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Raising Good Humans
Is Your Child "Sensitive"? Tools, Truths, and What the Research Really Shows w/ Renowned Temperament Researcher Professor Michael Pluess
01:13:34
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- [00:01]
A
The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Welcome to Raising good humans. I'm Dr. Eliza Pressman, and today I'm talking with Professor Michael Plous, who is the most prolific researcher on high sensitivity. His focus is on various aspects of environmental sensitivity. I wanted to talk to professor plus because he's the one designing all the intervention programs aimed at fostering positive outcomes, specifically for children who score higher on sensitivity to the environment and therefore may have more vulnerabilities. But also, as we've talked about many times, respond better than anyone to prevention and intervention. And since so much of it is related to our parent support and understanding, it's so incredibly helpful to know about this research. If you have a child in your life who is more sensitive to the environment or a partner, or you yourself are, this research is fascinating and it's also a real understanding of the genetic component and the environmental components that make up this particular beautiful part of the population, which is about almost 30%. So I wanted to bring his cutting edge research to you. And then we're also trying to integrate ways to sort of create an understanding between the research and how that translates to your everyday interactions. So first, just out of the gate, I want to hear your definition of a highly sensitive person or the language that you prefer to use in what has been called, you know, an orchid person or orca child. High, highly sensitive, highly reactive, deeply feeling. What's. What's your take?
- [02:17]
B
So there's lots of different terminology and in different fields, even within the academic world, there are quite a few different theories and words that are being used. So I sort of landed on just sensitivity, not necessarily saying high sensitivity, but just sensitivity, because it's a common trait and some people have low sensitivity and some people have high sensitivity. In the, from a scientific side, I summarized all the different theories under the term of environmental sensitivity, because one of the key factors is that people that score high on sensitivity, they are more affected by the environment, both negative and positive experiences. So that's why refer to environmental sensitivity, which captures individual differences in response to the environment. But the trait of sensitivity probably goes beyond that as well, capturing as well internal experiences rather than just external one. So I refer to sensitivity as a spectrum, a dimension, a continuous trait. And along this trait, we do find a group of individuals that are the higher end and, and we refer them as highly sensitive.
- [03:32]
A
Okay, I'm actually really glad that you said that about the continuum. My oldest, who's like lower on sensitivity, is so annoyed at this idea of, you know, categorizing people in this way because in her way of coping in the world, she sort of is. She brushes off a lot of sensitivity. And it's just like, this is just a rigidity that my sister has, or this is just, you know, whatever. She's sort of an interesting person to talk to about this because she lacks the sensitivity to sort of really buy into how different of an experience her sister could have moving through the world. And just like a silly example, they were both at the dentist doing the same procedure. And my older daughter was second. My first daughter went and said it was so painful and that the dentist was so annoyed with her for experiencing the pain. And she was like, he's really.
- [04:35]
C
Be.
- [04:35]
A
Just be prepared. Bring headsets, music, anything to distract you. It's terrible. And then my older daughter was super prepared. And then she got there and she was like, what are you talking about? There was no pain. It was so silly. You totally freaked me out. And he was perfectly nice. And even though that example seems ridiculous, I was there when my younger daughter was at the dentist. Her body was in pain. She was, like, shaking, and the dentist was bristly. Like, his reaction to her reaction was bristly. It wasn't. She wasn't making it up. But I was also there when my older daughter went and was just sort of like, listening to music, bopping along, and felt nothing. And so I think the dentist also was a little bit more at ease with her. And I thought, God, this is such a tiny example. But this is why I, when I look at them, I'm sort of interested in what is. What's at play and what's the balance between understanding that different people are on this sensitivity continuum, and at what point do we respond to it accordingly? And, like, how do we give tools to the person experiencing that nervous system so that they don't have. You know, because being in the world, I assume even if you have highly sensitive parents who are supportive and aware of this, it doesn't. Like, how do you kind of balance that with offering tools to move through the world when other people aren't caring as much about it? So those are my, like, big picture questions. But now I really want to hear about, like, when you start to look at sensitivity on this continuum as being something that needs a different environment, or does it.
- [06:27]
B
Well, it just means that people differ in how they respond to the environment, just as you described with your two daughters having the same procedure and a very different experience of that. And. And that's basically reflected in that idea of individual differences in sensitivity that, although Most of us have some level of sensitivity. That level could be quite different between different people and that means they react very differently to the same experience. They will have a different perception, different response to it. And I think what's also quite interesting that you mentioned is the impact that that might have on their environment. So basically there's a bidirectional relationship that our sensitivity has an impact on how we perceive the environment, but it also has an impact on the actual environment. So with a dentist maybe picking up on the nervousness or the anxiety and then responding a little bit different to that, and that's fairly well known in temperament parenting work, that the children's temperament have an influence on how the parenting affects them, but it also has an influence on the parenting that they receive because parents will respond in different ways. Yeah, so these are two important themes coming up. But yeah, I would say the key understanding is that differences in sensitivity are completely normal. They're adaptive. It's good to, you know, to have people that differ in their sensitivity. It's not a diagnosis, it's not a problem that needs to be treated. It's just a personality differences similar to some people being more extroverted than other being more introverted. That's not a problem. It just means those people probably excel in different areas or they do particularly well in particular contexts. And that's just a lovely example of diversity which is actually helpful for societies to have. People with different, different temperaments and highly sensitive people have a lot to contribute just as people with lower sensitivity also have lots to contribute because they tend to be more resilient and a bit more robust. And in certain contexts that's definitely an advantage.
- [08:42]
A
Effy and so I would love to to clarify because I do think from the outside if you are not experiencing the world in this way, there's just still language around like frag the fragility of a highly or even just moderately sensitive person. And I wonder, is it a sentence of fragility or is there reality to sort of in a better environment that there is a robustness and resilience that can come from these experiences of being more sensitive in the world and surviving that.
- [09:17]
B
So we've been using a sensitivity measure. This is a self report measure from 17 year olds twins in a large twin study in the uk. And twin studies are usually the first attempt to estimate the biological or genetic contribution to a specific trait. So we did find that sensitivity is heritable, it does have a genetic component and explains about 50% of the differences. So this shows that there is HNA components. It's considerable, but it doesn't completely explain oral sensitivity. So the experiences that people make throughout life also has an impact on their sensitivity. And that leads me to the second point, which is that there are different types of sensitivity, not just low and high. Actually, most people fall somewhere in the middle, right? It's a smallish group, about 20 to 30% that are in the group of highly sensitive ones, and another 20, 30% at the lower end in the low sensitive ones. And actually, we don't know very much about those. The low sensitivity research hasn't really focused on those. But about 40 to 50% are in the middle. So they have a sort of moderate sensitivity levels. So most people will be sensitive to some degree. But what we recently looked at is whether there are different types of sensitivity. And what we do find is that there are some that are highly sensitive to both negative and positive experiences. But there is also, there are also subgroups of highly sensitive individuals. There are those that are highly sensitive but particularly sensitive to more negative experiences. And we call them the vigilant type. They've developed to recognize threats, to be responsive to negative, emotional to threats, dangers and so forth. And then we talk about the other type, the vantage sensitive type, which are the ones that don't respond strongly to negative experiences, but they respond more strongly to positive experiences. So they are particularly responsive and are more likely to benefit from positive experiences. So within the highly sensitive individuals, you have those that are sort of equally responsive or sensitive to negative and positive, Some that are more sensitive to the negative and some more to the positive. Some of those differences will have a genetic basis, but we assume, and this needs to be tested further, that the type of sensitivity is shaped quite significantly by the experience that people have growing up. So a highly sensitive child growing up in an environment that is very supportive, where they feel understood, where they're not constantly overstimulated, where they experience acceptance and so forth, they probably develop this vantage sensitive type where they are able to regulate their negative emotions, they're able to deal with their anxieties, and they particularly benefit from the positive aspect of their sensitivity. Other children that grow up in quite challenging environments where maybe there's less autonomy, maybe the parents are quite strict, they don't feel necessarily appreciated a lot. They feel pushed in many different ways. They may feel not really understood that their emotions weren't taken seriously. These children might more likely develop into a vigilant type where the negative, the sensitivity to negative experiences is emphasized. And that all makes sense from the evolutionary perspective, but because we develop in ways that help us to adapt to the current context that we're growing up in. So someone growing up in a more challenging context, a sensitivity to the negative experiences will help them to recognize them and stay away from them.
- [13:16]
A
So the sensitivity is in these dimensions or like separately, there are different dimensions. Could you also be more sensitive to certain types of environmental input and not others? Like some people don't realize that they're highly sensitive on this continuum because while they are with like sensory stuff, they're not with emotional re reactivity or something like. Like that.
- [13:48]
B
Yes, that's absolutely the case. It's I know of sensitive people that are highly responsive to caffeine, they can't drink caffeine, and others that don't seem to be affected much by that. So I think there are some differences also. Again, that depends on how you grow up. If you are a highly sensitive child growing up in a city, then you just probably get used to, you know, the noises, the sensory inputs from being in a city and that's sort of your calibration. But if you were the same child growing up in the countryside, then maybe moving to a city would just feel completely overwhelming. But if you already grew up in the city, then that might be less the case.
- [14:33]
C
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C
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- [17:50]
A
Do we calibrate here? Because if a child who let's say would have typically like if they had been raised in a country, the input of the noise just wouldn't have they wouldn't have acclimated to it. So now they can't live in a city in a way that feels at ease. But that same temperament kid grows up in New York City Is constantly challenged with the loud, oppressively loud, I'm in New York City right now world. Is there a. Is there a way to adapt to it positively that grows the robustness versus shutting down completely? Like, I guess that's the struggle with parents who are trying to be highly.
- [18:39]
C
Sensitive to their children.
- [18:42]
A
At what point are you taking away the opportunity for a positive adaptation? And at what point are you saying, no, I'm just growing you in? It's like, is it a greenhouse you're growing kids in, or is it for the world? And how do you strike that balance?
- [19:00]
B
Yeah, I think that's a. That's a challenge. And I think it's important for highly sensitive children to not be protected from anything that could be challenging for them. And what they need is support in certain situations. So what they need is a parent that helps them to understand the feelings, to understand how they perceive a situation, and then to provide the regulation strategies, the coping strategies to help with that. So rather than sort of saying, oh, this experience is overwhelming for you, so we're just not going to have that, we remove that from your world. I think that would not. That would not be a good strategy to prepare the children for life. Much more important is as well, I think, particularly relevant for a parent is to understand why does the child respond in a certain way. And if you do understand, oh, this is. My child is highly sensitive. This happened. They're now overstimulated. So how can I help the child dealing with that overstimulation rather than preventing, you know, never exposing them to a certain experience? Because it could be, especially with highly sensitive children, that their first experience of something, they find it, you know, too much or too intense, and they may not like it, but maybe the second or third time they would like it, and maybe the fifth time, they absolutely love it. So we know that sometimes it just takes them a bit longer. So key for parents is to put themselves into the parents into the child's shoes and understand what is it about their sensitivity that makes this situation difficult and how could I help them? So sometimes it's just being with the child for a little bit in the beginning until the child feels at ease, and then they're fine. Once I took my son to. My son is young, he's. He's two and a half. But maybe a year ago, when he was even younger, I took him to a music class with lots of. It was total chaos. So There were maybe 20 parents with their toddlers, and there was one guy playing music. And the idea was that that Children were chime into the music and when I got there, we just sat at the edge watching. And he was just watching, was very fascinated by it. But it was, it was loud, it was chaotic, so he didn't want to go closer. But later I had to go. My wife came in looking after him and later she sent me a photo where he's in the middle of everything banging a drum. So I think in the beginning he just needed to first, you know, get familiar with it, understanding, until he felt comfortable to engage with it. And then he totally did engage with it. So this is sort of, we call that slow to warm up. They need a bit of time to get used to something because they taking in all this information, whereas another child may not perceive all of that. And so they just rushed into it. And we've seen that in other studies where we measured sensitivity based on behavioral observation. And in this, as part of that experiment, children had to go into a room. They were led into a room where there were new toys that they haven't seen before. And what we saw with the less sensitive children, they just immediately rush in play with all the toys, but then are quickly, you know, done with it. The highly sensitive ones, they first stood there, looked around and then after some time they went to one of the toys and then played with it, looked at it, you know, looked, looked at it from all different sides, really investigated it in much more depth and then moved to the others. So it's just a different way of how children approach a new situation. So it's important for parents to understand if your child is overwhelmed or scared of a new situation, what they need is someone to help them to regulate those emotions and to give them the time that they need. You can't rush these children. It's not going to help to rush these children. It will make it worse in the future. So sometimes that may slow things, slow things down a little bit. But maybe more relevant is to, to understand what is it? What's my child thinking right now? What's my child feeling right now? And how can I help with that? Because sometimes if you get that right, you know that that really makes a huge difference. Don't say, oh, my child is too loud or feels a bit scared because of this, or there's some, some people that you know that are distracting. So just the better you understand what's happening with your child, the more appropriate you can respond. Also, we had an interesting study that we conducted in existing data here in the uk, where we created a genetic indication indicator for sensitivity. So we had lots of children, thousands of children in this study, and we had a genetic indicator for sensitivity. And then we were looking at how that genetic sensitivity sort of interacts with the childhood conditions, the quality of their childhood environment, and then their mental health, their well being as an adult. And what we found is that children that are genetically sensitive, they're growing up in a more supportive environment, they actually tend to be more resilient in adulthood. Children that are genetically sensitive and growing up in less supportive environments, they tend to be more vulnerable to respond to stressful conditions with worse mental health. And what I found really important about that is because it showed that in children that are genetically sensitive, they can still be resilient, even though they generally the sensitivity would be associated probably with reduced resilience and heightened risk for mental health problems. Children that are highly sensitive, but are growing up in a caring, supportive environment, they can acquire the coping skills needed to be resilient, even when facing challenges later in adulthood. So since the children are not doomed to be fragile or vulnerable for mental health, they actually respond very strongly to psychological intervention programs. That's also what we found in several studies, that it's the highly sensitive children that were benefiting the most from school based programs aimed to at improving their resilience. The other children didn't respond at all. We didn't see any improvement whatsoever in the less sensitive children. But the highly sensitive children, they actually really significantly improved their mental health in response to the psychological program at school. And that was consistent, that was stable at least until a year after the intervention. That's when we stopped collecting the data. And we found that in several other studies as well. There's a study that we recently, a few years ago, published on the effects of a relationship intervention program that's for young couples about to be married. It's a well established program called prep, developed in the States. And we had data on two randomized control trials. So the PREP intervention I'm referring to is called Prevention Relationship Education Program.
- [26:26]
A
Okay.
- [26:28]
B
And it's a well established program that has been around for decades. And we did collect genetic data on various individuals that took part in this intervention. And again, we found that the highly sensitive ones, based on their genetic indication indicator, they benefited most from that intervention. But even 10, 12 years after the intervention, the intervention is very short. And our interpretation of all those findings are that highly sensitive individuals, they internalize the content of these interventions more deeply and might be more likely to apply them, and that's how they get the benefit from those interventions. So basically, if Parents are able to provide a good environment for these children. These children, even though their sensitivity can be challenging at times, they can develop into resilient adults that are still able to benefit from the positive aspects of their sensitivity.
- [27:33]
A
And I do want to get into the positive aspects, but I have a few more questions about this. So I guess first, it's hard to distinguish between, on the continuum of sensitivity, if you are in the higher category, are you more likely to have an anxiety disorder versus just like a lot of anxiety, or are you more likely to have some internalizing disorder? And if so, would having supportive parents who participate in earlier interventions and support programs, does that also lead to more positive outcomes later or more resilience? Or are we separating kids who are both highly sensitive and have a have a mental health or mental illness from that capacity for later resilience?
- [28:30]
B
It's something that we have to look at more closely. So the most of the research that we have right now suggests that there is an association between sensitivity and mental health. It's quite common, consistent across most studies. We do find a correlation of 0.4, which is sort of a moderate effect size, but it's considerable and it's really consistent. And we looked at that mostly with depression symptoms and anxiety symptoms. So this basically suggests that someone that completes a sensitivity questionnaire and scores high in that questionnaire is likely to also score higher on anxiety and depression symptoms. So when we look at just those different dimensions, we do find this association which is very stable, even when we look at more positive aspect of sensitivity. So, but what we don't know is when we look at individuals, how likely is it if one individual scores high on sensitivity that they actually develop depression, anxiety, or any other psychological disorder? At the clinical level, that information we don't have. But it is fairly clear that sensitivity is associated with a higher risk for the development of mental health problems. So there's definitely more research needed that looks at how sensitivity develops over time and how that influences mental health as well. We do a little bit of that in a large study on Syrian refugee children where sensitivity measures one of the most relevant risk factors. And we do it find that there's changes both in mental health and sensitivity. But I'd have to go back to look at that. So it is possible that sensitivity changes to some degree, just as it's possible that mental health changes at some degree. But it's most likely that sensitivity, if an individual is highly sensitive as a child, it's unlikely that they will lose that sensitivity in adulthood. It's a It, and it's not, as I mentioned, it's not a diagnosis, not a medical condition. It's not something that needs treatment. These children benefit from an environment that is supportive much more than other children do. So, you know, previously, a lot of, a lot of the literature talks about difficult temperament. And this is terminology that has been, has been used, you know, in the 50s and 60s to describe children that were more challenging for parents. So this term difficult temperament is still around and people still refer to that. These are children that are crying more easily. It takes them longer to get used to changes. They just get more easily upset. Once they're upset, they're upset for longer. And I think it's, it's important to change that narrative from just seeing children as sort of difficult to. It's like, okay, they, that's how they respond to this particular experience. How can I help them? You know, my, my son is, I think, highly sensitive and he really didn't like when I would hoover the flat apartment because it was, it was too loud for him. So we would give him sort of a ear protection that he was very happily wearing whilst I was hoovering. But most recently he no longer did. Well, that's because I think he, he knows it, he knows what it is. He can deal with it. So he has lost that as aspect that was, that was more challenging. And I think that's where, you know, I'm not, I'm not forcing him to wear the, the hearing protection or the, those headphones if he doesn't want to. It's, it's up to him. If he, if he's, if he is fine with the noise, then that's, then that's good. So I think it takes more, these children require more of the parents, but that investment that the parents make is the return of that investment is excellent in these children, but it might require a little bit more because you have to be aware of, oh, how does this situation, you know, how does this situation impact my child? And sometimes it just takes them a bit longer to get used to, you know, and obviously there's lots of questions with that, like childcare outside of the home, who's looking after child at what age? So there's significant differences. And that's also research that we've shown that, you know, the difficult children that are often more sensitive, they're actually more impacted by the childcare quality that they experience as well as the parenting quality. They are more likely to develop problems if parenting quality or childcare quality is low, but they have the least problems they have less problems than other children if they're in a high quality environment. So a sensitive child experiencing high childcare quality or high parenting quality will have less behavioral issues than a less sensitivity child. A less sensitive child in the same context.
- [33:33]
C
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A
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- [36:44]
A
I'm so curious if anybody's looked at like in sibling pairs. Well, I guess that that brings up two. Everything you say makes me have more questions. These are two that I just thought of. First of all, I think the Hoover, the vacuum cleaner example is that.
- [37:03]
C
That's a Hoover, right?
- [37:04]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [37:07]
A
That is such a great example. Because this, the supportiveness and sensitivity of his parents was that, okay, this is, this sound is too much for him right now.
- [37:21]
C
Here's.
- [37:22]
A
We're not gonna not hoover. We're just gonna give him the opportunity to make it a little lighter with earphones or protection. And then he gets used to it and acclimates. And then eventually he too can be in a room with the Hoover. He's not. You know, I think it's actually a perfectly beautiful example.
- [37:47]
B
And it's also so when I would give him those, those earmuffs, I would tell him, I'm hoovering now, it's got to be a bit NOISY, but after 20 or minutes or so, I'm done. So he obviously doesn't understand the minutes yet, but he knows, okay, this will end. So I would sit him in the sofa, put the headphones on and give him a book to read. And he would have a bit more a sense of control of the situation because he knows what's going to happen. It's not a surprise. It's not like, oh, will this go on forever now? Because I told him this is just going to be for a little bit and now why don't you read this book and then I come back to you. So it de escalates or prevents escalation from the beginning and gives him some sense of control to make sense of the noise that he hears and to understand what it's about.
- [38:44]
A
And so would that be equivalent to just generally over time and even thinking about couples or in the workplace place or with older kids, that the, that if you know that you are more highly sensitive and you've been given the opportunity to realize, oh, I Do better when I'm not surprised. I do better when I have a plan. I do better when I remind myself that this has, this will be a little bit more uncomfortable, but I'm not helpless. That you then translate that to the different scenarios that you might encounter.
- [39:22]
B
Absolutely, yeah. So that's that and that's why it's so key. And I think the, we do find in some of our studies that highly sensitive people, I mean, talking about adults now sometimes struggle a bit more with understanding their emotions. And I think because they have strong emotions, they have strong emotional reactions, and that having strong emotional reactions does not necessarily mean you understand them, it's just you experience them. And I think I would expect that more adjusted, highly sensitive individuals, they would have a good understanding of their emotions. So they know, oh, I feel, I don't. I feel stressed at the moment because of this deadline or because of, you know, or because of this conflict or this or that happened or I'm feeling overwhelmed right now because I have been surrounded by people. I've been in five meetings today, and I just need a break. All right. So understanding what's happening within you helps you then to take action and knowing exactly what you need to do to regulate yourself. And that's absolutely key. So. And we know about regulation, whether that's emotional or behavioral regulation, that is often internalized parenting that you receive from your parents. So your parent tells you, oh, you know, the first thing is to acknowledge the emotions. You're feeling sad right now because of this. And that gives the child a sense of, okay, the child doesn't think about, why do I feel sad, Right, they're just feeling sad. But helping them to make that connection, understanding, oh, this is why I felt sad, or this is why I feel happy, to make a connection, they can internalize that, and they can internalize then the strategies that the parents use. And that will become their self regulation. So the stronger their self regulation skills that they acquired during childhood, the more likely they will do well in adulthood. Because they now have learned to deal with their emotions, they've now learned to deal with their cognitive processing as well. Because sensitivity is not just about emotions, it's also about the deeper cognitive processing of experiences. So highly sensitive children will think for longer and more deeply about their experiences. And if they have the chance to talk things through with their parents, who takes them seriously and their thoughts seriously, that will help them in that processing. They will benefit from the processing that their parents are able to apply and then make it their own. So they internalize the Parental strategies, basically.
- [42:00]
A
And I could see where so, so thinking about siblings first, if your parent is responding in a supportive way, and I guess I should just. From a reality check standpoint, sometimes it's annoying and sometimes you might lose your cool. But if the majority of the time you can think about what is my child experiencing and how can I, you know, help support them and co regulate, I would imagine you end up with a deeper connection with that particular child so that the environment draws out from some parents a closer connection and a deeper connection. Maybe some. If there isn't a good fit, it, it causes tension. But if there's high quality connection, what hap. What happens in this in siblings and, and other family members? If one of the, if the, if the conversation of the house, you hear this a lot like they're sucking the air out of the room. They're taking all of the space. They're, they require so much more. So then you get the kids who are just like, nobody notices me because I don't need them. Like they're highly adaptable. But does that cause attention? Not attention, attention. In, in households, I read somewhere, I can't remember where I read this, that it's more adaptive to have only one highly sensitive child in the household because that means they're gonna, they, they'll get more attention. But if there are multiple highly sensitive children, it would not be super helpful or something along those lines.
- [43:45]
B
Well, there's two perspectives here. The evolutionary theories would suggest that it makes sense, or at least some evolutionary inspired theories would suggest it makes sense that children differ in their sensitivity. So that within a family you will have one sensitive child and one that is less sensitive. Some other theories suggest it's all about adaptation. So depending what that family's experience is, children will both, you know, if they're more than two, they will develop a similar level of sensitivity. I think the reality is that children differ substantially in their temperament. Even though they're biologically relatively similar. There's still quite, quite, quite differences in temperament between children from the same parents. So I think if you are a highly sensitive parent, you're probably more likely to have a highly sensitive child because we know it's heritable. But it's possible that your children are less sensitive and it's possible that you have one child that is highly sensitive in other children and not. It's also possible you have only highly sensitive children. I think probably all the combinations are possible and we don't have the data on the distribution of high sensitivity amongst siblings. So we simply don't have that data. But we do know from the genetic studies that, you know, the siblings share 50% of the genetic information with each other. So we would expect that it's more likely, you know, it's not unlikely that they would be similar. But again, it's only 50%. Same with the parents.
- [45:30]
A
Have you looked at anything that sort of suggests cultural, like, are there some cultures or communities that have higher rates of high sensitivity?
- [45:39]
B
Yes, there are. There are cultural differences, especially when we collect data on sensitivity with self report measures where children complete the cartagenaire. For example, one funny example is. So we, we've used our measures in the UK and then we do lots of research with, with colleagues in Italy as well. And one of the subscales of our sensitivity measure is called aesthetic sensitivity. It's basically capturing to what degree children enjoy nice tastes, arts, music and things like that. And Italian children scored much higher on that.
- [46:17]
A
Oh wow.
- [46:17]
B
They push their sensitivity levels high. And I think that's clear. There's a cultural difference. There's a, there's a much stronger appreciation for good food in Italy compared to the uk, I would say culturally. Right. As well as the arts and music and all of that. So that's one difference. And we also find very interesting differences with China. So in the west, uk, USA and most countries in the west, we do find this association between sensitivity and mental health. Sensitivity is more considered a problem. And in China that's quite different. In China, sensitive children are considered as examples. It's seen as something positive. And we do find associations with sensitivity in Chinese. In our Chinese samples are more positive. They're not strongly linked to the mental health. So in the culture, sensitivity is perceived as a more positive trait. In China compared to the Western world where, you know, especially the usa, I guess it's very much about, you know, the loud voices win and you know, you're your brand and, and all of those things. I think as a highly sensitive person living in the west could be more challenging. In China, it seems that this trait is culturally more accepted and appreciated.
- [47:45]
C
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- [48:25]
A
I mean, I'm also really into decorating.
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C
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- [52:23]
A
So from, like, just from a broader cultural perspective, it seems like in the US culturally there are some adaptations that are meant for supporting young people that have maybe it's like a misunderstanding of sensitivity. So like now I can't decide if there's like this high, like the US is so about the loudest, the leadership qualities that are sort of overt. The, the resilience is highly sought after while at the same time our way of dealing with sort of mental health and social and cultural issues is to either overcorrect completely and just like make sure that there's like nothing, words are not spoken, things are not done that would any, that would cause any discomfort whatsoever. And so I, I think. And then there's the rebellion against that and I think there's some like strange misunderstanding about the capacity for sensitive caregiving, that, that it means getting rid of uncomfortable experiences. And I was so curious. I think there must be an association between empathy and sensitivity.
- [53:47]
B
Yeah, there we go.
- [53:48]
A
I want to hear about empathy and the, and sensitivity and those associations. And then I guess I want to understand, are there some highly sensitive people whose empathy is so overwhelming that they might come across the opposite, unable to sort of open that up. And so there's. The reaction is having to build sort of a hardness around it.
- [54:14]
B
Yeah. So we, we do have information on, on empathy and different aspects to empathy. So generally we do find that the higher people score on our sensitivity measures, the more empathy they report as well. So that's all self report. Right. And it does make sense because the measures of sensitivity, especially the new ones that we use, they include aspects of the social life, how well they can read emotions in other people. Do they know what someone else needs before, before they say it? Are they're impacted by the emotions of others? You know, if you're around people that are in a negative mood, in a bad mood, does it have a stronger impact on your mood as well? At the same time, if you're surrounded by someone who's really positive, does it have a strong impact on you as well? So, and we do find that most people that are sensitive score high on those questions. If someone would score low on these questions, you would be concerned that that might not reflect sensitivity, the way that we define it, but that they could be experiencing aspects of sensitivity combined maybe with something else. So someone somewhere on the autistic spectrum might score lower on the social sensitivity, but still high on the others. But that's another question about the overlap with autism, which is a big one where we need to do a lot more research. We did look at emotion recognition in children. Basically they were shown photos of just eyes of adults. And they had to indicate, they had to set from four potential answers. Which answer is the correct, which answer displays the correct emotion seen in that face. And what we found is that the highly sensitive children were doing better at that task. And this is going beyond self report is an objective measure of how well do they actually do in recognizing emotions. And highly sensitive children, they seem to be doing better in emotion recognition. And emotion recognition is an important aspect of empathy. Right. It's difficult to empathize if you don't recognize the emotion in someone else's face. So highly sensitive children are doing better at emotion recognition and generally do find stronger associations with empathy. Highly sensitive people, it's easier for highly sensitive people to put themselves into the situation of someone else. And this is one of the reasons why many highly sensitive people end up being therapists or coaches, because you have to be doing that, you have to be able to do that well for those kind of roles. So a lot of highly sensitive people probably choose those careers because that's A good fit for sensitivity. And the second question.
- [57:06]
A
Yeah.
- [57:07]
B
About could sensitive people be so sensitive that experience empathy to such a level that they sort of shut down or show less? Yeah, that's an interesting hypothesis. I don't think we have any research on that. That probably would require an experimental study where we overwhelm people and then see whether there has any impact. I can imagine that something like that could happen, but that probably has more to do with overstimulation and the irritability that can emerge from that. So if you have someone that is overstimulated, it's just too much, then that can result in irritability and that irritability can then potentially shut down their empathy in a sense of. That they're no longer able to. Like, I can no longer deal with your emotions at the moment. I'm just, it's too much for me. I need a break.
- [57:57]
C
Right, right.
- [57:58]
B
And. But that's really the irritability speaking rather than their empathy. And the irritability has, Irritability has been activated because it has just has been going too much. There's been too much going on. So similarly, if someone has, is highly sensitive, has a very, very stressful day or has been overstimulated all day, that might erode their ability to respond in an empathetic way. They might still perceive the other's emotions, but they just find it too overwhelming so that they, they, they with basically withdraw. They don't, they don't want to do that too much. But that, that's a speculation and a hypothesis that needs to be tested.
- [58:41]
A
Thank you for saying that. Okay, along those lines, are there phrases that they can say to help other people understand them, like their romantic partners in the future or their friends? Or to your point, like you can imagine, if somebody's not that sensitive to. They probably aren't as impacted by how the day went. So they get home and it's not overwhelming. And so they are still available. They might not be as attuned because that's not their natural state, but they're not going to be withdrawn. But if you know that about yourself and you want to, you're thinking like, oh, I, I'm not, I'm. I want to have the kind of relationships and interactions where I'm not pushing people away because what I'm really trying to say is like, I need to recharge. Are there things that you imagine you'll tell your little one over time to help them get their needs met without them alienating people?
- [59:34]
B
Yeah, these are important things to Teach. And that's basically, I think that's true for all of us. To understand what is important for us and to be able to communicate that that's really key for ourselves, for our own well being, but also how to get along with others. Because if we, if we feel drained and overwhelmed because of a stressful day, we have less capacity to deal with someone else. So we might get more easily angry with them, but it has nothing to do with the other person. And it might have all to do with us having had a difficult day. So a mature person, an emotionally mature person, and obviously we talk about ideals here and the realities that is much more complex, would be aware of their own emotions and also be aware of how their own emotional state has an impact on others and foresee that. And then, you know, maybe say when they get home, say, I've had a really tough day, please give me half an hour, I need to go, I'll quickly go for a run or I'll do this and that because I know this is good for me. This will help me to process that day. And after that I'll be, I'm ready, I'm available. So knowing what do I need in order to also meet the needs of other people, that's quite complex, right? That requires understanding yourself, but also understanding the needs of someone else and how your behavior will impact their emotional state. But the more able you do that, the more likely you can de escalate situations or prevent escalation from the beginning and that will be probably more pleasant experience of life.
- [61:18]
A
Well, because I also think about likability and how important it is to have likability in the world. And I think about how hard it is when you're experiencing so much input from the environment to also express like the warmth and competence and confidence of a highly likable person. Like you want to be this way, but if you see that it prevents your social connection, then it can be problematic. And so I wonder, like, how do you make sure that you're promoting social connection without trying to say like you have to be a friendly, warm, extroverted, you know, whatever.
- [62:00]
B
Yeah, I think that's, that is the challenge that highly sensitive people are great at listening, they're great at feeling people, making feeling people understood and at the same time when that can probably tip over into just leave me alone because, you know, there's too much going on. So it's possible, I guess, to see those two extremes. And I guess, you know, I've heard from many people saying that your emotions are your Responsibility, not someone else's. So we need to regulate our own emotions and we need to, that's why it's important to understand our own sensitivity and knowing what are, what are the boundaries that we need to set. That's our responsibility. We set the boundaries. We can't expect other people to do that for us. And I think it's a key thing that parents should teach their children to understand what are their boundaries and then to set those boundaries, but then also to communicate that to others without alienating them. So that's, you know, as I mentioned, when you come home, say I need an hour or I need half an hour to just decompress. I feel overwhelmed. I can't really take on anything else for the moment. Just give me that one hour and then I'm back. Or if, you know, if a child is being invited to a birthday party and the child feels really stressed about that because they're doing something, you know, the activity is really, they, they found that difficult also to find a way to say, I really appreciate that you invite me to this party. I'm worried about this because, you know, I tend to respond to these things in a certain way. So I probably won't be able to join for this part of it, but I can join for the other parts and finding a solution that is sort of like the compromise where you can still have your, you have your boundaries because you still, you need to have that because otherwise you're not functioning well. But also to not be so strict, to sort of alienate every, everyone and isolate yourself from everyone else. So key is to understand yourself, understand the needs and demands from others and then draw the boundaries in a way that allow you to be yourself whilst also allow you to enjoy other relationships and engage with others. And sometimes, you know, we people might engage in an overstimulating activity knowing this is going to be overstimulated. I'm going to be, I'm going to be in the UK with saying knackered or really exhausted after this. But I appreciate this situation. I appreciate this so much, or I appreciate this person too much. I want to do that. But then I know after that I need some time to recover from it. So this has to be taken into account.
- [64:49]
A
If you know yourself. I mean this really. It's a really strong argument for high quality parenting not to put so much pressure on parents, but this does seem to be like a very clear. These things are all how we can learn. We can learn in our childhood so that our adulthood we have these tools we can Say, oh, I made plans two nights in a row. I will not be. If I say yes to the third night, I will not be the friend that this person is looking for or whatever. Or I won't be able to get to the office because I'll go, you know, berserk. Are there vulnerabilities? And then I would love to talk about the strengths because I don't want to fixate all on the vulnerabilities. And I do want to know sort of. I think we talk a lot about building resilience and robustness, but I would love to talk about also building sensitivity.
- [65:41]
B
I think when it comes to sensitivity, how does it develop? We do find. We have just a recent paper that came out last week in our Syrian refugee sample where we looked at predictors of sensitivity. And we did find that both negative and positive experiences are associated with increased sensitivity. So in more challenging environments, people develop higher sensitivity. In more positive environments, children develop higher sensitivity. That makes sense from an evolutionary theory called biological sensitivity to context, which suggests that sensitivity reflects a conditional adaptation, conditional based on the quality of the environment. So sensitivity is a costly feature. So it doesn't make sense to develop it unless you're in a context where it's of benefit. And it's particularly beneficial in a difficult environment because it helps you to detect threats. It's particularly beneficial in a positive environment because it helps you to benefit from whatever opportunity you come across. It's less beneficial in more moderate environments. And that's basically what we do find in our research as well, that both negative and positive experiences seem to be associated with higher sensitivity. But we do know relatively little about the development of sensitivity. We do know there's a genetic component. We do know environmental factors play an important role as well. We don't know exactly how that looks like across development, but I can imagine that, you know, the time as a parent that you spend with your child observing the world also has an important impact on sensitivity. I haven't really seen anything on that, you know, in research, but you know, this. Older parents are always. Seem to be rushing wherever they go. And maybe in the US Mostly, you know, you go everywhere by car. But here in London, most people don't go by car, but they go on public transport or they walk. And I see lots of parents just rushing. And I'm one of them, you know, rushing, pushing their child to the next thing. And sometimes what's needed is just to, to give them time to explore, observe, you know, take a break and just, you know, we saw, we see A family, a dog family in, in the canal, you know, just observe the next 10, 15 minutes, just, just have a look at that and say pointing out details. And I think that can probably help them to actually be in the moment and perceive those details. And I think that's, those are things that are stolen from the children if they engage with screens and social media because they're usually, they're designed to capture the attention without subtlety. But to be in nature on observing things, I think that that is probably, I would assume, helpful to develop a good level of sensitivity. Yeah, they would, yeah. But I think it's important to, to clarify that you can be, you can be low in sensitivity and you can still, you will still have, you know, you still be able to empathize, you still experience awe in nature and all of those, but probably not to the same degree as a highly sensitive individual.
- [69:04]
A
So, so do we want to work on that? Like, is that worthy of focus to think about, like drawing that out more, or do we not need to worry about it unless you find that your kid is just like not noticing anything?
- [69:18]
B
I think the sensitivity is generally, I think a positive thing. It's a positive trait that has some potential downsides as well. And not being particularly sensitive also, that is positive because these children adapt more easily to change. They tend to be naturally more robust and resilient, maybe less easily overwhelmed by things. So they might just be able to deal with more difficult challenges or able to bounce back from them. So I think there's lots of positives for the lower sensitivity, the low sensitive ones. I think the terminology low sensitive obviously doesn't imply that. It says, it suggests you're low on something, but let's say they're high in resilience or the sort of the mental toughness or robustness has lots of benefits. And before the field started talking about sensitivity, that was sort of, you know, the ideal outcome of development was resilient children. And actually there's an interesting example. There is lots of research has been done on the serotonin transporter gene and there's lots been lots, a lot of research. So this is research as 10, that's 20 years old. That's when it started where people found that if you have a short version of that gene, you're more vulnerable, you're more likely to develop depression if you experience childhood maltreatment or stressful life events. But if you have the long version, you're more resilient. So everyone wants to find out that they are half the long version. They're more resilient. They're more resilient in the face of stressful life events. And then we published a paper suggesting and providing some evidence that those with the short version of the gene are not only more vulnerable, but they also benefit more from positive experiences. They're generally more sensitive to the environment. And I once was presenting that to some of my students in that term in that way. I suggested that that short version of the gene is associated with sensitivity. People that have that version of the gene are more negatively affected by negative experiences, but also benefit more from positive experiences. At one point, some of the students got together and arranged that, you know, they collected DNA samples and got those analyzed in their lab. And I actually had people come to me saying that they're disappointed that they found out they had the long version of the gene, which is the resilient one, rather than the short one, which I thought was a really interesting example of the importance of the narrative around it, because, yeah, yeah, the positive aspects to any of those gene variants, and that's why they're still available. They're still in the gene pool. In the meantime, much of that research has been criticized for various methodological issues. So not too many people are talking about the serotonin transporter. So I just mentioned it as an example. But, yeah, both. First of all, sensitivity is a dimension. So you could be anywhere on that dimension or anywhere on that spectrum. Being at the lower end of the spectrum doesn't mean that you're a sociopath. It just means that you're, you know, you might be a little bit less perceptive or you might be, you know, processing your experiences a bit less deeply than other people do. And that has positives, just as being at the higher end has. Has positives. These are different evolutionary strategies for people to succeed. So you can succeed at any level of the dimension of sensitivity, but probably in different contexts. So there are some that are more suited to highly sensitive individuals and some that are more suited for less sensitive individuals, but one should not be valued more than the other. And I think the dandelion orchid metaphor does that to some degree as well.
- [73:24]
A
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