33: The Highly Sensitive Person

She's the author of The Undervalued Self, along with numerous other books, including The Highly Sensitive Person, The Highly Sensitive Child, and The Highly Sensitive Person in Love. She began probing emotional and relationship problems from the nature side with her study of high sensitivity, an inherited trait in twenty percent of the population. Now Aaron turns to the nurture aspect and the critical problem of self worth. Thank you, Laine for talking to me today. I'm glad to be here, Scott.

Really nice. Yeah, I've been a long time admire of your research from many aspects, you know, as a as a researcher and scientist, but also as someone who I would identify as highly sensitive, So thank you for you know, when to start off with, thank you for all the great work you've done this topic and how much you've really transformed lots of people's lives. So thank you, thank you. I especially like talking to highly sensitive men who will

we'll say they're highly sensitive. I know that the best interviewers and writers almost all are highly sensitive. But sometimes I'll get on a radio or TV show and some men will be giving a really hard time about the research and making a lot of jokes, and then I'll just say, you know, you might be highly sensitive yourself. Most of the best interviewers are. But I've found most men have a real complex about sensitivity because it's difficult

in our culture to be highly sensitive. And fifty percent of people who are highly sensitive or men, it's the same for men and women. It's not like it's mostly a female thing. Well that's a really good point. I didn't expect to actually start off with that, but since you went in that direction, I'd love to talk a

little bit more about that. So we do have these like masculine stereotypes, and we have this like you know, if like the alpha male versus beta male distinction, and it's such a And I've written about this before, how it's such an oversimplified binary distinction that is just not really in line with It doesn't really show the full

possibilities of what people are capable of becoming. I mean, you can be a sort of and sensitive person, right, I mean you can be you know, you don't have to be aggressive, but you can certainly have a strong identity as well as be highly sensitive. These are not mutually incompatible things, right, No, not at all. I'd say maybe the reason for those stereotypes is that because sensitive men are looked down on, they do have low self esteem.

But there's no reason to look down on them. I think of the four letters I've now kind of adopted for describing at depth of processing being easily overstimulated, so

does being emotionally responsive and being sensitive to subtle stimuli. Well, if a person is processing things deeply and sensitive to subtle stimuli, that person should be able to come up with amazing strategies for getting their way, not always in an overtly failing and screaming kind of way or a cruel or bullying way, but watching for opportunities and making alliances and getting their way that way. As kind of

quiet leaders. Oh yeah, I love that. And I don't know if you're familiar with like Susan Kaine's research and the whole quiet revolution showing that you can absolutely be a quiet leader and you can be a sensitive leader, right, I mean, and probably the best leaders are sensitive. Yes, there's a good h LinkedIn article by John Hughes about why highly sensive people make good leaders. I also have a book that by Harvard Business School that was done to flop back. Sure you said it to me? Email

that to you? Yes, sure, I'll put in the show notes. Okay, good. You know, before I encountered your work in which I encountered actually really early in grad school. Your book The Highly Sensitive person I discovered in grad school. But before I discovered it, what I thought I was, or what I thought was the dimension of personality that is represented by which now I have a great understanding of with

your research, I thought it was just simply neuroticism. It painted it, you know, in a very negative There wasn't any upside, right, you know, like you read when you read the Big Five, you're like, Okay, that's just what I am. And my whole life before I encoure your work. I thought I was just in anxious mess of a human being. But you know, but I did feel, like,

you know, feeling things very deeply. I have memories of being very very young as a child and just feeling just like just feeling the whole world on the back of my you know, the whole weight of the world on me at all times. And but you know, I think it's not just a framing issue, am I right? Like,

it's not like you're just repackaging neuroticism. I mean you would argue there, you know, this is you have really discovered a something that may be a part of neurasis, might be a part of it, but that it's it goes beyond it. Is that right, elean Well, sensitivity is not actually related to neuroticism. If you partial at statistically

having had a troubled childhood. Oh interesting that people have had In a sense, the person has had a good enough childhood, they don't have unusual we call neuroticism depression or anxiety. Now we are more emotionally responsive, So that may be a misunderstanding you had about your emotional responsiveness because we can worry, but we can also feel great joy. We can be sad, but again we can also feel

very happy. So the fact that we have stronger responses can cause people to say yes to all the negative items on a neuroticism measure, but there are no positive items as that also score high one I do. That's a really good point. And I liked how in your original scale because you started off with a lot of items which you then cut down for statistical reasons. But in your original scale you had a lot more you know,

your items weren't all about being overwhelmed or frazzled. You had a lot more items about you know, falling involved deeply, crying easily, you know, positive as well as some other positive items. That's correct, right, right, yes, And it's a flaw of the scale that it has so many negative items.

It's causing some problems. At the time, I didn't know really the underlying thing behind all four characteristics, which is depth of processing, and so there aren't any questions in there about that, and the negative ones held together well. But we also were looking for items that men and women that there'd be no gender differences on, and so crying easily, for instance, was eliminated because there was a big difference in genders, So I think some of the

negative ones were just also more gender and neutral. Interesting, so the more positive ones were more more males or females. I think just by chance they were more female. But I think it was just we just weren't. You shouldn't have let so many negative items get in there, but

they were the ones that did hold together well. And the reason they're there is that they're mostly measuring over stimulation, which is what sensitive people are most aware of, usually because the people around them are most aware of it, so their emotional responsiveness. They may learn to hide they're sensitive to selties. That's not easy unless you are comparing with somebody else. Did you see that flower? Did you

see that detail? The paintings. People often don't realize that they're more sensitive to subtleties or don't associate it with being overstimulated at least, but it's clear that that's an important thing that happens to sensitive people and that they have in common. Absolutely, And there are multiple facets of sensitivity, right, So you have the over you have these over stimulation aspect,

but you also have like appreciation of beauty. I find that really interesting that statistically that that loads, which might be part of the openness to experience. To me, I got to interrupt you there, because the three factors that people have identified are actually kind of artifacts. The thing that was amazing when I created that questionnaire was how many different things people would say yes to. So I

did not make it as uni dimensional as I could have. Instead, I found that when people have said that they were appreciated the arts and music, they also tended to be easily overwhelmed when there was too much noise. So they correlate very well. But it is still possible to I mean, from our point of view, the factor now showed one dimension, but yes there were three that didn't load very high. But other people have made it so it's a little

annoying to me that whole factor business. And we're now doing a study using a fancy new statistical technique called by factor analysis, which is showing that, yes, there are three factors, but there's but the important factor is the overarching single factor that holds them together. So see, I find that so interesting, and I think that's that's a

that's a good point. I mean, you could break it up and you could do this really precise factor analysis and you could show that it's like the different factors are differentially related to different Big five traits. Right but right, But the problem is that now you're not looking at sensive people anymore. Yeah, if you just take I appreciate an aesthetic thing, that could be a cultural thing. You just take easily over stimulated by itself, that could be

a neuroticism item so or neurotosism factor. And one person took the sense to over stimulation and related it to autiism measures. Well, that's sensitivity is the opposite of autism. But you have to include those three and I think actually four aspects in order to understand in order for a person to really be high a sense And as they say, the depth of processing didn't get in there

at all. The aesthetic could have been the depth of processing, but they weren't worded by we need things like I like to take as long as I can to make a decision. I like to think about the meaning in life. It's important to me to have deep conversations that kind of thing. Yes, Oh my gosh, so I have data on that. I'm going to stick out excited all of a sudden, I'll share I won't like geek out with you right now, but I'll share with you three email. We did a we study with Susan Kane because we're

trying to create a new scale of introversion. And the two major facets of introversion that we developed was stimulation and UH and need for deliberation and and and I. And we administered to HSP scales, so I can actually show you like the need for need for deliberation and how that relates to your HSP scale. Anyway, I'll show

you that. That would be fine. I think you know, but since thirty percent of highly sensitive people are extroverts, they have to be really careful, yeah, not eliminating them or or just ignoring them. I can kind of upset Susan Kane and I. She came to one of my workshops and she I felt I wasn't real happy with what she did and she noted much. But I can understand because no publishers and wanted to see a second

highly sensitive person book. But by overlapping but not you know, having that overlap and not complete auct they are introverts who are not highly sensitive. They're highly sensive people who are not introverts. But it feels to me as though most of how she's defining introverts is high sensitivity. And it works because that's how it's been for a long time, but it would work better if if you know the need for deliberation and being easily oversteend, it's true for

for a bunch of extroverts as well. Yeah, no, look, I completely agree. I mean it's a good point. And what we this is what's interesting is that the scale we developed is based on self report of identification with introversion. So a lot of people that maybe I HSP what they really are is HS highest HP, they're identifying as introverts because there only a lot of them would because the thirty percent of them are extroverts. Percent of them

are introverts. And if they're taking the scale because they identify themselves as introverts, they're certainly going to you know, but so anyway, you understand, Oh, I totally understand, totally,

Oh totally. You know, I talk about this and you know, to Susan's credit and uh, you know, since that the release of our book, I mean, she's been very open to hearing the latest science of this stuff, and you know, and we were talking a lot about how these are separate dimensions of personality and we're trying to figure out what exactly is introversion, what exactly you know, what different sheets you know, and so, yeah, it's it's it's an

emerging line of research. It's really neat, you know, understanding like how introversion has more to do with reward sensitivity to environmental ard you know, like the competitive rewards and stuff like that, and that's not necessarily the highly sensitive person. But even within the highly sensitive person demean there's different

ways of being sensitive. You know, some people, you know, personality researchers would say that every single one of the Big five is actually a different form of sensitivity if you think about it, right, like you have, like the extrovers introversion domain is sensitivity to environmental competitive rewards. Openness to experience would be like sensitivity to the reward value of information. Neuroticism would be threat sensitivity to threats in

the environment. And you could just go one by one, right, So there's actually different forms of sensectivity. The problem is is HSP scale does not correlate with any of the Big five. Yeah, and I tried once to create a big five. I tried to create an HSP scale out of out of items in the Big Five because somebody had done a lot of genetic research for the Big Five, and I said, well, let's see if the genetics correlate

with HSP scale. But they're not given it. I said, I'll try to create an HSP scale out of the items you have given and see if it correlates with our scale, and then you can use that scale. No, I couldn't find anything in the Big Five that openness to experience comes close. But in some studies it's correlated, but most it's not. It correlates quite a bit when euro auticism, but not a few factor out the difficult childhood.

I find that that specific finding, you know, with the interaction between contextual factors or developmental factors, because that's not really Stroaly taking account that much with an a Big five research, is it? You know, the it's not and certainly ends the fact it would be affected by that

for sure. And culture and environment is you know, I have a problem with the Big Five and I've had it from the beginning, and a part of it is a description of introversion, which is you know, is pretty negative. And then the thing is that it's taken. It was lexically derived from the words that people used to describe other people. But nesativity is not an easy thing to

observe like your own. Kegan observed in children that some of them hesitated before entering the room full of fancy toys, and he called them inhibited, and then the other kids were uninhibited. Well, you can see an inhibited behavior, but again you don't know the cause of it. It could be fear, it could be that the child just wants

to stop and observe before entering. And in fact, there's some nice research where they looked at the course adrenaline and cortisol of children in that same experiment, that same experimental paradigm, and they found that children who had secure attachments or who had been left for a half hour with a sort of babysitted person who was response to them entered and had a more adrenaline than the uninhabited children, but then immediately settled down a cortisol did not go

up when they started playing. Now, if they had an insecure attachment or a poor caregiver, then they had the adrenaline response followed by a cortisol response. They were anxious

in that environment. And this whole subject has to do with differential susceptibility, which is a huge subject in developmental psychology and sort of coming into adult personality and genetics, because it just goes back to that neuroticism issue that if an individual is raised in a poor environment or put into a poor environment, those who are environmentally sensitive that's the term they're using, environmentally sensitive, will be affected worse,

much more negatively than an individual without certain genetic markers. But these people with those same genetic markers or scoring high on the EHSP scale, if they are in a good environment, or if you do an intervention to improve their emotional health or to improve the way they're being parented, they do better than other children. And that's pretty weird. Jay Belski is that UC Davis is kind of a

bad boy in psychology. Wouldn't bitterly bet out, but he's as he likes to say things that are a little outrageous. And he wrote an op ed for The Times that you explain this, and he said, to save money, we should not do interventions with any children, accept those that are highly sensitive, because it's not affecting the others. Right, right, But of course everyone wrote it and said this is

this is racial discrimination, is like Nazi. You know. It was kind of funny, but it was also the way he put it, like we're just going to give it to these people. He could be he could have been more sensitive and how he freeses that. Yeah, but he likes to be outrageous. But it's a uh interesting observation. And Michael Pleuis, who's in London, he did a study with teenage well preteen girls in disadvantaged school setting trying

to prevent depression. So and he also gave the HSP scale and it turned out that they did a sort of a resiliency intervention and measured one year later when the girls were I guess starting high school or in high school, and they found that those who scored UH in the upper one third on HSP scale got a lot from the intervention and were not depressed. Those who scored the two thirds that scored lower did not get anything from the intervention and had the usual rated depression

for girls at that age. That's pretty striking. This is part of the message of trying to get across the movies. They're not weak people at all. The same idea that you had not weak people, but they are more affected by their environment. So for better and words, yeah, right, exactly. That's the phrase, is that they use it for better and words. Yeah, yeah, the the orchid dandelion hypothesis at his husband popular media. Yes, well, Tom Boyce is working

in a book on them. That's Tom Boyce's phrase. And he's at UCSF and he's a brilliant researcher, and he's been studying children who are physiologically reactive. You can't give children, you know, MRI guests or even give them self report, but he's been studying this for a long time. He

published the very first differential succeptibility article. He found in his surprise, he was in public health at the time, so that children who were more reactive their immune systems and their nervous systems were more reactive, had more illnesses than injuries if they were in a stressful home and school environment. But if they were in good environments, they had fewer colds and injury. I think they're just looking at colds and flud. Had fewer infections and fewer injuries

than other children. So that was back in nineteen ninety seven and ninety six, so interesting and I think David Dobbs was also working in a book on the orchadecls the I and he's just a journalist, just not just a journalist, but a journalist. Yeah, no, right, yeah, no, I know. I don't know what happened to his book. I don't know if it's I know he wrote an article for Atlantic. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, I don't know either. I want to return to something you said earlier,

because it perplexed me a little bit. You said that autism was the opposite of HSP. Yes, I would have thought, yeah, yeah, please, I'll listen. Yeah, because what autistic children have problem with is processing information at all. It doesn't get distinguished, it doesn't get sorted out, so a light bulb is as interesting as the face in front of them. They don't queue into social stimuli. Especially I see now the sensitive person.

The opposite is very tuned in socially, and it was processing information carefully so that it knows where to put its attention. For instance, the genetics that we associate with sensitivity. They make very good gamblers because they're paying very close attention to the odds and they don't want to lose, and they do want to win because they have stronger

emotional responses. I doubt very much if you put an autistic person into a gambling situation that they would be very successful, because they wouldn't be able to calculate the odds. I don't know, maybe they would, I can't say for sure, because they are always these autistic children who are particularly skilled in something, and they might be good at counting cards or something, but for the most part their opposites, because of the way they process information, both get overstimulated,

but for different reasons. The sensitive person's overstimulated because they're processing things so carefully, and the autistic persons overstimulated because they're unable to sort it out and throw some of it away. It's like everything's coming in equally. Well, that's really that's really interesting. I never thought of it that way, like, because I always you hear a lot in the autistic community that the research community that sensory processing sensitivity is

a characteristic of people with autism. But that's that's the You added some additional nuance there to that, right, because to my mind, the research suggests these four letters b oes, and also the fMRI research suggests and the genetics research is right on the cusp. Now, we just had one study associating it with the shorter of LEO the serotonin transport a gene. But we now have a bunch of studies that are going to come out, and you know,

not come out. We're going to know the results in a few months, but they'll have to be written up and published before we could talk about them. But we do have one study that was done in Denmark that did find that relationship. The reason that's important is because it opens up a whole lot of other research that's been done on that shorter leal that then we can say, well, it just being here like that and like that, and

like that. Some of it already overlaps. There's an FMR study fMRI study that got the same results as we did, was shortly o versus the HSP scale yielded the same results in a particular research design. So that will be

pretty interesting when that happens. But you mentioned different kinds of sensitivity, like thinking about the Big five that way, and we know that do leels are also involved, and people in China did a massive study and found that there were seven dopamina leels that predicted the HSP scale, and by the way, they also tried I believe the Big Five. What they said was frustrating that although we know personality trades are innate genetically caused, they don't correlate

well with with any genes. The Big Five does not. So they decided to use the HSP scale, which they they felt it was more deeply rooted in the nervous system, and there they got the kinds of correlations they expected from between the personality major and genes. So we have dopamine genes, seraton genes, probably some other genes, I'm sure.

So it might very well be that if you have more one set of genes than the other, you know that your sensitivity might be different, Like some people might have better social sensitivity and some people might have keener you know, non human sensitivity. You know, sensistic subtleties in their physical environment. And there's difference in sensitivity to two music,

you know, to all the artistic skills and people. Sometimes people are very sensitive to sense of smell, and not every single one of those are kindly sensitive in the broader sense, but many are. So sometimes I think it's like being dealt a bunch of cards, and if you have. If you're strong in one suit, you're highly sensitive, but the cards within that suit vary a lot, And so I haven't gone into the kinds of sensitivity very much.

It just seems right. I think finding genetic variation that would probably be easier than trying to do kinds of sensitivity. At this point, I don't know. I think behave, like the behavioral research would be might be easier than oh gosh, the genes research. It's hard to wrap, it's hard to find replications, it is. But the problem is is that I think that the genes, when we can figure mouth better, right,

are going to be more accurate. And if I make up a cast of five different kinds of sensitivity and give it to a thousand people, there's going to be people who score high on each of those, because that that actually means that there are five types of sensitivity. Right, I don't know, Yeah, I don't know. And I mean certainly like you could be you could check off that you get very frazzle or overwhelmed by lights and sounds and sense, but you could also not be very sensitive

to people, like you could not have high compassion at all. Right, so they can pull apart well, you know, it's hard to say, because we did a study fMRI study, you know, functional magnetic resments imagery, and we found that with just eighteen subjects, those who scored high on the HSP scale showed remarkable differences in their and the activation in the parts of the brain that are associated with empathy. Wow.

So I'm just not sure that there are different types of sensitivity as I defined sensitivity, right, because because this is this is pretty amazing study that and some of the parts of it have been replicated, so I'm pretty

clear about that. So the mirror neurons are more active, and the insula is more active, which is sometimes called the seat of consciousness, right, certain certain other areas that just doesn't There wasn't very much variance among these people squirt high on the HSP scale, at least in this area, they at high levels of empathy. Well, I find that

really interesting. I find that really interesting. I mean when we look at like, you know, like when I look at your HSP correlation with the agreeables agreeableness to mention of the Big five, I don't I don't see a statistical correlation there though, But that's not necessarily empathy. So well, no, because if you look at agreeableness, to me, it's about dominance and submission. Like you you agree with people. Yeah, if you look at the items, well, that's about being nice.

They're about well, I mean they are sort of about being nice, but they're not about compassion particular the extra version to mension. I thought was more about the dominance. But well, the agreeable this is more about submission. Maybe you're right. Actually, maybe I don't know that's true. That's a I've never thought of it that way before. I

have to look again at the items. I mean, that's always the question in any measure, is one of the actual items because people think that for instances the I S B S scale of Carver and what's the thing, you know, Shire Shire, No, yeah, Shire, maybe maybe. I mean everybody's using that B I S B S B I S is totally wrong. It has nothing to do with Gray's BIS system, the behavioral inhibition system. Nobody listens to it. That's a shame. I don't know much about

that scale. But I love Grase theory. I love the theory. Yes, yeah, I do too. But he said that behavior inhibition system is a pausitive check system. It can't be just responsive to threat because you don't know ahead of time whether something is a threat or not. And if you were born with a system that responds to everything, you know, if a strong BIS means responding to everything as a threat or being more likely to see everything as a threat,

then he would miss opportunities. Now, what he says is the BIS mediates between the bas and the fear system, the five five system, and it tells you whether to go forward or to not go for it, which is quite different than covers measure, which is all about being sensitive to threat only on all kinds of neuroticism stuff. And people love it because, oh look, the behavioral activation system.

People are so so lovely and the BIS people are such a mass and very sensitive to those kinds of results and those kinds of assumptions which have been around, as you know, for a long time. Oh yeah, for sure. And as as we're having this conversation, I'm crunching some numbers on the spot of the study we did. So Coliny, my colleague Coliny Young created a new scale, the Big five that actually split's COMPACTI like within agreeableness, it's what's

up compassion versus politeness. So some of the kind of items, and compassion are things like feel others' emotions. So that certainly does sound like empathy to me. Inquire about others' well being, sympathize with others feelings. So so I'm actually, we guess to keep talking, but in the background, we're going to run the correlation between your HSP scale and that aspect of the Big five. So hey, I've never

done this before. I've ever in real time done a data analysis while I was having a review, so I was like, you're good at it. So in that in that data set you have the HSP scale and that correct part. Oh that's interesting, correct, Yeah, So okay, so I'm going to be running that in the background. I love. Yeah, I know, I'm such a nerd actually, I mean so, I mean it's great, like this conversation allows us to

dive into a sort of deeper level of discussion. Then you know, you probably get asked the same questions over and over and over again. Right, Well, the politeness thing you would you would think would correlate with the HSP of scille only because low self esteem tends to correlate with the HSP scale. Why Well, because when you're twenty percent of population. Everybody thinks you're sick. Oh that's a

really good books. Hard to have high self esteem, really good point if your race and the family is where you're so oh tired. Yeah, I have the results. So this is a sample of four hundred and ninety three people, very diverse population, and I found a statistically significant positive correlation point two two two at p levels point zero or zero between the capassion aspect and your HSP scale. So yeah, I don't think anyone's ever looked at that.

Then that new big five aspect scale, so that actually teased apart. So let me tell you. Let me look at politeness. Let me look at politeness. Now maybe we

could find like a disassociation. So let me just for that of it, let me just run the okay, So okay, So it turns out that the politeness aspect is also positively correlated with your yeah, sense of time, we'll point one five three, So yeah, both politeness, and then see if the whole scale just because you may have a sample that's more diverse than right, So the whole you mean the whole agreeableness to mean, well, yeah, because it could be that when you break again, its correlated with both,

but if you take the whole thing, it's not sure. Okay, so let me do that right now. Okay, yeah, it's it is zero point two one six, So so there is something going on there. And and so I kind of stand corrected in a way because I never thought to run this analysis. So I'm glad we had this conversation because I, well, I can't correct it because I said that I didn't think the HSP scale in our studies had correlated significantly, right, Yeah, see right, Big five

Apparently that's correlate with agreeableness in your Yeah. Yeah, we see the openness to experience too. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just sticking the whole Big five right now? Why not? Okay, okay, so the high here's the whole Big five profile. It's zero point five five three positively recorded with withdrawal aspect of neuroticism, which like it's a it's an emotional withdrawal.

And I can send you the bee fast. You can see the items later if you want to sell items, like what about the overall correlation with the five factors? Do you have that? Yeah? So yeah, absolutely, I was just I was going through the aspects. But let me but I can I can go through, would you like? The aspects of the aspects of neuroticism again are kind of muddy by that by the interaction and needing to partial out the trouble childhood things. Yeah, so that's hard

to Yeah without being I can't. I certainly can't parcel that out right now. But don't have those kinds of questions. But but let me just go through some of the aspects I offer some finer, more finer nuanced So yes, So both neurotics and astecs volatility and withdrawal or positively correlated point five, five three and point four twenty six industrious within the conscientious to mean it's negatively correlated with industriousness,

which is like ambition, So that's kind of interesting. It's positively correlated with orderliness though, so there's adult there's a dissociation within the conscientiousness to mean that it is positively orally but negatively with industriousness. Yeah. I always thought it would be correlated with conscientious I thought would be the strongest, and it didn't. So that explains it because they've got that. That's strange thing to put conscientiousness is being started, achieve

and oriented. I know, the competition, and I joke that, you know, sense that people are not too fond of competition because they don't compete when they know they're going to lose, and when they know they're going to win, they don't think of it as competition, right, right, they do it and they're good at it. Yeah, no, that's great. And then with the introvers next person to me and the interesting you know fee the correlations are are are kind of weak, so negative with the enthusiasm negative it

is significant negative point one eighty seven. But as we know, that's not I mean, that's not as high as the neuroticism ones and negative with assertiveness negative point two eight zero. And then in terms of the openness to experience themain

and I think this is interesting. It's not correlated at all with the intellect component, which has things like I like IQ related kind of questions, but it is strongly point four zero six, so just as high as the neuroticism with the openness dimension because this this this scale splits, Yeah, this scale splits the I the IQ part from the appreciation of beauty and of reflection and daydreaming, right, So yeah, that's not a lot of that depth processing exactly easily.

Great's yeah, so that that shows that there's a distinction between quick thinking and deep thinking exactly. And your scale correlates with deep thinking, not quick thinking. Yeah right. And and they I don't know whether you have to look at the items in the lectual scale. No, they're like that there. They say things like I answered I saw problems quickly. I mean they're literally that kind of that's

a they don't ask, but if you solve them accurately. Well, they're in this culture that I bad decision made quickly is admired more than a good decision that took a long time to make. You know, we sure we want our president to be you know, not to think too long about things. You want to be a decider to take action. Then they will take the wrong action. Well, at least he was able to make decisions. Well, some of the items do have accuracy a little bit. So

I am quick to understand things. So I guess that doesn't mean like you do understand it. I guess that could be like intelligence. Yeah, I have difficulty understanding abstract ideas, which is reverse coded. You know, so I like I I so, yes, it really is. It's that's more ACCU related and and I think you've said even in your own research, you didn't find much of a correlation between right,

he only did one one measure of it. And I've been very hesitant to go into that because people who study gifted children say that they're almost one hundred percent highly sensitive, and I just I just don't know what to make of that. And one thing that I wonder about again is whether sense the people on a hole for poorly on i Q test because of lack of confidence,

you know, stereotype threat kind of thing. Well, that was certainly my case a huge test anxiety, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, especially if you know it's an i Q test, you know, yeah, your identity and yeah, you do it. But I really like that split between openness and intellect and uh and the r HSP scale. I really like that finding. I

should publish that? Should I publish that? Yeah? Yeah, Well, let's think you've got some interesting results there, because you know, except for the correlation within which as I'd say, you can pull, yeah part, nobody's found much except a little bit with openness of experience, and you can see and if some of these scales cancel each other out and

effect Yeah, no, absolutely, scale point of view. Absolutely, so I have I don't want to take up much more your time, maybe fifteen minutes more or so tops, but it's I didn't expect to go in this direction. So I had like a thousand more questions and don't worry, we won't go through them. But let me just try to, like on the spot here pick out the ones that

I absolutely think would be essential to discuss. So, something I think is interesting is you talk about how a lot of HSPs actually are also high sensation seekers and that could seem to some as a paradox, right, but you're saying it's not necessarily a paradox. No, Because what I had to do was recommends scale was take out the impulsive risk taking items, and so I had to revise it to take out the danger basically, because what

sense the people are not is impulsive. They're not going to do things that are dangerous, but they could be highly curious and wanting a variety in their lives. So I had to tweak his scale, and I never published this. It's so many things to do, I know, I know so. And the reason for this is that if the bas and the bis are separate, systems and you could be high on both of them. And that's what I found, is you can be high on both of them if

you think of the bas as high sensation. So the opposite of sensitivity is not being not interested in sensation. Is the opposite of sensitivity is being impulsive, not thinking, not doing any deft across before you do something right. I spoked about that intellectual problem. I solve problems quickly, and I said, yeah, but is it accurate because one study of interversion extraversion one time ago found that introverts wanted to take more time to solve the problems and

they were more often right because of that. So going back to your question, yes, And it's very interesting because these people have a very hard time well, they're often in the media, they're often journalists and going around and meeting new people all the time because they love variety, and yet they also get over stimulated, so it's like one foots on the gas and one foots on the brake. And they've also often been labeled as self destructive because

they do more than they can handle. But it's because they're so attracted to variety and new things. So it's an interesting combination and there are quite a few, and they're somebody Tracy Cooper who's writing a book on it, and oh really Yeah, it's certainly a very interesting feel. And these people are harder to identify as HSPs from our stereotypes because they're often engaged. I mean, I knew one who did hang gliding and one is a policeman. You know, I don't think, well, why would it matrice

to do that. Well, they use their sensitivity to be safe at these things, but they love the excitement of it in terms of you know, they're they're safe when they do it, but they like the novelty. As a policeman, I remember he said that he he he likes to be out on the street because he can sense when

something's going to happen. Yeah. Maybe because you're so sensitive, maybe you even need a greater sort of threshold to I don't know, I'm just like putting this out there, like the you know, you might be like so sensitive that when you encounter something that's enjoyable or thrill seeking, you actually get a heightened experience from it than other people. Right. I think so because the research of brain research and my sense that people are having positive experiences that are

stronger as well as negative. Exactly the reason for the differential susceptibility that a kid in a good environment is soaking up support, sucking up interesting you know, stimulating and enriching experiences, sucking up all this which gives them confidence and social skills and all of that. And you know, there's a great study of the shorter leel of of Reesius monkeys and Steven Summing it is now and I, ah,

I guess he's got all these recous monkeys. And we used to call them uptight and laid back and the uptight ones. It turns out I have the on the wheel. But he agrees now that the quote uptight ones are actually highly sensitive because he has taken them and put them with taken them away from their mothers and not too good and put them with very skilled mothers. And then they become the leaders of their troops. Oh wow.

So and their they're leaders through like I said, through the alliances and through clever observation, not through banging each other on the head. Right, So I know you have a lot more questions. Yeah, I want to get into just a couple of questions on your on love that you've studied with highly sensitive people involved. You can have different combinations, right, you can have two really highly sensitive people,

but you can also be with a partner. You can be highly sensitive be the partner's not really highly sensitive. That must be really frustrating maybe for both people, right could be. Well, we did one study my husband. We were going to confor close relations so we want me to go with than Israel, and so I said, well, what would you like to study? And I said, well that a look at boredom. I said, I think kind of sense that people may be more more easily bored

in their relationships. And so we found, yes, they're more easy for but they're when they're easy, when they're bored in the relationships, they're not more dissatisfy. Their relationship are still satisfying. And which looks to me like they've just accepted the choriction that that it's hard to find a

deep conversation and a deep conversation and relationship. I mean that's two thirds three cords the time you're figuring out who's going to make dinner or that when's the car going to be taken in, and you know you're going to just vacation, it's hard to have deep conversations. So I think the problem with HSB non HSP combinations, and I've written about this. A lot of highest sense of

person loves be about the conflict. But once you understand that some of these conflicts are based on temperament which cannot be changed. Once you accept the differences, you can get quite creative and making use of each other's abilities. Yeah, and it's not highly sensitive and not highly sensitive. RELI on me in many ways for my sensitivity, and I rely on him for his nonsensitivity and the sensitive over

stimulated as I do. Sometimes it's frustrating that there's certain kind of places that he wants to go with me, but he doesn't in the sense of being able to ask me. He can understand me, but he can't ask me, or he can't I'm sorry he can't contribute as much, but that's okay. I'm used to that. Yeah, and you would still say he's he's still is compassionate. Oh, absolutely. I have to be so careful about the meaning of the word sense exactly exactly, it has other meanings, and

sensitive to my needs extremely exactly exactly. I wanted to make that y and in fact I joked that when quote sensitive people are tired and over stimulated, they can be very mean, very insensitive because they just know, no, I can't do anymore. I can't. Yeah yeah, yeah, also picky because if you're sensitive to people wrapping their keys or coughing toos out or chewing with their mouth up.

I mean, we can get pretty irritated about those things sometimes when the nonsense a person doesn't fascinating, and you've gone into different kinds of research or not different, but you started to study the identity and and and and the self, like the idea of having a true self worth. I'd love to know, like how you like, what is true something I know? I know? And literally in five minutes, the last five minutes. But maybe maybe you could come on some other time and we could just talk about

the software stuff. Would you be down with that, like like mid midnight, like six months from now or something. Sure, yeah, but maybe just for the five for the last five minutes, just to wet people's appetite so they can read your waiter's book on the topic. See. I think that all social animals when they're with other animals, when they're in the group, are doing two things. They're ranking and they're linking.

If you watch herd of horses, for instance, a group of horses and a pasture, if you bring a carric to the fence, one horse is going to get that carre and if anybody else tries to get it to turn around and bite them and kick them. That's the alpha mayor the alpha gelding usually sun yeah. Tested. But at the same time, if you watch them there, horses or friends, they like to stand together and swap flies

off each other and they just hang out together. And so we see friendships and we see ranking, and we see this in human beings. But if you are in ranking mode, if you're if you're at the moment, this is what's being stimulated in you, or this is the environment that you're in. You're you're competing for a job, or you're competing for promotion, and you're looking around the other people and you think in that way, and you know,

in a tournament of some kind something like that. So when you're ranking, the questions is where do you rank yourself? Right and interestingly with animals, and I think it's partly true for humans too, is that to be safe, it's a good idea to have an overall sense of your rank. You know, we know that well and could be good at tennis but not be good at math. And they might be really good at this, or they wouldn't be

good at that. But people still have a sense of their overall self worth and it's some kind of additive thing, and it's very instinctual. Because animals are say they're going to decide whether the fight or not for that carrot, they'd better know how strong they are, how strong the other one is, you know, and what a strength. Well, they have a whole sense, well, I'm feeling good today, I'm as young as that horse, I can really buy it,

I can really kick I'm going to try it. And the other horses probably have tried it a few times, and they have an overall sense of themselves as not as strong as the alpha there. So we do have this sense of overall self esteem. When we're in linking mode, it's largely irrelevant. And it's interesting that if you ask people to make a list of the people who make them feel good to be with, the people who make them feel bad to be with. People on the you

feel good are the people with whom you link. And there's very little thanking going on. People who make you feel bad are the people with whom you rank yourself. Even people who rank themselves lower than you, you don't respect them, So it's not that pleasant to be around them, if that's that's what they're going to be constantly bringing up. I remember having a long time ago a friend who was constantly saying, Oh, you're so much better at that

than I am, and I found it not comfortable. Why would want to be friends of some of you who thinks I'm much better? It's supposed to be flattering. I guess maybe it's that agreeableness aspect that you were talking about or whatever. Yeah, yeah, the submissive Yeah, it's really ranking. Yeah. So my point about it was that it's hard to know your true self worth if you're I really was going into the fact that people who who are troubled in other ways tend to have low self worth because

they're constantly in ranking mode. They're not linking as much as they're ranking. They go into a party and they start thinking about who's better than them and who's not as good. They're comparing in that way or rather than charging in instying to link. And I don't think that's

so much about extraversion introversion at all. I think it's I think it's well, there are those correlations of extraversion and kind of assertiveness, but I think again those could be peeged out because the I kind of think their honicism has a lot to do with ranking. Because there's one guy who studied depression in animals and he thinks that depression is our instinctive response to being defeated, that what we need to do is crawl off and don't

try it again. Just feel bad about ourselves and have low energy and low initiatives and feel defeated, and then we won't get hurt because if we just charge back into the fray again, we're going to get hurt more. In terms of like animals that are in a cage together, the one that's defeated had better go crawl off and or he's going to get beaten up. So depression is a lot about feeling defeated and hopeful correct. Yeah, that makes anxiety is about am I going to be accepted

or rejected? Can I do this? Or am I going to look like a failure? So what is true self worth? That what is true self worth? True self worth would be having first of all, I think the self worth in a ranking situation is established because other people like you. You feel your sense of self worth from people's loving it or caring for you, wanting to be around you. And I define linking as being attracted to someone, wanted to be around them, and wanting to help them if

you can. So, boy, if people are treating you that way, you have self work. So I like how you No, I like how you're bringing in, Like the environment matters you, don't. You don't always hear that when people talk, well, how do you establish your self worth if it hasn't been through social interaction? Well, so wouldn't. Some people argue that, like a stable sense of self work should be independent of how people treat you well, not how you will

treat you now. But if your sense of self worth surely comes from your history with people right childhood or somebody have given you such a strong sense of self worth, But being around somebody who doesn't like hard affects you. That's like a secure attachment style. Most of that is established early on, but it's still social. I mean, we can't have any identity without without social interaction, gotcha, Yeah,

speaking as a social psychotist. Now I know you, so you are one of I would say, one of the best social psychologists of all time. But you know, we're quite a pair. You know. You guys are you guys are and you guys did you meet in nineteen sixty seven? Is that when you guys met? Yeah? I find it so touching, like, you know, just from like a personal perspective, like, yeah, I saw a picture of you guys, like very early in your career. He's like, got this big hair, and

you felt did you followed over that big hair? That was the sixties? Yeah, he was a pretty crazy guy. And you guys have just been such a you know, amazing team. And you did all this work on love and you found, you know, you did this great thirty six questions and found that you could actually create create love in the laboratory by having people becoming more intimately

each other. So with all that said, I'm going to end this whole interview today with one question I want to ask you, which comes from the list of thirty six. I'm not trying to make you fall in love with me. I just want to tell you, I just want to I picked out one question from your list of thirty six questions that you found, so we'll have fun with this. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would

you want as a dinner guest. That's funny because I've actually thought about that question because I keep changing my mind. I think of all the questions as to what I thought about the most. Is that good then that I asked you that one? Or bad? Well? Good? In confusing? Yeah, I wrote a paper called a Table for my Dinner with Carl You and Martin Luber and Mari Shimashjoki. So

right there, I couldn't decide right. The one that comes up with me today was I would like to have dinner with Jeesus, Wow, because I think he is the most confusing. You know, we don't know what this person was like. But then I think, no, I'd like to have dinner with Buddhas maybe Muhammad, because you know, I have a lot of spiritual interests in these people get

so warped by over the years. But just like you know, you're playing gossip and you know somebody said something and that no he said that, Oh no, he said that, and pretty soon it's nothing to do with what he actually said. So I'd like to meet some of these people. Yeah, well, why just pick one, you know, I think all those are fine. I think when when your husband was asked once, I think he said Socrates was Socrates? Yes, yeah, absolutely,

because he's really, really loved Socrates. I would love to see Socrates and Jesus have a conversation. That would be fascinating. Yeah, that would be great. Hey, thank you so much for your time. I know this this interview is a little longer than some of my other interviews, but I think we covered a lot of ground. And thanks for being so generous and talking to me today. That's fine. Thanks

a lot, Scott, Thank you, Bye bye bye. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as an informative and thought provoking as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or here past episodes, you can go to the Psychology Podcast dot com.