioeconomic variables (but not degree of stress) and found a low but statistically significant correlation between SPS and gastrointestinal symptoms. However, they were clear that correlation does not imply causation, and the underlying reasons for this connection remains unknown.
In contrast, in 2016 Grimen and Diseth found in their study of Norwegian university students that there was no clear correlation between SPS and “subjective health complaints.” The personality trait of neuroticism was a better predictor of having such complaints. And Takahashi and others, in a 2020 study of SPS and “dispositional mindfulness” (the personality trait of being less reactive or judging of emotions, being able to describe feelings, and acting with awareness in the present) found that HSPs also having this trait reported fewer physical symptoms.
However, these four studies only looked at symptom checklists, not diagnosed illness. A 2017 study by Goldberg and associates did consider a genuine illness and found an association between SPS and Type I diabetes in adolescence. However, this type of diabetes often begins when a youth is under stress.
Finally, Benham (who did the first study above, in 2006) and his colleagues published this study, which looked for and found the source of the correlation between SPS and poor health by seeking a “mediator, and stress was the clear mediator, as it was with depression in the study above.
Bottom Line: Without stress, HSPs are as healthy as those without the trait. A huge amount of research indicates that the key to good health for everyone is reducing stress as much as possible. That means that you as an HSP, by giving stress reduction your attention, can be healthier than others. Yes, you get stressed by being overstimulated. But you can figure out how to avoid that. You can meditate, make rest a priority, eat right, exercise, and set boundaries. Change jobs if you have to. Hire help. Find a way.
If something is stopping you from reducing your stress level, it is probable that you had a difficult childhood. Maybe you learned some bad habits as a child or, worse, you got the message from your caregivers that your physical well-being was not very important. So do what you have to do to get over all that!
You cannot eliminate stress. It is part of life. But look around you at what stresses other people, and what stresses you in particular. As an HSP it is your nature to observe your world and then use what you have seen to find a better way. You can do that!
2022
HSPS SHOW MORE INTERPERSONAL SENSITIVITY
Tabak, B. A., Gupta, D., Sunahara, C. S., Alvi, T., Wallmark, Z., Lee, J., … & Chmielewski, M. (2022). Environmental sensitivity predicts interpersonal sensitivity above and beyond Big Five personality traits. Journal of Research in Personality, 98, 104210.
The researchers reported two studies, finding roughly the same results. In the first study, with 1,377 participants, the researchers reduced the HSP Scale to just two factors: positive and negative (a decision that I believe was a good move). They found both factors were associated with better performance in three areas of interpersonal sensitivity–empathy (correlated with the positive factor), social anxiety (correlated with the negative factor), and theory of mind, a social cognitive ability, associated with both. In Study 2 (N = 1240), they replicated most of these findings after statistically controlling for all Big Five personality traits (with its factors of neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness). That is, the HSP Scale “explained unique variance” above and beyond the Big Five, demonstrating that high sensitivity is not simply a reflection of one or a combination of these traits.
Bottom Line: Once again we see that HSPs are better at somethings, this time social skills—empathy and understanding what others are thinking, plus being more anxious to please others.
SPS IS ASSOCIATED WITH CONNECTEDNESS TO NATURE AND AFFINITY TO ANIMALS
Annalisa, S., Francesca, L., Rachel, K., Liam, M., & Michael, P. (2022). The temperament trait of environmental sensitivity is associated with connectedness to nature and affinity to animals. Heliyon, 8(7), e09861.
In two studies, published as one article, the authors found that the higher the HSP Scale score, the greater the expressed connectedness to nature. In the first study, attachment to pets was also studied, and there was no difference between HSPs and those without the trait. I guess everyone loves their pets! The second study looked at “animal affinity” in terms of stewardship and protection of animals, and HSPs were higher on that. Again, both studies found greater connectedness to nature.
Bottom Line: This is no surprise. HSPs do love to be outside and to be with animals. But now we have data to demonstrate it.
CHECK OUT THE OTHER SIMILAR STUDY DONE IN 2024 SECTION ABOVE: “People with sensory processing sensitivity connect strongly to nature across five dimensions.”
SPS IS ASSOCIATED WITH DIFFERENCES IN “RESTING-STATE BRAIN CONNECTIVITY”
David, S., Brown, L. L., Heemskerk, A. M., Aron, E., Leemans, A., & Aron, A. (2022). Sensory processing sensitivity and axonal microarchitecture: identifying brain structural characteristics for behavior. Brain Structure and Function, 227(8), 2769-2785.
To further validate SPS by characterizing it anatomically, the present study looked at 408 participants from the Human Connectome, for which there are diffusion tensor images (DTI). DTI measures the diffusion of water molecules in tissues, a noninvasive way to study the structure and function of the brain. DTI differences correlated positively with SPS scores in frontal cortex areas generally underlying emotion, motivation, and cognition, and white matter differences in many areas, all suggesting that axonal microarchitectural differences can be identified with SPS that are subtle and in the range of typical behavior. Although previous fMRI studies had identified most of these areas, the DTI results put a new focus on brain areas related to attention and cognitive flexibility, empathy, emotion, and first levels of sensory processing, as in primary auditory cortex.
Bottom Line: One more piece of evidence that HSPs’ brains are different.
SPS NOT ASSOCIATED WITH PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCE USE
Mary-Krause, M., Bustamante, J. J. H., Collard, L., & Melchior, M. (2022). Is Sensory Processing Sensitivity associated with psychoactive substance use? Emerging Trends in Drugs, Addictions, and Health, 100038.
Using data from 862 French adults, 25-44 years of age, researchers looked at the relationship between SPS, using the 12-item HSP Scale, and the degree of use of psychoactive substances, including tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and illicit drugs. High SPS was observed among 14% of their subjects. There was no association between SPS and psychotropic use.
Bottom Line: If you are asked (I often am) whether HSPs are more prone to drug use, you can say research suggests they are not.
A NEW, GENETIC MEASURE OF SPS VERIFIES IT—HSPS GAIN MORE FROM INTERVENTIONS
Pluess, M., Rhoades, G., Keers, R., Knopp, K., Belsky, J., Markman, H., & Stanley, S. (2022). Genetic sensitivity predicts long-term psychological benefits of a relationship education program for married couples. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 90(2), 195.
Prior studies have found that HSPs gain more from interventions, but in this case, rather than the HSP Scale, two genetics indicators were used to identify those who were highly sensitive. One was a set of nine genes thought from past research to predict the trait, and the other, which turned out to provide better results, was based on several thousand variants across the genome, derived from a recent, very clever “genome-wide” association study. More on that below
The paper reports two independent studies. In the first, 242 couples were randomly assigned either to receive a well-researched program for improving communication in married couples or to be in a control group. There was then an independent replication with another 183 couples. In both studies, after the intervention highly sensitive persons showed more improvement in their marital communication over time (some were followed for sixteen years) than those who were not highly sensitive. That the effects increased with time suggests that the HSPs continued to process and learn from the program for years after.
It is a step forward that this intervention study was able to identify sensitivity genetically rather than simply using self-report questionnaires. It makes the trait just that much more real. It is equally validating that a genome-wide approach could be used because, while there are some genes thought to be associated with the trait, these results have not been very consistent. How this was done is described in the next study.
Bottom Line: When HSPs get help, they gain much more from that help than others do.
AN UNPREDICTABLE ENVIRONMENT IS HARD ON YOUNG HSCS
Li, Z., Sturge-Apple, M. L., Jones-Gordils, H. R., & Davies, P. T. (2022). Sensory processing sensitivity behavior moderates the association between environmental harshness, unpredictability, and child socioemotional functioning. Development and psychopathology, 34(2), 675-688.
This study followed children over two years (starting when they were around three years old)who were high or low in sensitivity, as measured by behavior in a laboratory setting. If children were living in an unpredictable family environment, highly sensitive children (HSCs) were more likely to become difficult–fighting, hitting, being resentful. “Unpredictable” was measured by how often things like sickness or death in the family happened, or moves, a separation or divorce of parents, or a change in primary caregiver. Interestingly, harsh parenting did not affect HSCs and non-HSCs differently.
This effect on HSCs of unpredictability came up in another study, done in 2018 by Slagt and others (see below) in which HSCs in kindergarten were more affected than other children by unpredictable parenting, but not affected more than others by “bad” parenting (such as parents being too permissive or authoritarian). It seems HSCs can get used to almost anything except constant change. This may be true of you, too.
Bottom line: Right from the start, HSPs tend to have difficulty with change. When you know one is coming (like a move), remember “All change involves some loss, and no loss happens without some grief.” Above all, remind yourself that it is normal, for you as an HSP, to have these strong reactions to change.
HSPS ARE MORE ACCURATE AND HAVE FASTER REACTION TIMES TO EMOTIONAL INFORMATION
Hoffmann, A., Marhenke, R., & Sachse, P. (2022). Sensory processing sensitivity predicts performance in an emotional antisaccade paradigm. Acta Psychologica, 222, 103463.
I imagine you scratching your heads about this one. What’s an “antisaccade paradigm”? A short answer is that it is a measure of being able to pause before acting, in this case pause with your eyes. You are shown a dot, then it moves. You are told either to follow the dot (prosaccade), the natural thing to do, or you are told to look the opposite direction that it moved (antisaccade), an instruction you obey more slowly because you must make an effort. This requires strong executive brain functioning. In this study, both dots and faces were used as the objects. HSPs were more accurate than others, in that they had a faster-than-average reaction time to the instruction to look the opposite direction. This was only true, however, when instead of dots, they were responding to faces with emotional expressions, and especially true when researchers compared their response to neutral versus sad faces. By the way, these results had nothing to do with the mood of the subjects at the time.
Bottom line: You can feel even more confident that you and other HSPs process information–especially social information– more carefully and accurately at a deep level. This means not only taking time to think through tasks but also performing better automatically when asked to respond quickly.This contrasts with those having schizophrenia, ADHD, or autism, who in other studies were found to have slower reaction times on these tasks.
HS TEENAGERS DURING THE PANDEMIC—RESILIENCE WAS KEY
Iimura, S. (2022). Sensory-processing sensitivity and COVID-19 stress in a young population: The mediating role of resilience. Personality and individual differences, 184, 111183.
The results of this study are not too surprising. HS teenagers were being slightly more negatively affected by the pandemic (obviously the circumstances one was in was the main factor, not temperament). However, HSPs were fine if they had adequate levels of resilience, as measured by a six-item scale with items like “I tend to bounce back quickly after hard times” and “It does not take me long to recover from a stressful event.” This is undoubtedly at least partly the result of resilient HS teens having had more positive parenting, again due to differential susceptibility to good and bad circumstances.
Bottom Line: When asked how HSPs are doing during the pandemic, you can say that a study of teenagers found that, on average, they were doing about the same as others, maybe a little worse sometimes, but many were resilient through it all, probably due to differential susceptibility. This means that while they were more affected by the pandemic, they were also more influenced by positive factors, such as a supportive home environment, which helped some become highly resilient.
Popham, C. M., McEwen, F. S., Karam, E., Fayyad, J., Karam, G., Saab, D., … & Pluess, M. (2022). Predictors of psychological risk and resilience among Syrian refugee children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
This study continued to look at Syrian children in refugee camps in Lebanon, this time 1,528, seeking to find out how children differed in their response to the trauma and ongoing difficulties in their lives. About 19% had only a few symptoms or problems, the rest did have significant difficulties. As we would expect, being highly sensitive was one variable that was associated with more symptoms. (Note that this study was not like the 2019 study of refugee children below, examining how a difficult family environment may better prepare HSCs for war trauma, because this study was not looking at differences among the childhoods of HSCs.)
Bottom Line: As you would expect, in general being highly sensitive (not considering prior history as in the study above) is one risk factor for suffering from being a refugee, although the study shows that very few children do well in this situation.
HSPS MAKE BETTER ETHICAL DECISIONS WHEN ALLOWED TO PROCESS THE PROBLEM DEEPLY
Stenmark, C. K., & Redfearn, R. (2022). The role of sensory processing sensitivity and analytic mind-set in ethical decision-making. Ethics & Behavior, 32(4), 344-358.
Researchers manipulated “mind set” by giving participants an ethical problem to either think thoroughly through (deliberation mind set) or focus on finding a concrete, practical solution (implementation mind set). Not surprisingly, HSPs performed better in the deliberative mind-set, “allowing them to solve the problem using their natural problem-solving approach.” People who did not have the trait performed better in the implementation mind-set. “Results suggest that ethics interventions should not be ‘one size fits all,’ and should consider a person’s natural problem-solving tendencies.”
Bottom Line: This obviously validates the depth-of-processing aspect of our trait, and that in most situations, temperament should be considered. One size does not fit all.
2021
IT’S TRUE THAT STRESS LEADS TO DEPRESSION—BUT MAINLY TRUE FOR HSPS
Davidson, T., Braudt, D. B., Keers, R., Assary, E., Harris, K. M., & Boardman, J. D. (2021). Genome-wide stress sensitivity moderates the stress-depression relationship in a nationally representative sample of adults. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 20332.
Years ago it was found that stress played a major role in causing depression, at least for people with certain genetic predispositions, but later studies did not find it to be the case, and the idea was almost forgotten. But the inventor (mainly Keers) of this new way of testing for SPS used it to bring back the old idea of stress causing depression—but it does so only for those with the genetic signs of SPS. But HSPs identified in this way were, as predicted by differential susceptibility theory, less depressed in good environments but more depressed in bad ones.
Bottom Line: Yes, HSPs are more prone to depression when operating in stressful environments, but less depressed than others when in good environments.
SPS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF RUMINATION AND DEPRESSION IN CHILDHOOD
Lionetti, F., Klein, D. N., Pastore, M., Aron, E. N., Aron, A., & Pluess, M. (2021). The role of environmental sensitivity in the development of rumination and depressive symptoms in childhood: a longitudinal study. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 1-11.
Just to remind you, in the study above, published earlier, the three-year-olds assessed for sensitivity were tested again at six, and the highly sensitive children (HSCs) with permissive parents had more problems, while those whose parents were using an “authoritative” style demonstrated more social competence than other children.
Now, in this study, with the children aged nine, HSCs with permissive parenting were still struggling, although the positive effects of authoritative parenting found at age six did not appear at nine. The HSCs at nine with permissive parenting scored higher on a questionnaire (the children were now old enough to be asked on paper) about how much they ruminate (dwelled on negative thoughts) ) and those scoring higher on rumination in turn were more likely to be depressed at that age and again, although less so, when they were tested again at age twelve. All in all, permissive parenting in this study was a problem for HSCs. One might wonder whether “permissive” was a sign of parents being indifferent to their children, which sensitive children would notice more than others. Alternatively, it could be that sensitive children need active help understanding and regulating their emotions while young, and without that guidance, they may struggle more with negative feelings.
Bottom Line: Again, being highly sensitive means that how you were parented affected you more when you were a child and probably still does in adulthood. You might want to consider the type of parent you had: Permissive, authoritative (firm boundaries but listened to you with respect), or authoritarian (simply strict) and consider how this has shaped you.
KNOWING HOW TO COPE WITH EMOTIONS CAN PREVENT DEPRESSION IN HS UNIVERSITY STUDENTSYano, K., Kase, T., & Oishi, K. (2021). Sensory processing sensitivity moderates the relationships between life skills and depressive tendencies in university students 1. Japanese Psychological Research, 63(3), 152-163.
This study looked at which life skills–decision making, interpersonal relationships, communication, and emotional coping–were associated with lower depression. Poor interpersonal relationship skills were associated with depression in everyone. For HSPs, emotional coping was the key skill. Not surprisingly, poor decision-making skills were the problem for those low in SPS. HSPs know how to process deeply before deciding.
Bottom Line: If you tend to get depressed, focus on your emotional coping skills!
WHAT YOU HEAR WHEN YOU DO IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS OF HSPS ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCES
Bas, S., Kaandorp, M., de Kleijn, Z. P., Braaksma, W. J., Bakx, A. W., & Greven, C. U. (2021). Experiences of adults high in the personality trait sensory processing sensitivity: A qualitative study. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 10(21), 4912. “Experiences of Adults High in the Personality Trait Sensory Processing Sensitivity: A Qualitative Study.”
This study is just what it says: It summarizes in-depth interviews, done by experienced researchers, based on all we know now about the trait. The purpose was to provide more fine-grained information that could suggest new hypotheses for fostering the well-being of HSPs.
Bottom Line: Could be worth reading.
2020
JAPANESE HS TEENAGERS DO BETTER IN A PROGRAM TO PREVENT DEPRESSION AND PROMOTE RESILIENCE
Kibe, C., Suzuki, M., Hirano, M., & Boniwell, I. (2020). Sensory processing sensitivity and culturally modified resilience education: Differential susceptibility in Japanese adolescents. PloS one, 15(9), e0239002.
This is one of several studies, beginning with one by Pluess and Boniwell in 2015 (see below), all of which have found that HS teenagers gain more from a program to create resilience than those without the trait. In this study, 407 Tokyo high school students (both boys and girls) were tested for resilience, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and depression before, right after, and three months after the resilience intervention. All students benefited, but the HSPs, who scored significantly lower on well-being at the start, gained the most. In particular their depression dropped and self-esteem rose.
Bottom Line: Once again we see differential susceptibility and responsiveness to interventions. While differential susceptibility can mean being more affected by a negative environment, in this case simply being an HS adolescent, the good news is that with HSPs the negative can be more easily mitigated or avoided.
2019
DIFFERENTIAL SUSCEPTIBILITY MEANS GAINING MORE FROM EXPERIENCES: HENCE, A DIFFICULT FAMILY ENVIRONMENT BETTER PREPARED HSCS FOR WAR TRAUMA
Karam, E. G., Fayyad, J. A., Farhat, C., Pluess, M., Haddad, Y. C., Tabet, C. C., … & Kessler, R. C. (2019). Role of childhood adversities and environmental sensitivity in the development of post-traumatic stress disorder in war-exposed Syrian refugee children and adolescents. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 214(6), 354-360.
This is a fascinating study. The participants were over 500 Syrian refugee children (7-17) living and going to school in Lebanon. Michael Pluess and his co-authors assessed for high sensitivity, childhood adversity, and intensity of negative war events they had experienced, from being unable to leave the house because of gunfire and knowing of friends’ homes having been destroyed to being tortured or seeing a family member killed. The question was, how would prior childhood adversity (e.g., having had parents who hit or neglected them, who fought with each other or screamed at the child, having had abusive siblings, etc.) change the effect of war stress on children with various levels of sensitivity?
Too often we equate differential susceptibility with the idea that HSCs do better in life than other children if they had good childhoods but worse with bad ones. So then we might predict that with better childhoods, sensitive children would handle war stress better than non-HSCs. But they did not. If a child was highly sensitive, the better the childhood, the more PTSD.
Once you digest this result, I am sure you can see the reason. Differential susceptibility means HSCs learn more from their experience than other children, but for that to be helpful, the past the child learns from must match up reasonably with future conditions. So, HSCs with happy, secure family life seemed to have found wartime events more shocking, more difficult to adapt to. In contrast, those with prior childhood adversity at home were used to hell. War was more of the same.
One might also wonder if the HSCs with bad childhoods had developed what is called an avoidant attachment style, taking the self-protective attitude that “I don’t need anyone—I can do fine on my own.” They detached early in their lives or were fully dissociated, so that maybe they did not fully feel new trauma.
This study also reminds me of one of Israeli soldiers being studied for their likelihood of suffering PTSD. The researchers used the short serotonin allele (sometimes thought of as one genetic source of SPS) as a likely predictor of PTSD after exposure to battle. They found, however, that while soldiers with this allele were more distressed by training, in battle they were less distressed, or at least not as prone as others to PTSD. I have always imagined that during training they were very anxious about how they would survive and paid close attention to everything they could learn that would help them. Hence in actual battle they were a little calmer and more confident (and safer) than those who had not taken their training so seriously.
That could suggest that, similarly, maybe the HSCs with adverse childhoods had simply developed “street smarts” early and were not surprised or unprepared when things got even tougher in their lives. When bombs started falling, they had well-rehearsed ideas and skills about how to survive.
Bottom Line: To me, this study brings home the reality of exactly what differential susceptibility is—susceptibility to learning more from one’s experiences, “for better and for worse.”
THE SENSITIVE, OPEN CREATOR–HSPS ARE MORE CREATIVE
Bridges, D., & Schendan, H. E. (2019). The sensitive, open creator. Personality and Individual Differences, 142, 179-185.
Bridges, D., & Schendan, H. E. (2019). Sensitive individuals are more creative. Personality and Individual Differences, 142, 186-195.
The first of these two articles reported a study involving 288 participants and finding sensitivity associated with several highly regarded measures of creativity, finally providing evidence (we never say “proving”) that HSPs are more creative, on at least some measures, than those without our trait. The second article is an in-depth review of similar research and an explanation of why sensitivity is a key overlooked factor in creativity.
Bottom Line: How nice to have this research to back up what we thought—HSPs are unusually creative.
WITH A NEW MEASURE OF SENSITIVITY IN YOUNG CHILDREN, HSCS FOUND TO BE MORE AFFECTED BY QUALITY OF PARENTING
Lionetti, F., Aron, E. N., Aron, A., Klein, D. N., & Pluess, M. (2019). Observer-rated environmental sensitivity moderates children’s response to parenting quality in early childhood. Developmental Psychology, 55(11), 2389.
After years of hard work, there is finally a measure of HS in children too young to read. It was created by watching videos of children going through a particular set of activities while being observed by people trained in the method. So, its application may be limited, as it requires children to be observed in this particular set of activities.
Developing the measure was possible because we had videos that were part of a study going on over many years of the same children. This kind of “longitudinal” study is a great research method. The videos of the children when they were about three had already been rated for “temperament” (positive and negative, fearful, inhibited) to see how temperament at that age would affect mental health when these children grew up. So, the videos only needed to be re-rated for high sensitivity, which we decided would be rated as present in a child when we saw a mixture of holding back to watch closely at the start of an activity, but not seeming fearful, and then coming forward after a while in a curious, positive way, and being highly cooperative with experimenters.
The second major contribution from this study is regarding differential susceptibility. The HSCs identified at age three using the new measure were more affected at age six by how they had been parented compared to non-HSCs. If they were raised by parents who were “permissive,” as rated when the children were three, they were more likely to have “internalizing problems” (depression, anxiety) when they were six. On the other hand, if raised by “authoritative parents” (considered the best parenting style), sensitive children were more likely at six to be more socially competent than others. This is a clear example of differential susceptibility—a negative environment leads to a negative result, but a positive environment leads to a positive result, but only for highly sensitive children. Children who were not found to be HSCs were hardly affected by their parenting (no parents in the study were abusive.)
Bottom Line: Just more evidence that HSCs with a good-enough childhood can truly shine. But don’t worry–the other HSCs will do fine with time and maybe some help.
The following studies were published prior to the 2019 review that I mentioned at the start,
but some of these are so worth noting that I listed them here, too.
2018
ANOTHER STUDY USING THE SAME GENETIC TEST FOUND HSCS GAINED MORE FROM A FAMILY
INTERVENTION
Lemery-Chalfant, K., Clifford, S., Dishion, T. J., Shaw, D. S., & Wilson, M. N. (2018). Genetic moderation of the effects of the Family Check-Up intervention on children’s internalizing symptoms: A longitudinal study with a racially/ethnically diverse sample. Development and Psychopathology, 30(5), 1729-1747.
Another study using this genome-wide measure found that it explained variations in the effects of a family intervention on children’s anxiety and depression.
Bottom Line: Those who seek to help children may want to focus most on those who are highly sensitive.
SPS PREDICTS GAINING MORE FROM A SCHOOL-BASED ANTI-BULLYING INTERVENTION
Nocentini, A., Menesini, E., & Pluess, M. (2018). The personality trait of environmental sensitivity predicts children’s positive response to school-based anti-bullying intervention. Clinical Psychological Science, 6(6), 848-859.
Anti-bullying interventions in schools work a little, but not a lot. Would it be different if you considered differences in the students? In a study of over two thousand students, grades four through six, researchers gave the HSP Scale designed for children and found that HS boys with high scores benefited much more from an intervention to reduce bullying than less sensitive boys. That is, according to self-report questionnaires, after the program they were victimized less and less depressed or anxious. HS girls also received more benefit than girls who were not highly sensitive, but the effect was not as great on girls as on boys. One explanation is that HS boys are more likely to be victimized. All the students in the anti-bullying program were compared to a control group who were not in the program, making it a well-done study.
Bottom Line: If you were bullied as a child, don’t you wish an intervention such as this had been done at your school? If you have anything to do with schools, ask for it to be done! These interventions are common so there should be no problem. Use the internet to search for tips.
EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF LOW-SENSITIVE, MEDIUM-SENSITIVE AND HIGH-SENSITIVE INDIVIDUALS
Lionetti, F., Aron, A., Aron, E. N., Burns, G. L., Jagiellowicz, J., & Pluess, M. (2018 ), Dandelions, tulips and orchids: evidence for the existence of low-sensitive, medium-sensitive and high-sensitive individuals. Translational Psychiatry, 8(1), 24. doi: 10.1038/s41398-017-0090-6
This study found that HSPs are closer to 30% of the population, rather than 20% as we have been saying for years. So far this seems to result in more and more studies. That’s fine. It’s how science progresses. This study also found that people fall into three distinct groups on the HSP Scale. Some of the authors (not myself or Art) decided to name the groups Orchids (30%), Tulips (40%), and Dandelions (30%). I am not so fond of any flower terms for describing the presence or the absence of the trait, given how boys may feel about it. Nonetheless, Orchids and Tulips were the terms coined by Tom Boyce, one of the pioneer researchers of high sensitivity, so that persuaded us to let it pass. Having found this middle group, everyone thought the name Tulips seemed to fit.
Bottom Line: You may want to say 20 to 30% of people are HSPs, rather than simply 20%, as we did in the past. I would not worry too much about changing it for now if you have said it or put it in writing.
IN BRAIN STUDIES, SPS IS NOT LIKE AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER, SCHIZOPHRENIA, OR PTSD
Acevedo, B., Aron, E., Pospos, S., & Jessen, D. (2018). The functional highly sensitive brain: a review of the brain circuits underlying sensory processing sensitivity and seemingly related disorders. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373 (1744), 20170161.
In this study of people doing similar tasks but in different studies, the brains of those with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) did not look like those of SPS. A problem is that participants were not all in a single study doing the same task. Rather, studies of all four were compared. Nevertheless, it was easy to conclude that in general HSPs’ brains work differently than those with these three disorders (although an HSP could still have any of these disorders— e.g., an HSP could also have PTSD.) Note that in a study of “performance in an emotional antisaccade paradigm” by Marhenke and Sachse, P. (2022). found HSPs were faster on the task, but those diagnosed with schizophrenia, ADHD, or autism had been found in other studies to be slower on this task.
Bottom Line: Should it come up in a conversation that HSPs are simply people with high-functioning autism, studies continue to suggest otherwise.
Pluess, M., Assary, E., Lionetti, F., Lester, K. J., Krapohl, E., Aron, E. N., & Aron, A. (2018). Environmental sensitivity in children: Development of the Highly Sensitive Child Scale and identification of sensitivity groups. Developmental psychology, 54(1), 51.
The main importance of this study was the “bifactor analysis” of the data, in which we found, as others had, three factors (sets of items that group together). The three are (a) Aesthetic Sensitivity (e.g., being deeply moved by arts and music; having a rich, complex inner life, being conscientious); (b) Low Sensory Threshold (unpleasant sensory experiences–e.g., reaction to bright lights and loud noises; avoiding violent media); and (c) Ease of Excitation, referring to being easily overwhelmed–(e.g., being negatively affected by having a lot going on). But there was also clear evidence for one overarching factor of plain old sensitivity.
A word about these three factors. They were the main reason for developing the new measure, HSP-R, in 2025. The three factors have been made much of by other researchers, even though the researcher originally finding them also said the single inclusive factor was very present as well. Sub-factors of course can only contain the items in the scale. In my original interviews from which we constructed the scales, of course I heard more about the most noticeable part of being HS, being easily overwhelmed and noticing intense stimuli, so items about these, mostly negatively worded, dominated the original measure and two of the three factors that arise from it. There were only six items in the “Aesthetic” factor, and mainly they were the ones positively worded! So study after study found problems with HSPs were most strongly associated with the two negative factors, when they really were not good descriptors of SPS and therefore not very good studies. An HSP is not at HSP without their scoring relatively high on all three factors, including the positive one.
Bottom Line: Beware of studies that make too much of the factors within the old HSP scale rather than focusing on the total score.
YOUNG HSCs MORE NEGATIVELY AFFECTED THAN OTHERS BY CHANGES IN PARENTING
Slagt, M., Dubas, J. S., van Aken, M. A., Ellis, B. J., & Deković, M. (2018). Sensory processing sensitivity as a marker of differential susceptibility to parenting. Developmental psychology, 54(3), 543.
This study was of kindergarten children who had been identified by both parents and teachers as having either high negative emotion or high SPS. (Negative emotion has long been seen as the main reason for differential susceptibility.) Mothers also reported on their parenting behavior using standard measures for parents, and teachers rated the children on certain behaviors (for example, having a “hot temper,” being easily distracted, or being especially considerate). The mothers and children were measured three times over seven months, allowing for studying changes over time.
Associations between parenting and child behavior did not depend on children’s negative emotionality. Rather, SPS affected these associations, such that changes in parenting, towards more negative or more positive parenting, both predicted more negative behavior in HSCs seven months later. Why changes gave the only results may be because HSCs tend to adapt to the parenting (in this study, mothering) they are receiving, whatever it is, but have more trouble—get angry, distracted, and so forth at school—if their mother’s behavior changes. (SPS and parenting were not related to positive social behavior. One reason may be that the children in this study, whether HSCs or not, did not vary that much on positive social behavior, coming from a relatively high socioeconomic level.)
So, negative emotionality in infancy is not necessarily a clear indicator of sensitivity to one’s environment. This is almost surely because signs of negative emotionality in infancy can be mixed up with SPS. That is, some of the “negative” infants were HSCs being negative only due to being overstimulated and parents not understanding their child’s needs. In the past sometimes infants were assessed in the laboratory for negativity by seeing their reaction to being held down or pricked with a pin on the foot!
I remember shortly after beginning this research going to a conference on temperament and nervously standing up to suggest, after someone presented a study on negative infants, that maybe this negativity could sometimes be caused by sensitivity. I added that labeling infants as negative might be misleading or sometimes even harmful for all involved, but no one got it at the time. Years later, here is an excellent study that addressed this. When the two behaviors were separated out in kindergartners, being negative (a trait easy to observe) and behaviors suggesting sensitivity (a little tricker to see and something parents had not been asked about much in the past), SPS was clearly the stronger predictor. How satisfying.
Bottom Line: When you see babies crying and parents saying, “this kid is so difficult—not like our first one at all (or not like other parents’ babies, who are so easy),” you might get up the courage to say, “Your baby could just be highly sensitive.” (Then be ready to answer questions!)
2017
SHOULD HSPS BE ASSIGNED TO HIGH LEVEL JOBS OUTSIDE OF THEIR HOME COUNTRY? NOT WITHOUT SUPPORT
Andresen, M., Goldmann, P., & Volodina, A. (2017). Do overwhelmed expatriates intend to leave? The effects of sensory processing sensitivity, stress, and social capital on expatriates’ turnover intention. European Management Review, 15(3), 315-328.
You may remember the lovely, charming, brilliant Maike Andresen from her appearance in the film Sensitive: The Untold Story. I visited her in Germany and taught for a day her students in the department of Human Resource Management at the University of Bamberg, Germany (one of the most prestigious in Europe), where she is a full professor and chair of the department. Her specialty is global careers and expatriation, and in this study, she looked at how being an HSP affected the “turnover intentions” (either to resign or a company’s intention to “let them go”) of employees working abroad.
The researchers found that HSPs were more often sent overseas on important assignments, but were higher on turnover-intention measures, with stress being the reason. Since organizations sent more than average numbers of HSPs to these positions, they apparently thought HSPs were especially suited for these jobs in other cultures (with their empathy, conscientiousness, etc.). Hence the conclusion was that more preparation and support, to help them deal with the stress, would allow them to be retained in these roles.
Bottom Line: How often HSPs are promoted into more responsible positions because of all their good qualities, but they exhaust themselves and/or perform less well than expected because the position as it is designed is too stressful for them. Wonderfully, Maike is saying, don’t give up on them, but prepare and support them better.
HSPS, WHILE RATING EMOTION-AROUSING PICTURES, SHOW MORE BRAIN ACTIVATION GENERALLY AND FOR POSITIVE PICTURES ESPECIALLY
Acevedo, B. P., Jagiellowicz, J., Aron, E., Marhenke, R., & Aron, A. (2017). Sensory processing sensitivity and childhood quality’s effects on neural responses to emotional stimuli. Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 14(6), 359-373.
This study is kind of a sister study to the one above, using 14 participants, women as it happened, half very high and half very low on the HSP Scale, and finding very similar results. But this time brain activation was used–a case of triangulation, or getting the same result with different methods, which is especially appreciated in science. The 14 women were viewing positive and negative images as compared to neutral ones, as in the last study, and took the same questionnaire about the quality of childhood parenting.
For all images, HSPs compared to the others showed more activation in areas associated with emotion, emotional memories, and emotion processing. For positive pictures (compared to neutral ones), SPS was more associated with areas involved in reward processing, self-other integration, calm, and satiation. This was even more the case the happier the childhood. For negative images (compared to neutral), some of the areas were the same (having to do with processing generally) but others were, as you would expect, associated with negative emotion, but again, many areas were different or increased for HSPs. A result of particular importance was, again, how much viewing the negative images was affected by having a better childhood, in that there was more activation in areas involved in emotion regulation and self-control.
Bottom Line: These two studies further validate differential susceptibility—that is, HSPs respond more to their environment than others do. As a result, they benefit more from a positive childhood and are more negatively impacted by a poorer childhood. All of this is because their brains must have processed these early experiences more intensely. Hence it seems that during a positive childhood, they had a better chance of developing self-awareness, self-control, and calm, which are so important when responding to any emotion-laden situation.
2016
A VERY CLEVER TEST FOR SPS FINDS, ONCE AGAIN, THAT PARENTING MATTERS MORE FOR HSCS
Keers, R., Coleman, J. R., Lester, K. J., Roberts, S., Breen, G., Thastum, M., … & Eley, T. C. (2016). A genome-wide test of the differential susceptibility hypothesis reveals a genetic predictor of differential response to psychological treatments for child anxiety disorders. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 85(3), 146-158.
The clever method of finding a genome-wide measure of SPS focused on twin studies, because how much a trait is genetic is often determined by comparing identical twins to non-identical twins. For differences in personality traits, the contribution of genetics will always be somewhere around 50%, while the environment contributes the remainder, but we really can see that genetics are involved when identical twins have even more of a trait than non-identical twins. Interestingly, even among identical twins, analyses show that identical twin pairs vary in how much they are affected by their genes versus their environment. These researchers reasoned that those identical twins more affected by their environments have genes that, by definition, make them more differentially susceptible! They are HSPs. Brilliant, yes? See Keers, R. et al., “A genome-wide test of the differential susceptibility hypothesis reveals a genetic predictor of differential response to psychological treatments for child anxiety disorders,” published in the 2016 issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
In that pioneering study, Keers and his colleagues used the same genome-wide pattern of genes associated with more susceptibility or sensitivity in identical twins to identify sensitive children in general, twins or not, and it worked. The emotional problems of children identified as sensitive using these genome-wide patterns were more affected by their parents’ parenting skills. And it was clearly differential susceptibility, in that HS children identified in this way had more problems than other children if their parents’ lacked skills and fewer problems than other children when their parents had good skills.
The same study also looked at the effects of therapy on those children in the study who had anxiety disorders and found that receiving more intense therapy (individual vs. group vs. something briefly taught to parents to help their kids) helped HS children, but the intensity of treatment did not matter for other children with anxiety disorders.
Bottom Line: How we parent HSCs is so important, as is the individual attention provided when helping them
HSPS RATE EMOTION-AROUSING PICTURES, ESPECIALLY POSITIVE ONES, AS MORE INTENSE
Jagiellowicz, J., Aron, A., & Aron, E. N. (2016). Relationship between the temperament trait of sensory processing sensitivity and emotional reactivity. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 44(2), 185-199.
This early study turned out to be particularly important. The first author is Jadzia Jagiellowicz, along with Art and myself. It is based on data Jadzia gathered while a graduate student with us at Stony Brook University. Ninety-six participants (half HSPs and half those who were especially low on the HSP Scale) rated standard emotional-arousing pictures for how positive and negative they seemed and how aroused the participant was by looking at them. HSPs rated the pictures, and especially the positive ones, as significantly more intense emotionally. They also responded faster to the positive pictures. HSPs who reported having high-quality parenting also reported greater arousal in response to positive pictures than those low in sensitivity.
Bottom Line: This study was important for showing why HSPs might exhibit “differential susceptibility,” feeling more than others in bad environments but better than others in good ones. It seems that in good environments they, compared to others, may pay more attention to positive stimuli relative to negative and react more strongly. This is even more so if they have had good parenting, when they must have paid particular attention to positive experiences, probably some of them quite subtle such as a parent’s slight smile of approval or delight.
2015
HS TEENAGE GIRLS BENEFITED FROM A TREATMENT TO PREVENT DEPRESSION; OTHER GIRLS DID NOT
Pluess, M., & Boniwell, I. (2015). Sensory-processing sensitivity predicts treatment response to a school-based depression prevention program: Evidence of vantage sensitivity. Personality and individual differences, 82, 40-45.
One of the most exciting studies to date (2015) was this one done by Michael Pluess and Ilona Boniwell. There was a depression prevention program for 11-year-old “at risk” girls in a poor neighborhood in London, and the HSP Scale was among other measures given to them before and after they went through the program. The goal was to prevent these girls from becoming depressed over the next year, which often occurs to girls around 12 or a little older. The result? A year later the researchers found that the prevention program successfully reduced depression scores only for the girls in the top one third of scores on the HSP Scale. It was not effective at all for low-scoring girls.
Bottom Line: HSPs may suffer more than others in poor environments, but they gain more from interventions. This is another example of us HSPs picking up especially well on good things, probably in this case by processing the program’s information deeply. This gives real hope that an intervention can help us if we need it, even more than it would help others.
2014
BRAIN STUDIES OF HSPS SUGGEST THEY HAVE MORE EMPATHY THAN OTHERS
Acevedo, B. P., Aron, E. N., Aron, A., Sangster, M. D., Collins, N., & Brown, L. L. (2014). The highly sensitive brain: an fMRI study of sensory processing sensitivity and response to others’ emotions. Brain and behavior, 4(4), 580-594.
This research used “functional magnetic resonance imaging,” which is able to detect activation of brain areas while someone performs a task. In this case the task was looking at photos of strangers and spouses showing happy, sad, or neutral expressions. Compared to others, HSPs’ brains were more responsive to expressions of emotions on the faces of others. This was true in all cases, stranger or partner, happy or sad (compared to neutral). However, HSPs’ brains were especially responsive to the emotions of their husband or wife (someone very close to them), and even more responsive to positive emotions than negative ones.
Two findings were particularly important. First, this responsiveness occurred in the “mirror neuron” areas, apparently only found in primates and humans and known to facilitate empathy. The second especially interesting area was the insula, sometimes called the “seat of consciousness” because it brings together all aspects – thoughts, feelings, perceptions, bodily states, etc. – all of our moment-to-moment experience.
Bottom Line: HSPs are more affected by how others seem from their facial expressions to be feeling. They are showing more empathy, one more aspect of the trait.
2012
MINDFULNESS AS A TRAIT REDUCES ANXIETY IN HSPS
Bakker, K., & Moulding, R. (2012). Sensory-processing sensitivity, dispositional mindfulness and negative psychological symptoms. Personality and individual differences, 53(3), 341-346.
The researchers looked for what might moderate the association between SPS and depression and anxiety by measuring mindfulness as a trait (not as a practice, but as a personality tendency to attend to and be accepting of present experience). They found that, with respect to anxiety, when mindfulness and acceptance were high, HSPs were not particularly anxious. However, mindfulness as a trait did not appear to help with depression.
Why might that be the case? First, no one is studying typical or normal highly sensitive people yet. Unless someone knows they are highly sensitive, they are living under a burden, and people in these studies generally do not know. So they may be more depressed because they have always thought something was wrong with them. Second, studies finding HSPs are more depressed are using measures that were validated on 100% of the population, meaning that the “other 80%” are the largest contributors to the norms. What is considered a normal level of depression for HSPs may simply be higher than it is for others.
Bottom Line: If you can be mindful of the present moment, this may reduce your anxiety.
2010
HSPS ARE BETTER ABLE TO IGNORE CULTURAL PERCEPTUAL BIASES
Aron, A., Ketay, S., Hedden, T., Aron, E. N., Rose Markus, H., & Gabrieli, J. D. (2010). Temperament trait of sensory processing sensitivity moderates cultural differences in neural response. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 5(2-3), 219-226.
In this particularly important study, 10 European-Americans and 10 East Asians underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing simple visuospatial tasks emphasizing judgments that are known from other studies to be either context independent (typically easier for Americans) or context dependent (typically easier for Asians). As expected from previous research, each group on average exhibited greater brain activation for the culturally non-preferred task due to it requiring greater effort in attention and working memory. However, HSPs were the exception, in that those scoring high in SPS in this study showed little cultural difference, while those scoring low showed strong culture differences. That is, the HSPs could do either task with equal ease, without cultural bias.
Bottom Line: It seems that HSPs can see (some) things without a cultural bias, automatically. Seems like the world needs more of that.