[Rerun] Dr. Elaine Aron on The Highly Sensitive Person

human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Just a quick note that today's episode is going to be a rerun the next season of the Psychology Podcast we'll begin later this year. I haven't taken any break in five years of doing this podcast, so I thought it was about time to take a step back and think about how it can make this a better experience for you all. Until then, enjoy these episodes from our archives. So today I'm really glad to have Elene Aaron on

the podcast. Elaine is a research associate at State University of New York, Stonybrook. 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 and 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 admirer 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'll we'll say they're high 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 of 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 w 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, you with 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 oversimplify 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 a depth of processing being easily overstimulated. So

doees 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 feeling and screaming kind of way or a cool 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 LinkedIn article by John Hughes about why highly sensitive people make good leaders. I also have a book that I Harvard Business School that was done a flot back. Sure you said it to me. You might

earn email that to you. Yeah, sure, I'll put in the show notes. Okay, good. You know, before I encountered your work in which I encountered actually really early grad school, your book high the highway 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 to neuroticism, 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 encounter 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 neurosalism, 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 out statistically having had a troubled childhood. Oh, interesting that the people have had in the sense, the person who has had a good enough childhood, they don't have unusual

what 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 that that also score

high on to see 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 good 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 gender. So I think some of the negative ones were just also more gender and neutral. Interesting, so the more positive ones were more males or females. I think just by chance they were more female. But I think it was just we just weren't We 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 celties. That's not easy unless you were comparing with somebody else. Did you see that flower? Did you see

that detail the painting? People often don't realize that they're more sensitive to subtlety, or don't associate it with being over stimulated at least, but it's clear that that's an important thing that happens the sense of 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 yea, 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 said that they were appreciated the art some music, they also tended to be easily overwhelmed when there was too much noise. So they correlate very well. But it is still possible too. I mean, from our point of view, the factor analysis showed one dimension, but yes, there were three that didn't load very high, but other people have made a big deal. So it's a little annoying to

me that whole factor business. And we're now doing a study using a fancy use 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 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 sense for people anymore. Yeah, if you just think I appreciate aesthetic things, that could be a cultural thing you just take easily overstimulated by itself,

that could be a neuroticism item or neurotosism factor. And one person took the sense overstimulation and related it to autism 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 highly sensitive. 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 stake excited all of a sudden, I'll say, I won't like seek out with you right now, but

I'll share with you through 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 need for deliberation and and I and we administered the HSP scale. So I can actually show you, like the need for need for deliberation and how that relates to your HSP scale. Anyway I show, I'll show you that that would be fine.

I think you know that since thirty percent of highly sense the people are extroverts, you have to be really careful, yeah, not eliminating them or or just ignoring them kind of upset Susan Kane and I she came to one of my workshops and she she I felt I wasn't real happy with what she did, and she noted what I can understand because no publishers wanted to see a second highly sensed person book, but by overlapping but not you know, having that overlap and not complete duct. 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 in 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 overstiend it's true for a bunch of extroverts as well. Yeah, no, look, I

compualely 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's only a lot of them. Would Yeah, because the thirty percent of them are extroverts, thirty percent

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

oh totally. You know, I talk about this and you know, to to Susan's credit and uh, you know, since that the release of her book, I mean, she's been very open to hearing the latest science of this stuff, and you know, and we've we've been talking a lot about how these are separate dimensions of personality and we're trying to figre out what exactly is introversion, what exactly you know, what different sheets you know. 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 rewards 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, to mean,

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 sensitivity. The problem is the HSP scale does not correlate with any of the Big Five. So interesting. Yeah, and I tried once to create a Big five. I tried to create an HSP scale out out of items in the Big five because somebody had done a lot of genetic research with the Big file, and I said, well, let's see if the genetics correlate with HSP scale. But they haven't 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 eure 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 it's not we take into account that much with an in 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 is it's taken It was lexically derived from the words that people used to describe other people. But I nescitivity is not an easy thing to observe, like your own cake. And observed in children that some of unhesitated 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 observed before entering. And in fact, there's some nice research where they they looked at the adrenaline and cortisol children in that same experiment, that same experimental paradigm, and they found that children knew had secure attachments or who had been left for a half hour with a sort of babysit. A 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 corsol 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 individual without certain genetic markers. But the people with those same genetic markers or scoring high on the HSP scale, if they are in a good environment, or if you do an intervention to improve their emotion health or to improve the way they're being parented. They do better than other children,

and that's pretty weird. Jay Belski, who's that UC Davis's kind of a bad boy in psychology, wasn't betterly bet out, but he's a he's he likes to say things that

are a little outrageous. And he wrote an op ed for the New York Times when you explained this, and he said, to save money, we should not do interventions with any children except 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, this 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 Plewis, 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 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 was part of the message of trying to get across the movies. Are not weak people at all, the same idea that you had, is it not weak people, but they are more to buy their environment, so for better and words, Yeah, right, exactly, that's the phrase,

is that they use it for better end worse. Yeah, yeah, the the orchid dandelion hypothesis. His husband Popular media. Yes, well, Tom Boyce is working in a book on that. That's Tom Boyce's phrase, And he's 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 founded 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 and injuries if they were in a stressful home and school environment. But if they were in good environments, they had fewer colds than injury. That 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. That's so interesting. And I think David Dobbs was also working in a book on the orcadando I and he's just a journalist, not just a journalist, but a journalist. Yeah no, right, yeah, no, I know. I don't know what happened to the book. I don't know if it's come out. 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 HSB. 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 now the sensitive person. The opposite is very tuned in socially, and it's processing information carefully so that it

knows where to put its attention. For instance, with 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 wouldn't. I can't say for sure, because there 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 over stimulated, but for

different reasons. The sense of the person's overstimulated because they're processing things so carefully, and the autistic person's overstimulated because they're unable to sort it out and show some of it 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, the oes, and also the fMRI research suggests it, and the genetics research is right on the cusp. Now, we just had one study associating it with the shorter LEO the serotonin transported 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 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 dopamine leels are also involved, and people in China did a massive study and found that there were seven dope mean of leos 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 traits are innate genetically caused, they don't correlate

well with any genes. The Big Five does not, So they decided to use the HSP scale, which 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, seratonin 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 a keener you know, non human sensitivity, you know, sensive subtleties in their physical environment. And there's differ in sensitivity to too, 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 highly 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 don't. I think finding genetic variation that would probably be easier than trying to do kinds of sensitivity at this point. Really, 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, it's hard to find replications. It is. But the problem is is that I think that the genes when we can figure them out 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 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 and 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 resins 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 neurals are more active and the insula

is more active, which is sometimes called the seated consciousness. Right, and certain certain other areas that just doesn't There wasn't very much variance among these people scored high on the HSP scale, at least in this area they had high levels of empathy. Well, I find that really interesting. When I look at your HSP correlation with the agreeables agreeableness di mension 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. For the extra version dimension 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 what are 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, No, yeah, Shire, maybe maybe. I mean everybody's using that BI S BIS. The BIS is totally wrong. It has nothing to do with Grays BIS system, the behavior inhibition system. Nobody listens to it. That's a shame. I don't know much about

that scale. But I love Gray's theory. I love the theory. Yes, yeah, I do too. But he said that behavior inhibition system is a positive 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 you would miss opportunities. Now, what he says is the BIS mediates between the the as 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. I so it picked up 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 mess, and so of course very sensitive to those kinds of results, those kinds of assumptions which have been around, as you know, for a long time. Oh yeah, for sure. And as we're having this conversation, I'm crunching some numbers on the

spot of the study we did. So Coliny, my colleague colinedy Young created a new scale, the Big Five that actually what's compactive, like within agreeableness, it's what's up compassion versus politeness. So some of the kind of items and capassion are things like feel others emotions. So that certainly does sound like empathy to me, and choir about others

well being sympathize with others feelings. So so I'm actually we guess to keep talking, but in the background we run the correlation between your HSP scale and that aspect of the Big Five. So, hey, I've never done this before. I've never in real time done a data analysis while i was having a review, so like a good at it. So in that in that data set you have the HSP scale and that correct. 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 sill only because low self esteem tempts 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 point. It's hard to have high self este really good point if you're racing the family where you're saying, oh is fired. 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, the new Big five aspect scale. So that actually teased apartment. 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 it. Let me just run the okay, So okay, So it turns out that the politous aspect is also

positively correlated with your yeah sense of time. We'll play one five three, So yeah, both politeness and but then see if the whole scale correlates, because you may have a sample that's more diverse than right sample. So the whole you mean the whole agreeableness to mean, well, yeah, because it could be that when you break it down, 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, right, big five? Apparently that's correlate with agreeableness in your Yeah, yeah, I want to see if that replicates the openness to experience to Yeah. Yeah,

I'm just sticking the whole Big five right now? Why not? Okay, okay, so the highest here's the whole Big five profile. It's zero point five five three positive recorded with withdrawal aspect of neuroticism, which like it's a it's an emotional withdrawal. And I can send you the beefast. 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 can certainly I parcel that out right now, but you don't have those kinds of questions. But let me just go through some of the aspects

that it offers, some finer, more finer nuanced. So yeah, so both neurotus is the mastecs, volatility and withdrawal or positively correlated point five five three one 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 possitively 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 explained it, because they've got that. That's strange thing to put conscientiousness is being started to

achieve and oriented. I know that 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 is competible, right, right? Do it? And they're good at it? Yeah, that's great.

And then with the introversed 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 to

mean and I think this is interesting. It's not correlated at all with the intellect component, which has things like I like I Q 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 i Q part from the appreciation of beauty and of reflection and daydreaming. Right, So yeah, that's not a lot

of that exactly, Great, that's yeah. So that's that's 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 yeah, I don't know whether you have to look at the items in the intellectual 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 they don't ask them if you solve them accurately.

Well put it in this culture, but a bad decision made quickly is admired more than a good decision that took a long time to make. You know, we want our president to be, you know, not to think too long about things. You wanted 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, have difficulty understanding abstract ideas, which is reverse coded, you know, so I like I I so, yes, it really is. That's more I accumulated. And I think you've said even in your own research, you didn't find much of a correlation between right, you only did one one measure of it. But 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 sens the people on a hole for a poorly on IQ 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 you know it's in my Q test, you know, yeah, your identity and yeah, you can do it. But I really like that split between openness and intellect

and the your HSP scale. I really like that finding. Maybe I should publish that. Should I publish that? Yeah? Yeah, Well let's think you've got some interesting results there. Yeah, because you know, except for the correlation with in which as i'd say, you can pull yeah apart, nobody's found much except a little bit with openness of experience, and you can see if some of these scales cancel each other out and effect. Yeah. No, absolutely, just 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 have 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 with Zuckerman's HSP 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 that 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 that's what I found, is you can be high on both of them if you think of the BAS as

high sensation. Sure, the opposite of sensitivity is not being not interested in sensation. Is the opposite of sensitivity is being impulsive, not thinking, not doing any depth of processing before you do something. Right, If I talked 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 this. 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 fots on the guests

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 attractive to variety and new things. So it's an interesting combination. And there are quite a few, and there's somebody Tracy Cooper, who's writing a book on it, and oh really Yeah, it's certainly a very interesting feeling. 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, they don't think, well, why would a matrice you do that? Well, they use their sensitivity to be safe at these things, but they loved the excitement of it. In terms of you know they're safe when they do it, but they like the novelty. As a policeman member, he said that he's he likes to be out on the street because he can send

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 there. 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 life 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, soaking up all this which gives them confidence and social skills and all of that. And you know, there's a great study of the short leel of Reeseius

monkeys and Stephen sum Me. Now in my age, I guess he's got all these recus monkeys and he used to call them up tight and laid back and the uptight ones. It turns out I have the shorter veel. But he 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 not too good, and put them with very skilled mothers. And then they become the leaders of their troops. Oh wow.

So and they're leaders through, like I said, through 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 weve that you've studied with highly sensitive people involved. You can have different combinations, right, you can have two really high sensitive people, but you

can also be with a partner. You can be highly sensed to be the partner who'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 a conference close relationship, so we wanted me to go with an Israel and so I said, well what would you like to study? And I said,

well that's 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 their relationships, they're not more to satisfy. Their relationship is still satisfying, which looks to me like they've just accepted the storiction that that it's hard to find a deep conversation and in a deep conversation and relationship, I mean that's two thirds three corps 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 what you're going to it's hard to have these conversations.

So I think the problem with HSB non HSP combinations, and I've written about this a lot on Higher Sensitive person Loves. There's going to 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 relies 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 tribute as much. But that's okay. I'm used to that. Yeah,

and you would still say he's he still is compassionate. Oh, absolutely, I have to be so careful about the meaning of the words exactly exactly. He has other meanings and sensitive to my needs extremely exactly exactly. I wanted to make that and in fact I joked that when quote sensitive people are tired and overstimulated, they can be very mean, very insensitive, because they just o, no, I can't do anymore.

I can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and also picky because if you're sensitive to people wrapping their keys, their 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 the idea of having a true self worth. I'd love to

know how you like what is true self work? 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 self war stuff. Would you be down with that, like like mid midnight, like a 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 ranking. If you watch herd of horses, for instance, a group of horses and a pasture, if you bring a care to the fence, one horse is going to get that care, and if anybody else tries to get it to turn around and bite them and kick them. The alpha mayor

the alpha guilding usually suddenly down a bunch test. But uh, and but at the same time, if you watch them certain horses or friends, they'd like to stand together and swap flives 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, a person could be good at tennis but not be good at math, and it might be really good at this, and 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 saate, 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 over all self esteem when we're in linking mode. It's largely your relevant. 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 are you feel good? Are the people with whom you link, and there's very little thinking 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 I want to be friends of somebody who thinks I'm sumuch better that it's supposed to be flattering. I guess maybe it's not

agreeableness aspect that you're talking about or whatever. Yeah, yeah, that's a lot as agreeful really ranking. 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 who's better than them and who's not as soon they're comparing in that way rather than charging in instining 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 teased out because the I kind of think their hoticism has a lot to do with ranking, because there's one guy who studied depression and 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 or he's going to get beaten up. So depression is a lot about feeling

defeated and hopefully correct. Yeah, that makes of course, 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? 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 liking 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, wanting to be around them and wanting to help them if you can. So, boy, if people are treating you that way, you have self worth. So I like how you no, I like how you're bringing in, Like the environment matters. You don't know, you don't always hear that when people talk, well, how do you establish your self worth if it hasn't been through

social interactions? Well so wouldn't Some people argue that, like a stable sense of self worth should be independent of how people treat you well, not how people you will treat you now. But if your sense of self worth surely comes from your history with people, rightchildhood or thank somebody have given you such a strong sense of stuff. But being around some of who doesn't like hardly affects you. That's like a secure attachment style. Most of that is

established early on, but still social. I mean, we can't have any identity without without social interaction, gotcha. Yeah, speaking as a social psychogist, now, I know, 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. If you guys are good huddle you guys are and you guys did you meet in nineteen sixty seven?

Is that when you guys met? Yeah, I find it's 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? And 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 think of all the questions as to what I thought about the most. Is that good? Is that good? Then that I asked you that one? Or bad? Well?

In confusing Yeah, I wrote up a paper calls a table for for Mike dinner with Carl You and Martin Uber and Mari shimas Joki. So right there, I couldn't decide right. The one that comes up with me today was I would like to have dinner with Jesus. 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 Ludhas maybe Mohammad, because you know, I have a lot of spiritual interests in these people get so warped by over the years by just like you know, you're playing gossip and you know, somebody says something and well, no, he said that. Oh no, he said that and pretty soon has 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 fight 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. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add our rating and review of

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