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      Dandelions, tulips and orchids: evidence for the existence of low-sensitive, medium-sensitive and high-sensitive individuals

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          Abstract

          According to empirical studies and recent theories, people differ substantially in their reactivity or sensitivity to environmental influences with some being generally more affected than others. More sensitive individuals have been described as orchids and less-sensitive ones as dandelions. Applying a data-driven approach, we explored the existence of sensitivity groups in a sample of 906 adults who completed the highly sensitive person (HSP) scale. According to factor analyses, the HSP scale reflects a bifactor model with a general sensitivity factor. In contrast to prevailing theories, latent class analyses consistently suggested the existence of three rather than two groups. While we were able to identify a highly sensitive (orchids, 31%) and a low-sensitive group (dandelions, 29%), we also detected a third group (40%) characterised by medium sensitivity, which we refer to as tulips in keeping with the flower metaphor. Preliminary cut-off scores for all three groups are provided. In order to characterise the different sensitivity groups, we investigated group differences regarding the Big Five personality traits, as well as experimentally assessed emotional reactivity in an additional independent sample. According to these follow-up analyses, the three groups differed in neuroticism, extraversion and emotional reactivity to positive mood induction with orchids scoring significantly higher in neuroticism and emotional reactivity and lower in extraversion than the other two groups (dandelions also differed significantly from tulips). Findings suggest that environmental sensitivity is a continuous and normally distributed trait but that people fall into three distinct sensitive groups along a sensitivity continuum.

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          Coping styles in animals: current status in behavior and stress-physiology.

          This paper summarizes the current views on coping styles as a useful concept in understanding individual adaptive capacity and vulnerability to stress-related disease. Studies in feral populations indicate the existence of a proactive and a reactive coping style. These coping styles seem to play a role in the population ecology of the species. Despite domestication, genetic selection and inbreeding, the same coping styles can, to some extent, also be observed in laboratory and farm animals. Coping styles are characterized by consistent behavioral and neuroendocrine characteristics, some of which seem to be causally linked to each other. Evidence is accumulating that the two coping styles might explain a differential vulnerability to stress mediated disease due to the differential adaptive value of the two coping styles and the accompanying neuroendocrine differentiation.
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            Animal personalities: consequences for ecology and evolution.

            Personality differences are a widespread phenomenon throughout the animal kingdom. Past research has focused on the characterization of such differences and a quest for their proximate and ultimate causation. However, the consequences of these differences for ecology and evolution received much less attention. Here, we strive to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive inventory of the potential implications of personality differences, ranging from population growth and persistence to species interactions and community dynamics, and covering issues such as social evolution, the speed of evolution, evolvability, and speciation. The emerging picture strongly suggests that personality differences matter for ecological and evolutionary processes (and their interaction) and, thus, should be considered a key dimension of ecologically and evolutionarily relevant intraspecific variation. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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              Sensory-processing sensitivity and its relation to introversion and emotionality.

              Over a series of 7 studies that used diverse samples and measures, this research identified a unidimensional core variable of high sensory-processing sensitivity and demonstrated its partial independence from social introversion and emotionality, variables with which it had been confused or subsumed in most previous theorizing by personality researchers. Additional findings were that there appear to be 2 distinct clusters of highly sensitive individuals (a smaller group with an unhappy childhood and related variables, and a larger group similar to nonhighly sensitive individuals except for their sensitivity) and that sensitivity moderates, at least for men; the relation of parental environment to reporting having had an unhappy childhood. This research also demonstrated adequate reliability and content, convergent, and discriminant validity for a 27-item Highly Sensitive Person Scale.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                +44(0)207-882-8004 , m.pluess@qmul.ac.uk
                Journal
                Transl Psychiatry
                Transl Psychiatry
                Translational Psychiatry
                Nature Publishing Group UK (London )
                2158-3188
                22 January 2018
                22 January 2018
                2018
                : 8
                : 1
                : 24
                Affiliations
                [1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2171 1133, GRID grid.4868.2, Queen Mary University of London, ; Mile End Rd, London, E14NS UK
                [2 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2216 9681, GRID grid.36425.36, Stony Brook University, ; Stony Brook, NY 11794 USA
                [3 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2157 6568, GRID grid.30064.31, Washington State University, ; Pullman, WA USA
                Article
                90
                10.1038/s41398-017-0090-6
                5802697
                29353876
                d133e970-7c18-4026-a064-7351393fb3b9
                © The Author(s) 2018

                Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 14 June 2017
                : 29 October 2017
                : 13 November 2017
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                © The Author(s) 2018

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry

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