⚀ A brief historical overview of
sensitivity and overexcitability.

William Tillier


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Summary.

Part 1 The early use of “sensitivity” and “overexcitability” in psychiatry: Sir Thomas Smith Clouston.

Part 2 The second approach: William James.

Part 3 The third approach: I. P. Pavlov.

Part 4 The forth approach: Carl Gustav Jung. 

Part 5 The fifth approach: Hans Eysenck.

Part 6 The sixth approach: Jeffrey Alan Gray. 

Part 7 The seventh approach: Thomas and Chess/slow-to-warm-up children. 

Part 8 The eighth approach: Sensory processing sensitivity/The Highly Sensitive Person.

Part 9 The ninth approach: Biological sensitivity to context/The dandelion and the orchid.

Part 10 The tenth approach: Differential susceptibility.

Part 11 The eleventh approach: Dąbrowski’s construct of overexcitability.

Part 12 Emotional sensitivity.

Part 13 Bibliography.


Summary.

There is a rich and complex history surrounding sensitivity in individuals, particularly in children. As we will see, the constructs of extraversion and introversion are important in the history of sensitivity and overexcitability. I will briefly highlight eleven major approaches as an introduction to the literature on heightened sensitivity and overexcitability. My selection process was fairly arbitrary and not meant to be comprehensive.

I will also briefly examine emotional sensitivity. There is a wealth of literature on this topic that frequently links emotional sensitivity with psychopathology, particularly borderline personality disorder and neuroticism, as outlined in the five-factor model. Much of this literature offers a definition that closely resembles Dabrowski’s construct of overexcitability.

A note on the references and bibliography: I have not used complete references (generally lacking page numbers) because I discovered that people copied and pasted my material into their university work. All of the quotes are easily accessible. 

I have included a fairly exhaustive bibliography that should provide sufficient meat for the interested reader to chew on. I am very supportive of students. If any students would like my bibliographic entries, I would be happy to provide them if they contact me. 

Part 1 The early use of “sensitivity” and “overexcitability” in psychiatry: Sir Thomas Smith Clouston.

Approach one was described in an article in the Scottish Medical and Surgical Journal published in June 1899, when [Sir] Thomas Smith Clouston outlined a condition in children and used the term “over-excitability” in the title (Clouston, 1899). This article was briefly mentioned in the widely read British medical Journal, The Lancet in July 1899 (Wakley, 1899). 

In his article, Clouston detailed his observations: “Few family practitioners have been long in practice before they meet with certain curious and often very difficult morbid conditions in neurotic children, conditions which lie on the borderland of psychiatry. The vagueness and variety of these conditions have prevented them from being systematically described. They are all referable to the brain cortex as their immediate locus, and almost all are pathogenetically states of deranged reactiveness of the neurons of the higher regions of the brain. They are none of them dependent on febrile states, though in some of them the temperature may be a little raised. There is no real pyrexia in a proper sense, the elevations if present being accountable for by increased and somewhat uncontrolled nerve action. In all of them the higher inhibitory centres are weakened absolutely or relatively to the amount of energising they have to control” (Clouston, 1899, p. 481).

Clouston attributes the cause to be genetic: “They can mostly be traced, as their ultimate cause, to hereditary and congenital peculiarities. There may be many exciting causes for their appearance at any special time, but the predisposing cause is nearly always defect in the subtile and most obscure process of central nerve development in the child” (Clouston, 1899, p. 482).

A simple presentation is noted based upon mental and emotional over stimulation: “The first of those morbid states to which I would direct attention is a simple hyper-excitability; an undue brain reactiveness to mental and emotional stimuli. This may come on at any age, from three years to puberty. The child becomes ceaselessly active, but ever changing in its activity. It is restless, and so absolutely under the domination of the idea which has raised the excitement that the power of attending to anything else is for the time being gone.” … “Those emotional centres must be hyperesthetic, and the motor equivalents and expressions explosive during such an attack, for an attack of nervous disease it is in many cases. The eye is bright and restless, the pulse quickened and the general state one of unhealth.” (Clouston, 1899, p. 483).

As well, Clouston describes sensory oversensitivity: “Any loud noise will startle them and ‘upset’ them badly, or will put them into a condition of trembling and terror. Any unusual or terrible sight will cause sleeplessness, tendency to nightmare and a condition bordering on hallucination. Such sights they re-vivify and ‘visualise’ very intensely, to their great distress and the disturbance of everyone near them. At such times such children become sometimes intensely sensitive to pain of any kind or to unusual impressions on their skin, crying at every slight cause of that kind and not stopping their weeping soon and forgetting all about it as the healthy child does. I have never seen such a condition of over-sensitiveness and over-reactiveness from nerve excitation in the senses of smell or taste. But certainly impressions of heat and cold may have such accentuated effects. It seems as if in such cases it was the special sense centres in the cortex that had become hyperesthetic, just as the emotional centres had become hyperesthetic in the eases previously described” (Clouston, 1899, pp. 483-484). 

Imagination was the next aspect Clouston noted. “Another state which is certainly of the nature of disease is that where children become for a time so over-imaginative that they cannot distinguish between their objective experiences and their subjective images, and where, without stimuli from without, mental or bodily, they conjure up fancies so vivid that they mistake them for realities and talk about them accordingly. Of course all children, especially the sensitive and clever children of neurotic ancestry, have this tendency in a large degree, but while free from actual disease they can, by a slight effort, distinguish between the real and the imaginary. No doubt all children are more or less liars physiologically, but those of whom I am speaking are automatic and quite involuntary tellers of stories which have little or no foundation in fact. The intensity and actuality of their imaginations are greater than is consistent with sound working brain.” … “At times their brains seem capable of realising facts and real impressions, and at other times they are simply the slaves of their over-excited imagination” (Clouston, 1899, p. 484).

Part 2 The second approach: William James.

Energy was an important construct for William James and he discussed the role of energy in several contexts. In our first example, James described various types of increased excitability (he referred to as “eagerness”):

“Wherever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who lives it, there the life becomes genuinely significant. Sometimes the eagerness is more knit up with the motor activities, sometimes with the perceptions, sometimes with the imagination, sometimes with reflective thought. But, wherever it is found, there is the zest, the tingle, the excitement of reality; and there is “importance” in the only real and positive sense in which importance ever anywhere can be” (James, 1899, pp. 9-10).

James (1903, pp. 194-196) described how religious faith may change how we relate to energy or how it may invigorate our energy.

“As life goes on, there is a constant change of our interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central parts of consciousness. … 

What brings such changes about is the way in which emotional excitement alters. Things hot and vital to us today are cold tomorrow. It is as if seen from the hot parts of the field that the other parts appear to us, and from these hot parts personal desire and volition make their sallies. They are in short the centres of our dynamic energy, whereas the cold parts leave us indifferent and passive in proportion to their coldness. 

Whether such language be rigorously exact is for the present of no importance. It is exact enough, if you recognize from your own experience the facts which I seek to designate by it. 

Now there may be great oscillation in the emotional interest, and the hot places may shift before one almost as rapidly as the sparks that run through burnt-up paper. Then we have the wavering and divided self we heard so much of in the previous lecture. Or the focus of excitement and heat, the point of view from which the aim is taken, may come to lie permanently within a certain system ; and then, if the change be a religious one, we call it a conversion, especially if it be by crisis, or sudden.

Let us hereafter, in speaking of the hot place in a man's consciousness, the group of ideas to which he devotes himself, and from which he works, call it the habitual centre of his personal energy. It makes a great difference to a man whether one set of his ideas, or another, be the centre of his energy ; and it makes a great difference, as regards any set of ideas which he may possess, whether they become central or remain peripheral in man is ‘converted’ means, in these him. To say that a terms, that religious ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness, now take a central place, and that religious aims form the habitual centre of his energy.

James (1907) believed that most people do not fully utilize their available energy and are essentially only half alive. He described the phenomenon of a “second wind.” He suggested that this reservoir of energy could be released by “emotional excitements” or by crises that challenge one’s habitual routines.

“Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Every one knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of us feel as if we lived habitually with a sort of cloud weighing on us, below our highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half-awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. In some persons this sense of being cut off from their rightful resources is extreme, and we then get the formidable neurasthenic and psychasthenic conditions, with life grown into one tissue of impossibilities, that the medical books describe” (James, 1907, p. 3).

[on the theme of people being half-awake or asleep, see the important work of Gurdjieff and Charles Tart. For example, “A modern man lives in sleep, in sleep he is born and in sleep he dies. About sleep, its significance and its role in life, we will speak later. But at present just think of one thing, what knowledge can a sleeping man have? And if you think about it and at the same time remember that sleep is the chief feature of our being, it will at once become clear to you that if a man really wants knowledge, he must first of all think about how to wake, that is, about how to change his being” … “Work on oneself must begin with the driver. The driver is the mind. In order to be able to hear the master’s voice, the driver, first of all, must not be asleep, that is, he must wake up. Then it may prove that the master speaks a language that the driver does not understand. The driver must learn this language. When he has learned it, he will understand the master” (Ouspensky, 1950).]

“The existence of reservoirs of energy that habitually are not tapped is most familiar to us in the phenomenon of ‘second wind.’ Ordinarily we stop when we meet the first effective layer, so to call it, of fatigue. We have then walked, played, or worked ‘enough,’ and desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious obstruction, on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and a fourth ‘wind’ may supervene. Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points. When we do pass, what makes us do so? Either some unusual stimulus fills us with emotional excitement, or some unusual idea of necessity induces us to make an extra effort of will. Excitements, ideas, and efforts, in a word, are what carry us over the dam.” (James, 1907, pp. 4-5).

“We have to admit the wider potential range and the habitually narrow actual use. We live subject to inhibition by degrees of fatigue which we have come only from habit to obey. Most of us may learn to push the barrier farther of, and to live in perfect comfort on much higher levels of power.” (James, 1907, p. 5).

[James emphasizes the importance of establishing healthy habits that include optimizing energy: “The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right” (James, 1890, p. 54).] 

“The excitements that carry us over the usually effective dam are most often the classic emotional ones, love, anger, crowd-contagion, or despair. Life’s vicissitudes bring them in abundance. A new position of responsibility, if it do not crush a man, will often, nay, one may say, will usually, show him to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.” (James, 1907, p. 6).

“The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum” (James, 1907, p. 17).

Part 3 The third approach: I. P. Pavlov.

Pavlov extensively studied neurophysiological reactions in dogs but did not study human personality or psychology. However, he made important contributions and laid the foundations for later work in the application of neuropsychology to personality. Pavlov considered both the strength of the excitatory processes [external inhibition] as well as the strength of the inhibitory processes [internal inhibition].

Pavlov was clearly prescient in describing extraversion and introversion in his observations of dogs:

“At present, however, I shall not go beyond a general classification of our dogs. Two definite types, which may be regarded as extremes, stand out with special prominence” (Pavlov, 1927, p. 285).

“Until a rigid scientific classification is fully established for all the various types of central nervous system I think we may be permitted to make use of the ancient classification of the so -called temperaments. The animals just described must be regarded in the light of the ancient classification as belonging to the pure ‘sanguine’ type. Under quick changes of stimuli they are energetic and highly reactive, but with the slightest monotony of the environment they become dull, drowsy and inactive. Our second type of dog is also very definite, and must be placed at the other end of the classical series of temperaments. In every new and slightly unfamiliar set of surroundings such animals are extremely restrained in their movements. They slink along close to the wall in a cringing fashion, and often at the smallest movement or sound from outside a shout or a threatening movement they immediately cower to the floor. Everybody who sees such an animal would immediately judge it a great coward. These animals get used to their experimental surroundings and the associated manipulation very slowly, but when they become thoroughly familiar with the new conditions they make invaluable subjects for experimentation” (Pavlov, 1927, p. 286).

“Both the above types are obviously extremes. In the first the excitatory process predominates in the extreme, and in the second the inhibitory. Both, therefore, are limited types, with, so to speak, a narrow scope of vital expression. The first needs a continuous and novel succession of stimuli, which may indeed often be absent in the natural surroundings; the other, on the contrary, needs extremely uniform conditions of life and therefore suffers from being unable to react to a sufficient number of stimuli to ensure a full use and development of its nervous organization” (Pavlov, 1927, p. 287).

“In between the extremes just described can be found numerous intermediate types which present a greater balance between excitation and inhibition, types on the whole better adapted to the natural conditions of life and therefore biologically more resistant. Those that approximate to the first type are lively and active, and in most cases aggressive; those that approximate to the second type are quiet and restrained” (Pavlov, 1927, p. 288).

In the dog two conditions were found to produce pathological disturbances by functional interference, namely, an unusually acute clashing of the excitatory and inhibitory processes, and the influence of strong and extraordinary stimuli. In man precisely similar conditions constitute the usual causes of nervous and psychic disturbances. Different conditions productive of extreme excitation, such as intense grief or bitter insults, often lead, when the natural reactions are inhibited by the necessary restraint, to profound and prolonged loss of balance in nervous and psychic activity. So, too, neuroses and psychoses may develop as a result of different powerful stimuli, e.g. extreme danger to oneself or to near friends, or even the spectacle of some frightful event not affecting one directly. At the same time we know that the same influence may produce a profound disturbance in some individuals and show no trace of effect on others, according to the power of resistance of the nervous system in each case” (Pavlov, 1927, p. 397),

“The observation and study of a large number of dogs, using the method of conditioned reflexes, carried out in our laboratory for many years, have gradually disclosed to us these properties in their vital manifestations and combinations. These properties include: in the first place, the strength of the basic nervous processes—excitatory and inhibitory—which always constitute the sum total of nervous activity; in the second place, the equilibrium of these processes; and, finally, in the third place, their mobility. It is obvious that while all these properties exist and act simultaneously, they provide the highest adaptation of the animal’s organism to the surrounding world, or, in other words, the complete equilibration of the organism as a whole with the external environment, i.e., they secure the organism’s existence” (Pavlov, 1955, pp. 315-316).

“Human and animal behaviour is determined not only by congenital properties of the nervous system, but also by the influences to which the organism is continuously subjected during its individual existence; in other words, it depends on constant education and training in the broadest sense of these words. This is due to the fact that along with the above-mentioned properties of the nervous system, another very important property incessantly manifests itself—its high plasticity” (Pavlov, 1955, pp. 317).

“[Thus,] the strength of the excitatory process was regarded by us as the-first property of the type of nervous system. Hence the initial division of all our dogs into strong and weak ones. 

Another property of the nervous system, clearly observed by us and according to which the animals are subdivided into new groups, is the equality or inequality of the two opposite nervous processes—excitation and inhibition. We imply here the higher active cortical inhibition (or according to the terminology used in the theory of conditioned reflexes—internal inhibition), which, together with the excitatory process, continuously maintains the equilibration of the organism with the surrounding medium and helps (on the basis of the analysing function of the organism’s receptors) to distinguish between the nervous activity corresponding to the given conditions and moments and that which does not (extinction, differentiation and retardation)” (Pavlov, 1955, pp. 320-321).

“It is now possible clearly to see how the Greek genius, personified (individually or collectively) by Hippocrates, succeeded in discerning the fundamental features in the multitudinous variations of human behaviour. The singling out of melancholics from the mass of people signified the division of the entire mass of human beings in two groups—the strong and the weak, since the complexity of life must, naturally, tell with particular force on individuals with weak nervous processes and darken their existence. Thus, the paramount principle of strength was clearly stressed. In the group of strong individuals the choleric is distinguished by his impetuousness, i.e., inability to repress his temper, to keep it within the proper limits; in other words, he is distinguished by a predominance of the excitatory process over the inhibitory. This, consequently, established the principle of equilibrium between opposite processes. finally, by means of a comparison between phlegmatic and sanguine types the principle of the mobility of the nervous processes was established” (Pavlov, 1955, pp. 329-330).

“And then comes, of course, the multitude of human beings more or less strong and even exceedingly so, and at the same time equilibrated, the phlegmatics and the sanguines, the people who make the history of mankind either by their systematic mundane but indispensable labour in all branches of life, or by the exploits of their mind, lofty emotions and iron will. Of course, as far as great men are concerned, no matter how strong they may be, they are also subject to breakdowns, since the scale of their activity is extraordinary, and there is a limit to any strength” (Pavlov, 1955, p. 344).

“In general, it can be said that if, by increasing stimulus intensity, we can cause the subject to reach some such threshold of response (e.g. the absolute sensory threshold or the threshold of transmarginal inhibition), then the attainment of that threshold is taken to indicate that the intensity of the excitatory process has reached some definite value. Now, the intensity of the stimulus at which the excitatory process attains this value of intensity (i.e. at which such a threshold is reached) differs in different individuals. It follows, therefore, that a given physical stimulus sets up excitatory processes of different intensities in different individuals. It will appear from the rest of this chapter that in general the thresholds by which the intensity of the excitatory process is tested are reached at lower stimulus intensities by individuals who are said to have weak nervous systems (i.e. to be low on the dimension of strength of the nervous system) than by individuals who are said to have strong nervous systems (i.e. to be high on this dimension). In other words, under most conditions, the weaker the nervous system, the more intense is the excitatory process which is set up by a given physical stimulus” (Gray, 1964a, p. 160).

“… the prediction is that of a negative correlation between strength of the nervous system and sensitivity as measured by absolute sensory thresholds. This prediction has since been verified at a high level of confidence” (Gray, 1964a, p. 207).

“According to Pavlov, the weak nervous system is particularly susceptible to external inhibition. At the human level, susceptibility to external inhibition equates with inability to maintain concentrated attention in the face of distracting stimulation. Teplov connects this feature of the weak nervous system with its great sensitivity, supposing that the strong nervous system is able to ignore stimuli to which the weak nervous system is forced to respond” (Gray, 1964a, p. 207).

“He [Pavlov] concluded that in some animals the excitatory and inhibitory processes had equal degrees of strength, and hence were ‘balanced’, although both might be stronger or weaker than normal. In other cases he concluded that the excitatory process was strong and the inhibitory process weak, or vice versa. These animals he described as unbalanced with predominance of one or the other process. His brain behaviour theory arose from the observation that these differences related systematically to differences in overall behaviour which he classified as sanguine, melancholic, phlegmatic or choleric in accordance with the temperamental typology of antiquity” (Robinson, 1982, p. 2). 

“Pavlov provides descriptions of four major types in his classification of behaviour and these have their counterpart in Eysenck’s dimensional description of human personality when all four combinations of high and low extraversion (E) and neuroticism (N) are considered. In both cases the four descriptions are explicitly associated with the sanguine, melancholic, choleric and phlegmatic temperaments of antiquity. The sanguine description was ultimately applied by Pavlov to lively, sociable, and confident animals [had strong excitatory and strong inhibitory processes that they were strong balanced types]. The melancholic description was applied to those that were quiet and fearful [had both weak excitatory and weak inhibitory processes, and hence were weak balanced types]” (Robinson, 1982, p. 5).

“In particular, it would seem that the Pavlovian notion of “strong” and “weak” nervous systems, which has formed the basis for most of Teplov’s experimental work, bears a striking similarity to the notions of extraverted and introverted personality types, as they emerge from our own. The “weak” personality type appears to resemble the introvert, the “strong” personality type the extravert. Even if it is admitted that similarity does not imply identity, it is certainly striking that two quite independent approaches should issue in such closely related concepts (Eysenck, 1967)” (Eysenck & Levey, 1972, p. 206).

In summary, Pavlov described the strong nervous system has being able to manage strong stimuli without being overwhelmed and to maintain an optimal balance between excitation and inhibition.

Part 4 The fourth approach: Carl Gustav Jung.

“Jung’s [typology] began as a typology of temperament and developed over a period of years into one of consciousness. The core idea of Jung’s typology is that there are four functions of consciousness—thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition—each of which exists in two forms—extraverted and introverted, making a total of eight kinds of awareness” (Beebe, 2012).

“Thus, we have two attitudes, namely introversion and extraversion, and four functions, namely, sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. The particular pattern of an individual is delineated and understood in terms of his affinity for one pole or the other of each of the three dimensions with eight different patterns coming into focus:

1. Extraverted – Sensation – Thinking

2. Extraverted – Sensation – Feeling

3. Extraverted – Intuitive – Feeling

4. Extraverted – Intuitive –Thinking

5. Introverted – Intuitive – Thinking

6. Introverted – Intuitive – Feeling

7. Introverted – Sensation – Feeling

8. Introverted – Sensation – Thinking (Detloff, 1972).

In analyzing a case study involving two sisters, Jung observed “Both were healthy; neither the one nor the other showed any nervous symptoms. An attentive observer might have discovered that the elder daughter was the more beloved by the parents. This affection depended on a certain sensitiveness which this daughter showed. She asked for more affection than the younger one, was also somewhat precocious and more serious” (Jung, 1914b, p. 275). 

The two sisters met two young men. The younger sister became engaged and married. The elder sister had an insecure and awkward exchange with her suitor but, in the end, could not commit. She went on to develop sexually explicit fantasies. 

Jung picks the story back up: “We saw that both sisters were originally only slightly different. From the moment of the engagement their ways were totally separated. They seemed now to have quite different characters. The one, vigorous in health, and enjoying life, was a good and courageous woman, willing to undertake the natural demands of life; the other was sad, ill-tempered, full of bitterness and malice, disinclined to make any effort towards a reasonable life, egotistical, quibbling, and a nuisance to all about her. This striking difference was only brought out when the one sister happily passed through the difficulties of her engagement, whilst the other did not. For both, it hung to a certain extent only on a hair, whether the affair would be broken off or not. The younger one, somewhat calmer, was therefore more deliberate, and able to find the right word at the right moment. The elder one was more spoiled and more sensitive, consequently more influenced by her emotions, and could not find the right word, nor had she the courage to sacrifice her pride to put things straight afterwards. This little circumstance had a very important effect. Originally the conditions were much the same for both sisters. The greater sensitiveness of the elder produced the difference. The question now is: Whence arose this sensitiveness with its unfortunate results? The analysis demonstrated the existence of an extraordinarily developed sexuality of infantile phantastic character; in addition, an incestuous phantasy towards the father [that the father had made an indecent approach to her bed when she was a young child]. We have a quick and easy solution of the problem of this sensitiveness, if we admit that these phantasies had a lively, and therefore effective existence. We might thus readily understand why this girl was so sensitive. She was shut up in her own phantasies and strongly attached to her father. Under these circumstances, it would have been really a wonder had she been willing to love and marry another man” (Jung, 1914b, pp. 277-278).

“The critical moment for this neurosis was that in which the girl and man were inclined to love one another, but in which an inopportune sensitiveness on the part of the patient caused the opportunity to slip by. 

The Conception of Sensitiveness. We might say, and the psychoanalytical conception inclines in this direction, that this critical sensitiveness arises from some peculiar psychological personal history, which determined this end. We know that such sensitiveness in a psychogenic neurosis is always a symptom of a discord within the subject’s self, a symptom of a struggle between two divergent tendencies. Both tendencies have their own previous psychological story. In this case, we are able to show that this special resistance, the content of that critical sensitiveness, is, as a matter of fact, connected in the patient's previous history, with certain infantile sexual manifestations, and also with that so-called traumatic event-all things which are capable of casting a shadow on sexuality. This would be so far plausible if the sister of the patient had not lived more or less the same life, without experiencing all these consequences. I mean, she did not develop a neurosis. So we have to agree that the patient experienced these things in a special way, perhaps more intensely than the younger one. Perhaps also, the events of her earlier childhood were to her of a disproportionate importance. But if it had been the case to such a marked extent, something of it would surely have been noticed earlier. In later youth, the earlier events of childhood were as much forgotten by the patient as by her sister. Another supposition is therefore possible. This critical sensitiveness is not the consequence of the special previous past history, but springs from something that had existed all along. A careful observer of small children can notice, even in early infancy, any unusual sensitiveness” (Jung, 1914b, pp. 279-280).

“From this point of view, we cannot any longer pretend that her special previous psychological history caused this sensitiveness at that critical moment; it would be more correct to say: This innate sensitiveness is manifested most distinctly in uncommon situations. 

This surplus of sensitiveness is found very often as an enrichment of a personality contributing even more to the charm of the character than to its detriment. But in difficult and uncommon situations the advantage very often turns into a disadvantage, as the inopportunely excited emotion renders calm consideration impossible. Nothing could be more incorrect than to consider this sensitiveness as eo ipso a morbid constituent of a character. If it really were so, we should have to regard at least one third of humanity as pathological. Only if the consequences of this sensitiveness are destructive to the individual have we a right to consider this quality as abnormal” (Jung, 1914b, p. 280).

“Primary Sensitiveness and Regression. We come to this difficulty when we crudely oppose the two conceptions as to the significance of the previous psychological history as we have done here; in reality, the two are not mutually exclusive. A certain innate sensitiveness leads to a special psychological history, to special reactions to infantile events, which are not without their own influence on the development of the childish conception of life. Events bound up with powerful impressions can never pass without leaving some trace on sensitive people. Some of these often remain effective throughout life, and such events can exert an apparently determining influence on the whole mental development. Dirty and disillusional experiences in the domain of sexuality are specially apt to frighten a sensitive person for years and years. Under these conditions, the mere thought of sexuality raises the greatest resistances. As the creation of the shock-theory proved, we are too much inclined, in consequence of our knowledge of such cases, to attribute the emotional development of a person more or less to accidents. The earlier shock- theory went too far in this respect. We must never forget that the world is, in the first place, a subjective phenomenon. The impressions we receive from these happenings are also our own doing. It is not the case that the impressions are forced on us unconditionally, but our disposition gives the value to the impressions. A man with stored-up libido will as a rule have quite different impressions, much more vivid impressions, than one who organizes his libido into a rich activity. Such a sensitive person will have a more profound impression from certain events which might harmlessly pass over a less sensitive subject” (Jung, 1914b, pp. 280-281). 

“[1] In my practical medical work with nervous patients I have long been struck by the fact that besides the many individual differences in human psychology there are also typical differences. Two types especially become clear to me; I have termed them the introverted and the extraverted types.

[2] When we consider the course of human life, we see how the fate of one individual is determined more by the objects of his interest, while in another it is determined more by his own inner self, by the subject. Since we all swerve rather more towards one side or the other, we naturally tend to understand everything in terms of our own type there” (Jung, 1976, p. 24). 

“[4] But despite the diversity of the formulations the fundamental idea common to them all constantly shines through: in one case an outward movement of interest towards the object, and in the other a movement of interest away from the object to the subject and his own psychological processes. In the first case the object works like a magnet upon the tendencies of the subject; it determines the subject to a large extent and even alienates him from himself. His qualities may become so transformed by assimilation to the object that one might think it possessed some higher and decisive significance for him. It might almost seem as if it were an absolute determinant, a special purpose of life or fate that he should abandon himself wholly to the object. But in the second case the subject is and remains the centre of every interest. It looks, one might say, as though all the life-energy were ultimately seeking the subject, and thus continually prevented the object from exercising any overpowering influence. It is as though the energy were flowing away from the object, and the subject were a magnet drawing the object to itself. 

[5] It is not easy to give a clear and intelligible description of this two-way relationship to the object without running the risk of paradoxical formulations which would create more confusion than clarity. But in general one could say that the introverted standpoint is one which sets the ego and the subjective psychological process above the object and the objective process, or at any rate seeks to hold its ground against the object. This attitude, therefore, gives the subject a higher value than the object, and the object accordingly has a lower value. It is of secondary importance; indeed, sometimes the object represents no more than an outward token of a subjective content, the embodiment of an idea, the idea being the essential thing. If it is the embodiment of a feeling, then again the feeling is the main thing and not the object in its own right. The extraverted standpoint, on the contrary, subordinates the subject to the object, so that the object has the higher value. In this case the subject is of secondary importance, the subjective process appearing at times as no more than a disturbing or superfluous appendage of objective events. It is clear that the psychology resulting from these contrary standpoints must be classed as two totally different orientations. The one sees everything in terms of his own situation, the other in terms of the objective event” (Jung, 1976, pp. 26-27).

“[7] I have found from experience that the basic psychological functions, that is, functions which are genuinely as well as essentially different from other functions, prove to be thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. If one of these functions habitually predominates, a corresponding type results. I therefore distinguish a thinking, a feeling, a sensation, and an intuitive type. Each of these types may moreover be either introverted or extraverted, depending on its relation to the object as we have described above. In my preliminary work on psychological types. I did not carry out this differentiation, but identified the thinking type with the introvert and the feeling type with the extravert. A deeper study of the problem has shown this equation to be untenable. In order to avoid misunderstandings, I would ask the reader to bear in mind the differentiation I have developed here. For the sake of clarity, which is essential in such complicated matters, I have devoted the last chapter of this book to the definition of my psychological concepts” (Jung, 1976, pp. 28-29).

The case study below reminded me of Dabrowski in connecting excitability and sensitivity with conflicts in the environment.

“[648] CASE NO. II

An educated young man, 22 years old, excitable and sensitive, sanguine, morally unsound, not particularly intelligent. He is well known to the writer and has also given sufficient information about the complexes broached by the associations.

Complex I: The patient is very excitable and extraordinarily sensitive. This characteristic brings him into frequent conflict with his environment. One of these conflicts has led him to a mental hospital. The patient had a good friend who once made a joke of sketching him with ass's ears, and produced this caricature in the presence of ladies. The patient took him to task about this, but the perpetrator denied having done it, whereupon the patient slapped his face and challenged him to a duel with sabres” (Jung, 1981, p. 279).

Jung associates sensitivity with hysteria:

“[909] From this we can first of all conclude that the sensitivity (i.e., the excitability) of the emotions is greater in hysterical patients than in normal people. An integral part even of hysteria, however, is a complex of images linked with most powerful affect which, for some reason or other, is still reverberating in the patient and which his conscious mind finds unbearable; the hysterical patient suffers from an affect that he has been unable to conquer. The recognition of this is of the greatest importance in therapy” (Jung, 1981, p. 423).

“The terms introversion and extraversion are commonly used by both professional people and laity, but with only vague relationship, if any, to Jung’s use. Western civilization (particularly the United States) has an extraverted bias in the culture, so that the true introvert is often conditioned to adjust in extraverted terms. Aside from the many manifestations, the central issue, for Jung, has to do with the ‘direction of flow of psychic energy.’ For the extravert, this means that he spontaneously views the object (outer person, place, or thing) as being crucial. The extravert places importance with the object because of its qualities, and he gives himself freely and comfortably to the object without inner reservation. The introvert frequently cannot clearly formulate the basis of his reaction, but he senses an inner point of reference to which he must be loyal. The outer object takes on importance to the introvert only when the object has meaning in relation to the inner place. It is as if this inner place had to be protected and consulted on all important matters. The most differential feature is not the resulting relationship of subject to object but how the person arrived at his point of view” (Detloff, 1972).

Part 5 The fifth approach: Hans Eysenck. 

Hans Eysenck spent his life studying personality. He developed a biological description of personality eventually emphasizing three major dimensions; extraversion/introversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. Eysenck theorized that genetic differences in cortical arousal levels mediated by the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) underlie differences in introversion and extraversion (Eysenck, 1967/2017).

Introverts: 

– Have elevated reactivity in the ARAS causing faster and more intense arousal reactions (allowing them to reach their maximum arousal threshold quickly in response to activation by external stimuli; increasing the likelihood of overstimulation). 

– This reduced stimulation threshold leads to a preference for less stimulating settings to sustain an ideal arousal level.

– Introverts perform better in low-arousal situations.

– Following Pavlov, Eysenck equated this high sensitivity to a weak nervous system (easily overwhelmed by overstimulation).

Extraverts:

– Have less reactive ARAS systems leading to higher thresholds for arousal.

– Higher thresholds to external stimuli mean extraverts need more stimulation to reach optimal arousal levels.

– Easily bored, extraverts seek environmental stimulation to compensate for their low baseline arousal.

– Extraverts excel in high-arousal conditions.

– Following Pavlov, Eysenck equated this lower sensitivity to a stronger nervous system that allows extraverts to tolerate higher levels of stimulation without discomfort.

“Having taken Hull’s law of inhibition as our point of departure, we must next propose what may be called a postulate of individual differences: Human beings differ with respect to the speed with which reactive inhibition is produced, the strength of the reactive inhibition produced, and the speed with which reactive inhibition is dissipated. These differences themselves are properties of the physical structures involved in the evocation of responses. This postulate is implicit in Pavlov’s account but has been curiously neglected by Hull, who hardly ever deals with individual differences of this kind.

To make our theory complete, we must add one further postulate which may be stated as follows: Individuals in whom reactive inhibition is generated quickly, in whom strong reactive inhibitions are generated, and in whom reactive inhibition is dissipated slowly are thereby predisposed to develop extraverted patterns of behaviour and to develop hysterico-psychopathic disorders in cases of neurotic breakdown; conversely, individuals in whom reactive inhibition has developed slowly, in whom weak reactive inhibitions are generated, and in whom reactive inhibition is dissipated quickly, are thereby predisposed to develop introverted patterns of behaviour and to develop dysthymic disorders in cases of neurotic breakdown. These two postulates, added to the law of reactive inhibition, are, it is suggested, sufficient to account for the observed facts on which the dimension of extraversion-introversion is based, and enable us to make predictions which are experimentally verifiable” (Eysenck, 1955, pp. 34-35).

Issues: “Disagreement over definition is not just a matter of detail and two major issues have dominated the literature. first all, early theorists initiated a debate concerning a relationship between introversion-extraversion and adjustment (neurotic tendency). Some followed Jung (1923) in maintaining that introversion-extraversion and ‘neuroticism’ were independent. Others agreed with Freud (1920) that introversion was related to neurosis. Guilford (1934) summarized the problem very well when he pointed to “the very troublesome situation found by those who construct tests of IE and of neurotic tendency, a difficulty in keeping the two types of test from correlating significantly with one another” (p. 343). In fact, different measures of extraversion were found to correlate as highly with measures of neuroticism or adjustment as they did with each other (Bernreuter, 1934; Vernon, 1938)” (Robinson, 1986, p. 435). 

Part 6 The sixth approach: Jeffrey Alan Gray.

Jeffrey Alan Gray, a student of Eysenck, disagreed with him and proposed two theories: the biopsychological theory of personality and the reinforcement sensitivity theory.

The biopsychological theory of personality proposes that personality is based on individual differences in two brain systems: the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and the Behavioral Activation System (BAS).

The behavioral inhibition system (BIS) responds to signals of punishment, threat, or non-reward. It is associated with anxiety and sensitivity to negative stimuli. High BIS sensitivity is linked to traits like anxiety and introversion.

The behavioral activation system (BAS) responds to signals of reward, non-punishment, or escape from punishment. It is associated with impulsivity and sensitivity to positive stimuli. High BAS sensitivity is linked to traits like impulsivity and extraversion. (Gray, 1981; 1982a; 1982b). 


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[“Gray argued that extraversion and neuroticism were derived from impulsivity and anxiety, which were their fundamental neurophysiological bases. In 1994, Carver and White gave a boost to research into Gray’s theory by constructing personality scales to measure his hypothesized BAS and BIS systems. In laying out his theory, Gray also deviated from classical learning theory by asserting that there was not just a single reinforcement mechanism but two: BAS reflected sensitivity to rewards, and BIS, sensitivity to punishments” (Davis & Panksepp, 2018).]

Gray went on to develop the reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) based on his earlier work (the BAS and BIS) and incorporating a third approach, the Fight-Flight-Freeze System (FFFS). The RST provides a more nuanced understanding. BIS is associated with anxiety, BAS is associated with reward sensitivity and impulsivity, and FFFS is associated with fearfulness and immediate reactions to threats (Corr, 2002, 2008; Pickering & Corr, 2008). 

In general, sensitivity in RST refers to the degree to which individuals respond to reinforcement cues. This sensitivity shapes their personality traits, emotional experiences, and behavior patterns. It affects how individuals perceive, process, and react to rewards, punishments, and conflicts in their environment. Someone with high BAS sensitivity may become highly motivated by rewards, whereas someone with high BIS sensitivity might be overly cautious or anxious in uncertain situations. Individuals with low sensitivity in these systems may exhibit muted responses to reinforcement, resulting in less noticeable behavioral and emotional reactions. Variations in sensitivity clarify why individuals differ in pursuing rewards, avoiding punishment, and managing complex or conflicting situations.

Gray later revised the RST making a number of important and some controversial changes although, these changes have apparently not been recognized by personality psychologists (Gray & McNaughton, 2000; Smillie, Pickering, & Jackson, 2006).

Smillie, Pickering and Jackson (2006) provide a detailed comparison of the original and the revised RST. “In this article, we have argued that a challenge facing psychometric measurement of Gray’s model relates to the fact that RST is not a theory of specific traits, but a broad framework of motivation, emotion, and learning. Therefore, basic research concerning the structure and organization of the biological systems of RST should inform psychometric measurement and trait conceptualization more strongly than might usually be the case for a personality model. Here we have considered three particular refinements, these being (a) Gray and McNaughton’s (2000) revision to the basic details of RST, (b) formal considerations of dynamic interactions among the RST systems, and (c) the growing indication that the BAS-related trait may be represented by Extraversion rather than Impulsivity. These revisions have been driven by the accumulation of new data and clarification of Gray’s original postulates, and, it is encouraging to note, often appear to bring RST closer to alternative perspectives in personality research” (Smillie, Pickering, & Jackson, 2006, p. 331).

McNaughton (2020, 2024; McNaughton and Gray, 2024) subsequently changed the names of Gray’s items as follows:

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Part 7 The seventh approach: Thomas and Chess/slow-to-warm-up children.

In 1968, Alexander Thomas, along with Stella Chess and Herbert Birch, made a significant contribution when they identified three major temperament types in their New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS): “easy,” “difficult,” and “slow-to-warm-up” children (Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968).

Slow-to-warm-up children exhibit initial hesitation or withdrawal in new situations, with unfamiliar people, or in response to novel stimuli and take longer to adapt to changes or transitions. They show mild, low-intensity reactions compared to children with more pronounced responses (e.g., “difficult” children) (Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968).

The basic premise is that these slow-to-warm-up children have have heightened sensitivity but are less reactive in outward expression. Over time, with consistent exposure and support, they typically acclimate and function well. 

“INTENSITY OF REACTION: In this category interest is directed to the energy content of the response, irrespective of its direction. A negative response may be as intense or as mild as a positive one. Scorable items for this category were provided by descriptions of behavior occurring in relation to external stimuli, to prelimination straining, to hunger, to repletion, to new foods, to attempts to control, to restraint, to diapering and dressing, to the bath, and to play and social contacts. Examples of intense reactions are the following: ‘He cries loud and long whenever the sun shines in his eyes’; ‘Whenever she hears music she begins to laugh loudly and to jump up and down in time to it’; ‘When he is hungry he starts to cry, and this builds up to a scream, and we can’t distract him by holding or playing with him’; ‘When she is full she spits the food out of her mouth and knocks the spoon away’; ‘The first time we gave him cereal he spit it out and started to cry’; ‘If we tell him ‘no' he starts to cry’; ‘Dressing is such a problem, he wriggles around so, and when I hold him so that he can’t move, he screams’; and ‘She loves her bath so, that as soon as she hears the water running she tries to climb into the tub even if she’s still fully dressed.’ Beautiful” (Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968, pp. 21-22).

“THRESHOLD OF RESPONSIVENESS: This category refers to the level of extrinsic stimulation that is necessary to evoke a discernible response. The explicit form of response that occurs is irrelevant and may be of any quality, e.g., approaching or withdrawing, intense or mild. What is fundamental is the intensity of stimulus that has to be applied before a response of any kind can be elicited. The behaviors utilized were those concerning responses to sensory stimuli, environmental objects, and social contacts. We are also interested in the magnitude of difference between stimuli that must obtain before the child shows evidences of discrimination. Examples of the types of descriptions that were scored in this category are the following: ‘You can shine a bright light in his eyes and he doesn’t even blink, but if a door closes he startles and looks up.’ This would be scored as high threshold for visual and low threshold for auditory stimuli, ‘I can never tell if he’s wet except by feeling him, but if he has a bowel movement he fusses and is cranky until I change him.’ The statement indicates high threshold with respect to wetness, but low threshold to the tactile complex associated with a bowel movement. ‘He loves fruit, but if I put even a little cereal in with it he won’t eat it at all.’ This was scored as a low threshold response because it demonstrated the ability to discriminate small taste or textural differences. ‘He doesn’t pay any attention to new people; he doesn’t cry, but he doesn’t respond to them, either.’ This is an example of a high threshold in the area of social relations, as contrasted with ‘He laughs and smiles at a stranger, and starts to cry if they don’t play with him,’ a response scored as low threshold. ‘He always cries when he sees a man wearing a hat even if it’s his father’ is illustrative of effective discrimination to presence of a specific item of clothing and was scored as a low threshold response. ‘He makes himself at home anywhere, and runs around a strange house as if it were his,’ was scored as high threshold, while ‘He notices any little change. When we got new curtains for his room he spent a whole day crawling over to the window and pulling on them,’ received a low threshold score” (Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968, pp. 22-23).

Part 8 The eighth approach: Sensory processing sensitivity/The Highly Sensitive Person.

In 1996, Elaine Aron introduced her concept of higher-than-average sensitivity in her book for the general public titled The Highly Sensitive Person. In an academic article, Aron and her husband Arthur presented the construct of sensory processing sensitivity (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997).

“The model suggested in this article highlights an aspect of this cluster of much-studied but vaguely identified fundamental differences that seems thus far oddly underemphasized. There has been a consistent report of some sort of greater sensory processing sensitivity in, for example, introverts. By sensory processing, we refer to a difference not in the sense organs per se but to something that occurs as sensory information is transmitted to or processed in the brain. Consistent evidence for this difference is almost always cited in reviews of the literature on introverts and extraverts – for example, in Koelega’s (1992) meta-analysis, in Stelmack’s (1990) and Stelmack and Geen’s (1992) reviews, and in Kohn’s (1987) discussion of arousability” (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997, p. 347).

“Others besides introversion researchers have noted and studied sensory sensitivity as a fundamental individual difference. Thomas and Chess (1977), in their early work on childhood temperament, observed low sensory threshold as one of nine basic traits that distinguish children and found that, together with other traits such as social withdrawal, low sensory threshold described the “slow to warm up” child. Petrie’s (1967) early work on augmenters of stimulation also captured the phenomenon well, but was probably lost as a useful concept because of the use (by Buchsbaum et al., 1983) of the opposite term, reducers (of evoked potentials), for the same phenomenon” (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997, p. 347).

“finally, there is the pioneering work of Mehrabian (1976, 1991; Mehrabian & O'Reilly, 1980), who developed a measure of low stimulus screening and arousability that assumed arousability to be an effect, not a cause, of having a greater openness, if not sensitivity, to stimulation” (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997, p. 347).

“finally, Japanese psychologists (e.g., Nagane, 1990; T. Shigehisa, 1974) have been researching sensory sensitivity for some time and have taken the next step in model building: observing and describing sensitivity and its types. For example, Satow (1987) factor analyzed a 60-item questionnaire regarding sensitivity and found factors he termed lower sensory threshold, more rapid perception of a stimulus, and lower tolerance for intense or prolonged stimulation. Variations in these were said to lead to four types of sensitivity” (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997, p. 347).

“In sum, there is reasonable evidence for some kind (or a variety of kinds) of greater sensory-processing sensitivity and depth of discrimination in a large minority of individuals. If this sensitivity exists, it would be expected to manifest itself as low sociability and high negative emotionality in some sensitive individuals – the former as a strategy to avoid overstimulation, and the latter as the result of an interaction of the trait with aversive or socially unsupported early experiences involving novel stimuli. However, it should be distinct from these as well and related to other variables and measures logically involving sensitivity” (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997, p. 350).

“Six key findings emerged consistently over these studies: (a) The various themes expected from our conceptualization of sensitivity were in fact consistently intercorrelated and formed a unidimensional construct; (b) sensitivity was related to but not identical with social introversion; (c) sensitivity was related to but not identical with emotionality; (d) sensitivity was not merely the combination of social introversion and emotionality; (e) there appear to have been two distinct groups of highly sensitive individuals, a smaller group (about one third of the participants) who reported having had an unhappy childhood and who tended to have higher scores on social introversion, emotionality, and a variety of related sensitivities, and a larger group (the other two thirds of the participants) who differed little from the larger population of non-highly sensitive individuals except in terms of their basic sensitivity; and (f) sensitivity seems to have moderated, at least for men, the relation of parental environment to reporting having experienced an unhappy childhood. In addition to these six findings, we also developed over these studies a 27-item measure of high sensitivity, the HSP Scale, that appears to have levels of reliability and content, convergent, and discriminant validity adequate for use in future research” (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997, p. 361).

“In three quite different, moderately large samples, we found a pattern of two clear clusters of highly sensitive individuals. In each case, the smaller cluster, consisting of about one third of the highly sensitive individuals, reported childhoods that were substantially more troubled. In the two student samples, this smaller cluster also was more introverted and emotional. The larger cluster, on the other hand, although having virtually identical means on sensitivity, was much more similar to those who were not highly sensitive with regard to troubled childhood, introversion, and emotionality. Given the vagaries of cluster analysis, the degree of similarity over replications with three diverse samples is rather exceptional” (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997, p. 363).

“In essence, as we found in our interviews in Study 1, sensitive individuals from home environments that support their temperament seem quite successful in their lives and adept at making their sensitivity an asset while avoiding shyness and over-self consciousness” (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997, p. 363).

“The key implications of this research are that there appears to be a unidimensional construct of high sensory sensitivity (and associated arousability) that is partially independent of introversion and emotionality. This is very important because introversion and emotionality are highly prominent, central variables in personality psychology, and the present data suggest that research and theory on these variables up to now has often confounded them with sensitivity as conceptualized here. Further, high sensitivity in itself appears to have broad implications for behavior and experience, as illustrated by the widely diverse variables that have unique correlations with it (ranging from sensitivity to daylight to moral-social sensitivity). finally, the findings regarding the two clusters of highly sensitive individuals and the role of sensitivity as a moderator (at least for men) of the link of parental environment with childhood experiences suggest ways in which the environment may interact with temperament in structuring other personality differences” (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997, p. 365).

“Conclusion: In short, without quite promoting an aristocracy of the sensitive, we would like to side with Forster in our own way, by helping to restore sensitivity to a visible place in psychological research” (E. N. Aron & Aron, 1997, p. 365).

Aron’s work generated significant research, making the highly sensitive person concept popular. This approach emphasizes the deleterious impacts of strong sensitivity and the need to modify the environment to prevent being overwhelmed.

Part 9 The ninth approach: Biological sensitivity to context/The dandelion and the orchid.

The popular construct, the “dandelion and the orchid,” is associated with W. Thomas Boyce. In this view, early reactivity may be the product of either highly stressful or protective, positive environments.

“Highly reactive phenotypes, in which affected individuals mount vigorous and/or persistent autonomic, adrenocortical, or other biological responses to stressors, have been viewed as an atavistic health risk factor, a legacy of physiological responses more commensurate with the perils of prehistoric human environments. As such, exaggerated stress reactivity is generally viewed as a maladaptive, monotonically harmful heritage of an ancient preparedness for endangerment. High reactivity, so the argument goes, is a heritable response disposition, often unmasked by traumatic experiences in early life, which places individuals at heightened risk for disorders of mental and physical health. It is the central claim of this two-part series that this view, that high reactivity phenotypes are uniformly harmful psychobiological reversions to primitive and maladaptive modes of response, is mistaken. Rather, an evolutionary reinterpretation of evidence regarding reactivity and health suggests that highly reactive phenotypes can be more usefully viewed as reflecting heightened biological sensitivity to context (BSC), an attribute that may have conferred selective advantages in certain social and ecological contexts during human evolution … the association between early adversity and reactivity is curvilinear in character, with both highly stressful and highly protective environments yielding disproportionate numbers of highly reactive children.” (Boyce and Ellis, 2005, pp. 271-272).

“BSC increases adaptive competence in highly stressful environments by augmenting vigilance to threats and dangers and in highly protective environments by increasing susceptibility to social resources and ambient support” (Boyce and Ellis, 2005, p. 272).

“reactivity may reflect not simply overarousal of neurobiological pathways, but rather sensitivity to both harmful and protective contextual effects. Highly reactive children appear to experience either the best or the worst of psychiatric and biomedical outcomes, within the populations from which they are drawn. Under conditions of adversity, such children sustain higher rates of disease, disorder, and injuries than their more normatively reactive peers from the same environments. On the other hand, equally reactive children in low-stress, protective social environments experience substantially lower rates of health problems than their low reactive peers. These results suggest that the highly reactive biological profiles found in this subset of children reveal a unique sensitivity or “permeability” to the influence of environmental conditions. A Swedish idiomatic expression, maskrosbarn (dandelion child), refers to the capacity of some children, not unlike those with low reactive phenotypes, to survive and even thrive in whatever circumstances they encounter, in much the same way that dandelions seem to prosper irrespective of soil, sun, drought, or rain. Observations of such children have generated, for example, an extensive developmental literature on the phenomenon of resilience, the capacity for positive adaptation despite experiences of significant adversity. A contrasting Swedish neologism, orkidebarn (orchid child), might better describe the context-sensitive individual, whose survival and flourishing is intimately tied, like that of the orchid, to the nurturant or neglectful character of the ambient environment. In conditions of neglect, the orchid promptly declines, while in conditions of support and nurture, it is a flower of unusual delicacy and beauty” (Boyce and Ellis, 2005, pp. 283-284). [Also see e.g.: Ellis, Essex, & Boyce, 2005; Lionetti, Aron A., Aron E. N., Burns, Jagiellowicz, & Pluess, 2018]

“This theory is supported by a common experience. Almost everyone knows of some child who was brought up in poverty or in a chaotic, abusive family, or who experienced poor quality schooling, and yet became a prominent person in their community. It is also a common experience to have a relative or friend who is completely thrown off their developmental path by parental divorce or by insensitive experiences with peers. The most revolutionary aspect of this theory, however, is the understanding that “Orchids” are not simply unusually vulnerable to adversity, but are also unusually sensitive to nurturing environments” (Martin, Lease, & Slobodskaya, 2020, p. 111).

Part 10 The tenth approach: Differential susceptibility.

This approach, associated primarily with Belsky, emphasizes that individuals vary in the degree to which they are susceptible to environmental influences leading to “developmental plasticity.”

“vulnerable” individuals most adversely affected by many kinds of stressors may be the very same ones who reap the most benefit from environmental support and enrichment, including the absence of adversity. Thus, we should expect individual differences in developmental plasticity and, more generally, susceptibility to environmental influences, with some individuals being far more affected than others by both negative and positive contextual conditions” (Belsky and Pluess, 2009, p. 886).

“To make the case, as we exclusively seek to, that differential susceptibility appears operative in human development and functioning but that individual differences in plasticity have been largely even if not entirely overlooked in favor of prevailing views that some individuals are simply more vulnerable to adversity than others, we contend that an admittedly selective compilation of a multiplicity of illustrative findings is exactly what is appropriate at the present time. This would seem especially so in light of the fact that much of the available research, most particularly that investigating GXE interaction, focuses on both a restricted range of environments, typically emphasizing the negative end of the spectrum and failing to measure at all the positive (except for the absence of adversity), and a restricted range of psychological and behavioral outcomes, also typically emphasizing the negative, and thereby fails to assess competent functioning (except for the absence of dysfunction)” (Belsky and Pluess, 2009, p. 886).

“some children and even adults will be more susceptible than others to both the adverse and beneficial effects of, respectively, unsupportive and supportive contextual conditions. This view contrasts markedly with traditional dual risk/diathesis-stress frameworks, which regard certain putatively “vulnerable” individuals as more likely than others to be adversely affected by unsupportive contextual conditions but stipulate nothing about differential responsiveness to supportive conditions” (Belsky and Pluess, 2009, p. 887).

“One possible reason why those high in negative emotionality, operationalized as it has been in a variety of ways, may prove most susceptible to environmental influence is because a negatively emotional/difficult temperament reflects a highly sensitive nervous system, one on which experience registers especially strongly; this is so irrespective of whether the experience is positive and growth promoting or negative and undermining of well-being (Aron & Aron, 1997; Belsky, 2005)” (Belsky and Pluess, 2009, p. 893).

“The preceding review was designed to highlight findings consistent with the differential-susceptibility hypothesis that have appeared—mostly recently—within much larger literatures addressing principally, even if not exclusively, Parenting x Temperament and Gene x Environment interactions. The research considered should be regarded as providing at least suggestive even if not conclusive evidence that there exist individual differences in plasticity. That is, some individuals are more affected than others by rearing experiences and, apparently, environmental circumstances more generally. In particular, some individuals appear more susceptible to the adverse effects of unsupportive contextual conditions and the beneficial effects of supportive ones” (Belsky and Pluess, 2009, p. 902).

“The contention that some individuals are more susceptible than others to both the adverse and beneficial effects of, respectively, unsupportive and supportive contextual conditions is strikingly different from diathesis-stress/dual-risk thinking. The latter model regards some individuals as simply more vulnerable to adversity with respect to problematic outcomes and has informed, if not directly guided, so much Parenting x Temperament and GXE interaction research, including much of that considered herein. The traditional view seems so deeply entrenched that some investigators have failed to notice when their own data reveal differential susceptibility-like findings, not just vulnerability-related ones” (Belsky and Pluess, 2009, p. 902).


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Caption: The left half of the figure illustrates the negative side of differential susceptibility (i.e. diathesis-stress): in response to low quality parenting, the level of functioning decreases in individual A, reflecting vulnerability, whereas it remains unchanged in individual B, reflecting resilience. The right half of the figure illustrates the positive side of differential susceptibility (i.e. vantage sensitivity): in response to high-quality parenting, the level of functioning increases in individual A, reflecting vantage sensitivity, whereas it remains unchanged in individual B, reflecting vantage resistance. Consequently, individual A reflects higher susceptibility to both negative and positive parenting experiences whereas individual B appears less responsive regardless of parenting quality. (Pluess and Belsky, 2012, p. 3)

Differential susceptibility includes sensitivity to both negative environments as well as positive ones; Pluess and Belsky (2013) developed the construct of vantage sensitivity to focus only on positive experiences. For example, a child with high vantage sensitivity would excel given a positive environment but would not be impacted by a negative environment

In describing vantage sensitivity, Pluess and Belsky said: “Recently, Manuck and associates (Manuck, 2011; Sweitzer et al., 2012) introduced the term Vantage Sensitivity to characterize the “bright side” of differential susceptibility and more generally variability in response to positive experiences. Vantage is short for advantage, but in addition to implying benefit, gain or profit, it is also defined as “a position, condition, or opportunity that is likely to provide superiority or an advantage” (Houghton Mifflin, 2000). In Manuck’s own words (S. B. Manuck, personal communication, January 18, 2011), vantage “bespeaks a position conferring advantage, benefit or gain, without bearing the singularity of a particular advantage.” We embrace and promote the term vantage sensitivity to describe the notion that some individuals are more sensitive and positively responsive to the environmental advantages to which they are exposed. These advantages may take the form of security of attachment derived from sensitive parenting, academic achievement resulting from high-quality child care, prosocial behavior due to supportive friendship networks, and life satisfaction stemming from positive life events, as well as sense of efficacy following psychotherapy, to name just a few possibilities.


We propose the following concepts to characterize variability in response to positive experiences: (a) vantage sensitivity reflects the general proclivity of an individual to benefit from positive and presumptively well-being- and competence-promoting features of the environment, just as vulnerability depicts the tendency to succumb to negative effects of adversity in the diathesis-stress framework” (Pluess and Belsky, 2013, p. 903).

Likewise, “vantage resistance describes the failure to benefit from positive influences, just as resilience characterizes resistance to negative effects of adversity in the diathesis-stress framework” (Pluess and Belsky, 2013, p. 903).

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“Figure 1. Graphical illustration of vantage sensitivity; in response to a positive exposure, the level of functioning increases in Individual A, reflecting vantage sensitivity, whereas it remains unchanged in Individual B, reflecting vantage resistance” (Pluess and Belsky, 2013, p. 904).

Part 11 The eleventh approach: Dąbrowski’s construct of overexcitability.

In describing overexcitability, Dąbrowski emphasized two aspects: a lower threshold for stimulation, which leads to heightened sensitivity of neurons, and a higher and longer-than-average reaction to a “neutral” stimulus.

Dąbrowski’s descriptions of overexcitability go back to his earliest writings. Wells & Falk (2021) document that overexcitability was present in Dąbrowski beginning with his French PhD thesis, where he referred to emotional and sensual overexcitability (see Dombrowski, 1929). Other early references that mention nervousness/overexcitability include Dąbrowski, 1931, 1934, 1935, and 1937. Dąbrowski (1938) mentions affective (emotional), sensual, psychomotor, and imaginational overexcitability. Intellectual overexcitability is not explicitly introduced until Dąbrowski (1958). The following pertinent publications are available for download on my website: 1929, 1934b, 1935, 1937d, 1938d, and 1958c.

Dąbrowski 1935.

Tillier: this Polish work is available to download on my webpage. It is interesting that here, Dąbrowski outlines nervousness as a disorder that needs to be “combated.” This brief English excerpt from Google translate gives a flavour of the work. The interested reader is encouraged to pursue the original.

“This work is based primarily on many years of observations collected during pedagogical practice in primary schools, secondary schools and closed educational institutions. These observations concern difficult-to-lead individuals (approximately 250 individuals), aged 3-18, including over 90% aged 7-18. These youth were normal in terms of their mental level. When examining this level, the Binet-Terman scale, school grades, and opinions of educators and teachers were used. Most often, all three methods were used together. 

… My work is intended primarily for educators, teachers and school doctors, i.e. for those people whose mutual complementation and cooperation in the field of education can play a decisive preventive role in the field of combating childhood nervousness, or in giving it a direction that is beneficial to social culture. Such cooperation should play a significant role in preventing neuroses and mental illnesses, especially when one considers that the so-called nervousness is often an initial, poorly differentiated basic stage for the development of more serious disorders. The educator and teacher of a ‘normal’ child can also, by familiarizing themselves with the issue of nervousness, acquire the ability to penetrate the deeper mechanisms of the child's mental life, in accordance with Kretschmer's view that ‘the psychology of nervousness is the psychology of the human heart in general.’ 

… In my work, the term ‘nervousness’ is used to designate the above-mentioned disorders in children and adolescents, which also does not have a fixed meaning in the scientific literature, but is generally known and accepted to designate milder, poorly distinguished, initial neurotic states

… Here we are mainly concerned with the weakening of resistance to emotional influences on the one hand and insufficient tension of willpower on the other. Together with this, there are usually deficiencies in the even formation of personality. Nervousness can also be considered a group of diverse and fluid functional nervous disorders, which are characterized by psychic hyperexcitability with intact cognitive powers. In the following I will explain why I consider hyperexcitability to be the basic state of nervousness. 

… At this point, however, I would like to mention that many of such symptoms of nervousness, such as anxiety states, nervous outbursts, self-torment, easy fatigue, excessive susceptibility to the current of involuntary associations, can be explained as the effect of the action of various factors on the hyperexcitability of a given individual; it should also be taken into account here that the formation of excitability with a predominance of one or another form (motor, emotional, sensory) may depend on various constitutional conditions and diseases undergone. I would like to justify the division of my work not according to disease entities, but rather according to symptom complexes. The definition of nervousness given and the issue of the difficulty of a closer separation of more detailed forms of excitability raised above should justify such a division.

Dąbrowski 1937.

Dąbrowski’s first English publication appeared in 1937 and was a translation of an earlier Polish article (Dąbrowski, 1934). In the first 15 pages of this work we can clearly see the themes of greater than normal excitation, an analysis based on differentiating levels and psychological disintegration. I think it’s fair to say that in this work, excitability is linked with disintegration but I do not see a direct causal relationship yet. Again, the interested reader is referred to the original. Although it is beyond my scope, it will be critical to eventually trace the development of these constructs and their relationships through each of Dąbrowski’s works (a task that Wells & Falk, 2021, have begun).

Dąbrowski (1972, p. 7) described overexcitability as a neurological phenomenon, explaining:

“Each form of overexcitability points to a higher than average sensitivity of its receptors. As a result, a person endowed with different forms of overexcitability reacts with surprise, puzzlement to many things, he collides with things, persons and events, which in turn brings him astonishment and disquietude. One could say that one who manifests a given form of overexcitability and especially one who manifests several forms of overexcitability, sees reality in a different, stronger and more multisided manner. Reality for such an individual ceases to be indifferent but affects him deeply and leaves long-lasting impressions. Enhanced excitability is thus a means for more frequent interactions and a wider range of experiencing.” 

Dąbrowski explained why he used the term overexcitability: “The prefix over attached to ‘excitability’ serves to indicate that the reactions of excitation are over and above average in intensity, duration and frequency” (Dąbrowski, 1996, p. 7).

Dąbrowski (1970) made overexcitability an integral part of disintegration, both by definition and by clinical observation:

“first, psychic hyperexcitability, whether general or more differentiated (emotional, psychomotor or, intellectual) provokes conflicts, disappointments, suffering in family life, in school, in professional life; in short, it leads to conflicts with the external environment. Hyperexcitability also provokes inner conflicts as well as the means by which these conflicts can be overcome. Second, hyperexcitability precipitates psychoneurotic processes and third, conflicts and psychoneurotic processes become the dominant factor in accelerated development.” (p. 38)

Dąbrowski (1970) differentiated and highlighted two roles played by overexcitability:

“It is, on one hand, a basis for excitement, inner and external conflicts, tension, sadness, depression, anxiety and so on and—on the other hand—a basis for [a] universal and more complicated view of reality but in a different light: vital, full of contrasts and non-automatic.” (pp. 2-3)

Overexcitability increases an individual’s sensitivity to both the external environment and their internal psychic environment, thus creating disappointments, unpleasant emotional reactions, and conflicts (Dąbrowski 1970).

Dąbrowski used the terms “nervousness” and “overexcitability” synonymously:

“Nervousness is characterized by increased psychic excitability (psychomotor, affective, imaginational, sensual, and mental) and intact cognitive powers. Nervousness or increased psychic excitability is based on innate dispositions.” (Dąbrowski, 1967, p. 181).

“Psychic overexcitability is a term introduced to denote a variety of types of nervousness (Dąbrowski, 1938, 1959). It appears in five forms: emotional, imaginational, intellectual, psychomotor, and sensual” (Dąbrowski, 1996, p. 71). 

“The essential characteristic of nervousness is an increased excitability, symptomatized in the forms of sensual, psychomotor, affectional, imaginational, and mental hyperexcitability. It consists in an unproportional reaction to a stimulus, an extended, long-lasting, accelerated reaction, and a peculiar reaction to a neutral stimulus. This hyperexcitability is therefore a strong, uncommon sensitivity to external and internal stimuli; it is virtually a positive trait.” (Dąbrowski, 1967, p. 81).

“Nervousness and psychoneuroses are structural conditions of sensitivity within and towards one’s own inner psychic milieu wherein positive development through unilevel and multilevel disintegration finds especially favourable ground. Without these processes the author does not see much possibility of positive development of human personality. Without nervousness and neuroses there is no positive disintegration, and without positive disintegration there seems to be no positive development.” (Dąbrowski, 1972, p. 159)

“Nervousness, neuroses, and especially psychoneuroses, bring the nervous system to a state of greater sensitivity. They make a person more susceptible to positive change. The high psychic structures gradually gain control over the low ones. The lower psychic structures undergo a refinement this process of inner psychic transformation. This transformation is the fruition of the developmental potential which makes these states possible and makes possible their further development. The components of the development potential like enhanced overexcitability, nuclei of the inn psychic milieu, and special abilities and talents play here an active role. Through multilevel disintegration there occurs positive evolution, making possible the achievement of a high level.” (Dąbrowski, 1972, p. 160)

“Nervousness and psychoneurosis, in our opinion, are signs of the beginning or already advancing process of positive development. Intense psychoneurotic processes are especially characteristic of accelerated development in its course towards the formation of personality. According to our theory accelerated psychic development is actually impossible without transition through processes of nervousness and psychoneuroses, without external and internal conflicts, without maladjustment to actual conditions in order to achieve adjustment to a higher level of values (to what “ought to be”), and without conflicts with lower level realities as a result of spontaneous or deliberate choice to strengthen the bond with reality of higher level.” (Dąbrowski, 1972, p. 220)

“Nervousness consists in mental overexcitability which may take emotional, sensual, psychomotor, imaginative or intellectual form. It must be emphasized that clear cases of such forms of overexcitability do not exist. They appear, as a rule, in compounds of two or more forms some of which may be more or less favorable for development. For instance, it seems that the coexistence and collaboration of emotional, imaginative and intellectual overexcitability are very favorable for development, because they are strongly connected with general mental sensitivity, with creative tendencies and with capabilities for prospection and retrospection. However, we do not regard the union of sensual and psychomotor overexcitability as useful for development, because they create a rather narrow structure on the borderline of psychopathy with little reflectivity and limited creative possibilities. (Dąbrowski, 1973, p. 147).

Dąbrowski (1973) emphasized the importance of overexcitability to development: 

“It is mainly mental hyperexcitability through which the search for something new, something different, more complex and more authentic can be accomplished. All this is associated with the loosening and disintegration of primitive homeostasis” (p. 15).

“there are two general kinds, or better, two levels of mental development: one, taking place in conformity to the universal laws of development of the human species, to the biological cycle of life, and another, which takes an accelerated form and transcends the cycle of biological transformations. The first passes through the stages of childhood, maturity, aging, and culminates in death. It is characterized by gradual psychobiological integration of functions, growing biological perfection, activities typical for universal phases of development (acquirement of psychosomatic and intellectual skills specific to man, adjustment to the external environment, engagement in commonly practical, sexual, professional, and social pursuits). The second form of mental development consists of the transcendence of those activities, in some degree of maladjustment to the universal phases of development. It is characterized by mental hyperexcitability, that is to say nervousness, frequent disintegration of functions, psychoneuroses, social maladjustment and accelerated process of mental transformations.

In the first kind of development mental hyperexcitability and maladjustment appear usually in specific developmental phases and in situations of stress. They vanish when a biological phase or a grave experience comes to an end. In the second kind of development, the contrary is true: hyperexcitability, maladjustment, creative projections become permanent, or almost permanent elements and manifest themselves not only in difficult periods.

The first kind of development is biologically determined, universal, and ordered in a narrow and rigid way. Development of the second kind is an expression of individual differentiation, autonomy in relation to the laws of biology, authenticity, creativity, transformation of the innate psychological type. It involves maladjustment to the environment and the biological cycle, and thus to a certain extent a transcending of this cycle.

In the first kind of development we usually observe an average level of intellectual functions and some degree of emotional underdevelopment. In the other kind of development we usually observe above average abilities, emotional richness and depth, as well as inclination to psychoneurosis. The individuals who manifest the second kind of development are from their childhood maladjusted, talented, experiencing serious developmental cries. They show a tendency toward mental hyperexcitability, toward dissolution of lower levels in their drive toward higher levels. Hence, they exhibit disturbances and disharmony in their internal and external environment, the feeling of “otherness,” strangeness. In this group we can find bright children, creative and outstanding personalities, men of genius, i.e. those who contribute new values.

Striking examples of the second kind of development can be easily noticed. Historians seem to agree in their judgment that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest president of the United States. For many years he experienced grave mental disturbances, anxiety and depressions on the borderline of psychosis. He frequently exhibited attitudes of uncertainty, hesitation, inhibition, marked sensitivity, ability for identification, autonomy and authenticity. However, the last years of his life were characterized by inner harmony, ability to make clear-cut decisions, farsightedness, humanitarianism, and control over his “pathological” dynamisms. (Dąbrowski, 1970, pp. 29-30).

“Mental overexcitability is based on hereditary endowment and is shaped through the influence of the external environment and autonomous factors.” (Dąbrowski, 1973, pp. 146-147).

Part 12 Emotional sensitivity.

“For millennia, people have debated whether emotions are good (e.g., desirable, useful) or bad (e.g., unwanted, harmful) and whether emotions are controllable (e.g., modulated according to our will) or uncontrollable (e.g., arriving unbidden and departing of their own accord). Each individual must decide the ‘correct’ answers to these questions, and these decisions form the basis of each individual’s beliefs about emotion” 

(Ford & Gross, 2019, p. 74).

Emotional sensitivity is a major component of several different bodies of literature. For example, emotional sensitivity is often considered pathological; it is seen as related to borderline personality disorder and neuroticism in the five factor model. Eileen Aron emphasizes that strong emotional sensitivity is a trait that can bring advantages or disadvantages and she emphasizes the need to manage and optimize levels of emotional sensitivity. 


Fischer, Kret, Broekens, 2018.

We test what we have referred to as the ‘emotional sensitivity hypothesis’, focusing on gender differences in the perception of a profile of emotion intensities. … The emotional sensitivity hypothesis states that women are more sensitive to subtle cues, which implies that they perceive the intended emotion as more intense, but only when the cues are subtle or low intense. … As noted above, the stereotype that women are the more emotional sex, but also the belief that women are better in dealing with their own and others’ emotions is a prevalent stereotype in the Western world. … We did not find any empirical support for gender differences in the perceived intensity of the target emotion displays, either on human faces, avatars or icons, nor in interaction with the intensity of the emotion display. Both men and women generally perceived low intense emotions to be less intense than highly intense emotions, and this applied to the stimuli at all abstraction levels (humans, avatars, icons). Thus, the emotional sensitivity hypothesis was not supported.

Nilsen, Bang, Røysamb, 2024.

Trait self-control influences key facets of human functioning and has been linked to core aspects of life, such as health, life satisfaction, relationships, and work performance. Identifying antecedents for self-control is therefore important to better understand and support the development of self-control. … Traditionally, self-control has been considered a reactive process, employing effortful, inhibitory self-control (the intentional resisting of unwanted thoughts, feelings, and behavior) in the face of temptations that lead to dilemmas between smaller-immediate versus larger-delayed rewards. … However, recent trait self-control research has suggested an expansion to the traditional perspective by including a second and more proactive type of self-control: initiatory self-control. This progress of the self-control concept has been supported by considerable evidence. Initiatory self-control refers to the proactive processes and strategies that individuals use to reach long-term goals when they anticipate temptations in conflict with these goals. … Studies show that conscientiousness and neuroticism are reported to be moderately to strongly associated with both inhibitory and initiatory self-control. … Individuals high in neuroticism tend to experience more negative emotions, find it difficult to regulate emotions, and have heightened stress reactivity. It is argued that this can lead to impulsive behaviors and a lack of self-control in stressful or emotionally charged situations. … Neuroticism correlated negatively with all self-control dimensions, which is in accordance with prior studies. Furthermore, our results corroborate findings that neuroticism was more strongly and negatively correlated with inhibitory self-control, than with initiatory self-control. However, when controlling for the other personality traits, neuroticism was only significantly and negatively related to general and inhibitory self-control, and not to initiatory self-control. Hence, the higher the level of neuroticism, the more difficult it is to resist unwanted thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the face of temptations.

Tornquist & Miles, 2019.

Drawing together research showing that emotions can facilitate self-control (DeSteno, 2018), that people with good self-control are able to regulate their emotions effectively (Paschke et al., 2016), and that people can regulate emotions to attain goals (Tamir, 2009a), we propose that adaptive emotion regulation may be one strategy that people with good self-control use to achieve their goals. … Research has generally demonstrated that positive emotions facilitate self-control relative to negative emotions. … Emotion regulation is often considered a form of self-control (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998; Paschke et al., 2016), and specifically refers to the attempts to alter which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience and express them (Gross, 1998, 2015). … Our results suggest that people are sensitive to whether a situation requires enacting or preventing a behavior and view the demands of these situations differently, and further suggest that people with good self-control believe that different emotions can help them to succeed in these situations. … Specifically, people believe that positive emotions are more useful in initiatory than inhibitory self-control situations, whereas they have the opposite beliefs regarding negative emotions, and people with higher trait self-control recognize negative emotions as less useful and positive emotions as more useful for their success in both types of self-control situations.

Tamir, 2009.

If emotions are regulated for instrumental reasons, people should want to feel pleasant emotions when immediate benefits outweigh future benefits, but when future benefits outweigh immediate benefits, people may prefer to feel useful emotions, even if they are unpleasant. … To identify what motivates people to regulate their emotions, the instrumental account integrates research on self-regulation with research on emotion. The account emphasizes that emotion regulation is a domain of self-regulation, and thus that the principles that guide self-regulation, broadly construed, should also guide the regulation of emotion, in particular. … People pursue different goals and therefore should vary in the emotions they prefer to feel in particular situations. For instance, individuals high in neuroticism are typically motivated to avoid threats (Elliot & Thrash, 2002). Emotions such as fear or worry can be useful for successful avoidance (Carver, 2001). Therefore, individuals high in neuroticism should prefer to feel fear or worry when anticipating possible threats. … Overall, there is evidence that people differ in what they want to feel in certain contexts and that such differences are linked to the goals they pursue. 

Nettle, 2006.

Some evolutionary psychologists have argued that heritable variation will not be found in important, fitness-relevant characteristics because of the winnowing effect of natural selection. This article propounds the opposite view. Heritable variation is ubiquitous in all species, and there are a number of frameworks for understanding its persistence. The author argues that each of the Big five dimensions of human personality can be seen as the result of a trade-off between different fitness costs and benefits. As there is no unconditionally optimal value of these trade-offs, it is to be expected that genetic diversity will be retained in the population. … There is abundant evidence of interindividual biological variation in humans, not just at the phenotypic level but also at the genotypic level. For example, the genes coding for the serotonin and dopamine transmitter-receptor systems are massively and ubiquitously polymorphic in the human population. … I briefly examine the nature of each domain and consider the kinds of costs and benefits that increasing the level of the domain might have with respect to biological fitness. … A dimension related to positive emotion, exploratory activity, and reward is a feature common to all personality frameworks and theories. Its most common label is extraversion, and its proximate basis is thought to involve variation in dopamine-mediated reward circuits in the brain. … The neuroticism personality axis is associated with variation in the activity levels of negative emotion systems such as fear, sadness, anxiety, and guilt. The negative effects of neuroticism are well-known in the psychological literature. High neuroticism is a strong predictor of psychiatric disorder in general (Claridge & Davis, 2001), particularly depression and anxiety. … Although very high neuroticism has evident drawbacks, it may also serve as a motivator to achievement in competitive fields among those equipped to succeed. Thus the optimal value of neuroticism would plausibly depend on precise local conditions and other attributes of the person, leading to the maintenance of polymorphism. … The core of openness seems to be a divergent cognitive style that seeks novelty and complexity and makes associations or mappings between apparently disparate domains … The remaining two personality domains, conscientiousness and agreeableness, are often thought of as being unalloyed in their benefits, because they are generally negatively related to measures of delinquency and antisocial behavior … Though it is an uncomfortable truth to recognize, it is unlikely that fitness is unconditionally maximized by investing energy in positive attention to others. Instead, though an empathic cognitive style may be useful in the whirl of social life, it may have costs in terms of exploitation or inattention to personal fitness gains. Moreover, sociopaths, who are low in agreeableness, may at least sometimes do very well in terms of fitness, especially when they are rare in a population (Mealey, 1995). The balance of advantages between being agreeable and looking after personal interests will obviously vary enormously according to context. For example, in a small isolated group with a limited number of people to interact with and a need for common actions, high agreeableness may be selected for. Larger, looser social formations, or situations in which the environment allows solitary foraging, may select agreeableness downward. 

Steimer, 2002.

[In 1878] Charles Letourneau, who was contemporary with the French neuroanatomist Paul Broca, defined emotions as “passions of a short duration” and described a number of physiological signs and behavioral responses associated with strong emotions. … Letourneau assumed that “the strong cerebral excitation” that accompanies emotions probably only concerned “certain groups of conscious cells” in the brain and “must necessitate a considerable increase of blood flow in the cell regions involved.” 1 He also mentioned that the intensity, the expression, and the pathological consequences of emotions were directly linked to “temperaments” (which he defined within the four classic Hippocratic categories). … The suggestion that temperament or personality traits influence the “affective style” and vulnerability to psychopathology is also an important aspect of our modern approach to anxiety and mood disorders. … [today’s] view of emotions being experienced or expressed at three different, but closely interrelated levels: the mental or psychological level, the (neuro)physiological level, and the behavioral level.These three complementary aspects are present in even the most basic emotions, such as fear. … The view that there is a limited set of emotions (eg, fear, anger, etc) with specific neurophysiological and neuroanatomical substrates that can be considered as “basic” and serve as the primitive building blocks from which the other, more complex emotions are built, was challenged as late as 1990. However, Ekman has convincingly argued that there is now enough evidence of universals in expression and in physiology to suggest a biological basis for these elementary emotions. … The fact that anxiety and fear are probably distinct emotional states does not exclude some overlap in underlying brain and behavioral mechanisms. In fact, anxiety may just be a more elaborate form of fear, which provides the individual with an increased capacity to adapt and plan for the future. If this is the case, we can expect that part of the fear-mediating mechanisms elaborated during evolution to protect the individual from an immediate danger have been somehow “recycled” to develop the sophisticated systems required to protect us from more distant or virtual threats. … For a long time, it was assumed that emotions, including fear and anxiety, were almost exclusively generated or processed in a “primitive” part of the brain, ie, the limbic system (“the emotional brain”).The view that emotions and cognitions are separate functions of the brain and must therefore have different underlying neuroanatomical substrates is probably responsible for this simplification. As pointed out by LeDoux in a recent review, 43 modern research with the most advanced neuroimaging technologies still uses this dichotomic approach to higher brain functions as a post hoc explanation: “When a so-called emotional task is used, and a limbic area is activated, the activation is explained by reference to the fact that limbic areas mediate emotions. And when a limbic area is activated in a cognitive task, it is often assumed that there must have been some emotional undertone to the task.” However, neuroanatomical and behavioral data obtained during the last decades clearly indicate that this dichotomy between cognitive and emotional processes is obsolete. … The inhibition of ongoing behaviors is the first behavioral manifestation of an anxious or fearful state. In the 1970s, Gray suggested that vulnerability to anxiety is associated with individual differences in the activity of a septohippocampal behavioral inhibition system (BIS). According to Gray, this is one of the three major emotional systems,which also include the behavioral approach system (BAS) and the fight/flight system (F/FLS) … In LeDoux’s model, the amygdala and thalamic pathways are responsible for the primary appraisal of threat by allowing a rapid, automatic analysis of potentially dangerous stimuli. Additional brain structures, including the hippocampus and cortical pathways, provide more information on the situational context and relevant stimulus characteristics … Activation of the amygdala by threatening stimuli then influences cognitive processes, perception, selective attention, and explicit memory. … Individual differences in sensitivity to threat or stress, and particular coping or affective styles appear to be critical predisposing factors for anxiety-related disorders. Genetic and environmental factors have been implicated, and how these factors interact during development is one of the major questions addressed by recent clinical and fundamental research. … A genetic basis for anxiety-related behaviors is now clearly established, notably through several family, twin, and adoption studies. … The role of environmental influences in the etiology of anxiety is also well established. Early adverse experience is a major developmental risk factor for psychopathology. … [This and other examples] indicate that the developmental processes that determine individual sensitivity to stressors, or emotionality, and coping behaviors involve complex interactions between genetic and environmental factors, and that anxiety-related phenotypes cannot be predicted on the sole basis of a genetic predisposition or early adverse experience. … It is now clear that individual differences in affective or coping styles, which are also observed in nonhuman species, are directly associated with vulnerability to psychopathology. Studying these individual differences, including sex-related differences, in humans and in animal models will give interesting clues about the brain mechanisms of emotional behavior.

Koole, 2009.

As it turns out, people can control virtually every aspect of emotional processing, including how emotion directs attention (Rothermund, Voss, & Wentura, 2008), the cognitive appraisals that shape emotional experience (Gross, 1998a), and the physiological consequences of emotion (Porges, 2007). These and other processes whereby people manage their own emotions are commonly referred to as emotion regulation. … The present article provides an integrative review of contemporary research on the psychology of emotion regulation. … Emotion regulation can thus be defined as the set of processes whereby people seek to redirect the spontaneous flow of their emotions. … The prototype of emotion regulation is a deliberate, effortful process that seeks to override people’s spontaneous emotional responses. Some forms of emotion regulation indeed fit this prototype, by drawing upon the same psychological and neurobiological systems that are involved in the effortful control of action and attention. … During emotion regulation, people may increase, maintain, or decrease positive and negative emotions. Accordingly, emotion regulation often involves changes in emotional responding. These changes may occur in the kinds of emotions that people have, when they have their emotions, and how they experience and express their emotions. … People’s primary emotional response presumably reflects their emotional sensitivity, whereas their secondary emotional response presumably reflects emotion regulation. This distinction is grounded in the conceptualisation of emotion regulation as a control process. … 

lu figure 1

Figure 1. Model of emotional sensitivity versus emotion regulation.

Emotional sensitivity is determined by any variable that influences people’s initial emotional response to the situation, including the nature of the stimuli that people encounter, personal characteristics, and the broader situation. The offset of the emotional response is depicted in figure 1 as the exit gradient, or the steepness with which the emotional response returns to a neutral baseline. Variables that influence the exit gradient belong to the process of emotion regulation. Similar to emotional sensitivity, emotion regulation is determined by the characteristics of the person, the stimuli that the person encounters, and the broader situation. … Distinguishing between emotional sensitivity and emotion regulation is relatively straightforward when people are engaged in the on-line regulation of their emotions. … [However,] studies have shown that anticipating an emotional experience leads to a partial simulation of that experience, in which emotional responses of the brain and body become activated (Niedenthal, 2007; Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005). Therefore emotional sensitivity already comes into play during the anticipation of unwanted emotions. The distinction between emotional sensitivity and emotion regulation is therefore meaningful regardless of whether people regulate their emotions on line, in the heat of the moment, or proactively, before an emotion-arousing situation has actually occurred. … Emotion regulation determines the offset of an emotional response, and can thus be distinguished from emotional sensitivity, which determines the onset of an emotional response. Emotional sensitivity and emotion regulation follow different developmental paths and are functionally distinct throughout the lifespan. 

Martin, 1996.

There is evidence that the ability to recognize basic emotions in facial expressions is innate, or “hard-wired.” Thus, emotional information is likely to be extracted rapidly and automatically in face perception. … The main assumption of our research is that individuals vary in their ability to become aware of these induced emotional responses and to accurately identify them. Thus, individuals who are able to correctly identify the emotional valence of a face following a shorter exposure, as compared to those who require a longer presentation, are more sensitive to their own emotional states as well as to those of others. … The results of these studies support the emotion perception threshold as a measure of individual differences in emotional sensitivity and awareness. … Third, there may be individual differences in the ability of the cortical-level general purpose systems to access this experiential information, compare it to previously acquired emotional information, and arrive at a descriptive label. Although our paradigm does not allow us to separate these possible sources of variability, we assume that most of the variability in individuals arises from the third mechanism, because this is based on learning and prior experience, whereas the first two are presumably biologically based and “hard-wired.” However, it is also possible that there are variations across individuals in such biological processes.

Thus, individuals with particularly low emotion perception thresholds may be sensitive to their own inner emotional states and have well-developed emotional information processing abilities. They are able to extract emotional information from a brief stimulus presentation. In contrast, those with high thresholds may be less able to access and categorize the subjective emotional responses arising from prime activation. Instead, they require a longer stimulus presentation to access the emotional information at a neocortical level. … Although construct validation is a never-ending process, the findings reported here indicate that the emotion perception threshold shows promise as a measure of individual differences in emotional sensitivity, empathy, and, more generally, emotional intelligence or competence. With further validational support, the emotion threshold technique may prove useful in applied settings.

Bloise & Johnson, 2007.

Men’s and women’s memories of life events also differ in the inclusion of emotional and interpersonal information. Women use a greater quantity and variety of emotion words than men when describing their past experiences. … Women include not only a greater number of references to their own emotional states but also a greater number of references to the emotional states of others. In addition, when asked to recall emotional life experiences, women recall more memories of both positive and negative personal experiences than men. … As predicted, women recalled more emotional information than men from a narrative script containing both emotional and neutral information. … finally, emotional sensitivity significantly mediated the gender difference in emotional recall, indicating that emotional sensitivity is a stronger predictor of memory for emotional information than is gender. … An individual’s level of emotional sensitivity was a stronger predictor of their emotional recall than their gender, suggesting that memory for emotional information is not determined by gender alone, but instead reflects a person’s sensitivity to emotional information in their environment. Thus, gender differences in memory for emotional information observed in the present study most likely reflect that women are, on average, more sensitive than men to the emotional aspects of their environment and experiences, at least their interpersonal experiences.

Wall, 2018.

Emotional sensitivity is a construct found in major developmental models of borderline personality disorder. However, the construct remains nebulous. … Marsha Linehan’s biosocial theory of borderline personality disorder (BPD) posits that ES [emotional sensitivity] is one component of a biologically-based vulnerable temperament which interacts with an invalidating emotional environment, contributing to the development of BPD. Individuals with BPD are thought to be emotionally sensitive from birth, resulting in a higher likelihood of experiencing negative emotions in more situations compared to others. This frequent negative affect makes it more difficult to learn appropriate emotion regulation strategies and increases the likelihood of an individual using a maladaptive strategy. In this way, ES can be viewed as one piece of a dynamic emotion dysregulation process. … ES may be defined as heightened emotional reactivity or a tendency to respond emotionally to even low-intensity environmental stimuli. … However, it also remains unclear what is really meant with the term “emotional sensitivity”. Based on the above experimental approaches, the phrase “emotional sensitivity” may be used to refer to emotional reactivity speed or likelihood, emotion recognition or identification accuracy, bias for experiencing affect as negative or general emotional hypervigilance. … [1] All participants above the clinical cut-off for BPD considered themselves to be emotionally sensitive since childhood. [2] Each recognized both the benefits and problems caused by their ES, but 9 out of 10 wished to change it at least in part, recognizing that their sensitivity was problematic. … Individuals with high levels of borderline pathology expressed a lack of understanding and confusion regarding multiple facets of their emotional lives. These individuals stated that they often did not know what they were feeling or why. … [3] A third major theme that emerged was a perception or experience of invalidation of emotional experiences by close others, reported by participants with elevated borderline traits. … Qualitative results of the ES interview suggest that ES, for those identifying themselves as emotionally sensitive, is a heightened emotional reactivity to stimuli, including the emotions of other individuals, [6] or a tendency to have emotional reactions to even low impact stimuli.

Nock, 2008.

This study reports on the development and evaluation of the Emotion Reactivity Scale (ERS), a 21-item self-report measure of emotion sensitivity, intensity, and persistence, among a sample of 87 adolescents and young adults. … Less research attention has focused on the increased emotion reactivity that is likely to predispose individuals to problems with emotion regulation. Emotion reactivity refers to the extent to which an individual experiences emotions (a) in response to a wide array of stimuli (i.e., emotion sensitivity), (b) strongly or intensely (i.e., emotion intensity), and (c) for a prolonged period of time before returning to baseline level of arousal (i.e., emotion persistence). … The ERS assesses the three hypothesized facets of emotion reactivity-emotion sensitivity, intensity, and persistence-as subjectively experienced by an individual. … our analyses suggested that emotion reactivity is best conceptualized as a unidimensional construct when measured by self-report and also supported the internal consistency of this new measure. … we found that adolescents with a mood, anxiety, or eating disorder reported significantly higher emotion reactivity than those without such disorders. … These findings suggest that emotion reactivity is associated with specific forms of psychological disorders rather than with psychopathology more generally. … our analyses demonstrated that emotion reactivity statistically mediates the relation between the presence of psychopathology and both NSSI and suicide ideation. … This study has made a strong argument for a model in which emotion reactivity helps to explain why psychopathology is related with NSSI and suicide ideation.

Zhang, 2016.

we draw attention to the identification of diametrically opposing patterns of variability changes between schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder/autism. Regions of the default-mode network demonstrate lower variability in patients with schizophrenia, but high variability in patients with autism/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, compared with respective controls. In contrast, subcortical regions, especially the thalamus, show higher variability in schizophrenia patients, but lower variability in patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The changes in variability of these regions are also closely related to symptom scores. Our work provides insights into the dynamic organization of the resting brain and how it changes in brain disorders. The nodal variability measure may also be potentially useful as a predictor for learning and neural rehabilitation. … Intersubject variability in resting state functional connectivity is heterogeneous across the cortex, and it is significantly correlated with the degree of evolutionary cortical expansion (Mueller et al., 2013). Individual variability in functional connectivity is also predictive of task performance. … We find that both primary sensory cortex and unimodal association cortex show very low variability because these regions are involved in unitary neural circuitry responsible for simple sensory functions. These regions are usually structurally connected more with regions belonging to the same modality (i.e. the same functional module) and their variability is small. In comparison, the transmodal areas (Mesulam, 1998), including the heteromodal association cortex and limbic regions, demonstrate high variability. These regions receive information from multiple sensory modalities and other heteromodal regions and are therefore responsible for more complex, integrated cognitive activities (Pearlson et al., 1996; Bullard et al., 2013). Consequently, these regions may participate in multiple functional communities at different times with resultant high temporal variability, or flexibility. Our results from resting state functional MRI are consistent with those obtained in task functional MRI by Bassett et al. (2013), who found that in a motor learning task primary sensorimotor and visual areas reconfigure little over time, while multimodal association regions reconfigure frequently. Lastly, we note the relatively low variability of the DMN, including medial frontal gyrus and posterior cingulate/precuneus, which is consistent with the strong functional connectivity within this network during resting state. These results are also in agreement with Power et al. (2011), who suggested that sensory-motor, visual and default mode systems are rather stationary.

Davis & Panksepp, 2018.

A partial explanation and one of the themes of this book is that our personalities are all different because of our underlying genetically based as well as environmentally promoted emotional differences that lead each of us to perceive and react to the world differently. Our unique personalities are a reflection of how we individually experience and respond to the world. Because we cannot experience our environments directly but must rely on our brains to interpret each life event, we all experience the world in our own unique ways. … As we add our affective feelings and values to life events, we simultaneously have different thoughts and memories, as well as different behavioral reactions. The fact that two people can stand side by side and yet perceive the same scene differently with different feelings, interpretations, thoughts, and actions is what adds uniqueness to our personalities. … Each of the many primary emotions we have inherited is basically an evolutionarily adaptive action system with intrinsic Valences—various positive and negative feelings—reflecting in part that all mammals are born with the capacity to express and experience a set of primal emotions. … Panksepp described seven of the primal emotional responses shared by all mammals, including humans. They are capitalized as SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC, and PLAY, to highlight their primary-process inherited nature (although this does not mean that their typical activities are not modulated by living in the world–indeed, they guide a great deal of learning). Each emotion not only has its own characteristic feelings but also guides perceptual interpretations, thoughts, and behavioral reactions, both unlearned and learned. However, the strength and sensitivity of each brain emotion system, as well as the developmental learning it has guided, vary from individual to individual. So, there is substantial variation across different people in each of these basic emotion systems, part of it inherited and part of it learned. … Why should personality theorists accept factor analysis as the standard for parsing human personality space? … While this issue is still debated, the Big five emerged as a widely accepted model, perhaps prematurely. Our argument is that we have to understand the neurobiology of basic emotional states to have a more comprehensive and accurate assessment of human personality, and when neuroscience can demonstrate clear cross-species distinctions among various instinctive emotional systems, perhaps neuroscience should be given priority over statistics. … 

lu figure 1

Figure 5.1. Nested BrainMind Hierarchies: Two-Way or Circular Causation. The three level Nested BrainMind Hierarchy summarizes the hierarchical bottom-up and top-down (two-way or circular) causation proposed to operate in every primal emotional system of the brain. The diagram illustrates the hypothesis that in order for higher MindBrain functions to mature and function (via bottom-up control), they have to be integrated with the lower BrainMind functions Primary processes are depicted as red squares; secondary-process learning as blue circles; and tertiary-level processes by purple rectangles. This coding conveys the manner in which nested hierarchies integrate lower and higher brain functions to eventually exert top-down regulatory control.

At present, the Big five/FFM simply lumps these three affectively negative emotions together as forms of Emotional Instability. It seems unacceptable to relegate anger, fear, and separation distress as mere FFM “facets” of Neuroticism/(low) Emotional Stability, especially given the suffering (antecedent to diverse psychopathologies) created when any one of them becomes overly sensitized or imbalanced. Surely our anger and frustration, our fears and anxieties, and our social pains and distresses deserve as rich an assessment, as primal personality dimensions, as our various positive emotional systems. … [referring to Gray’s system] Furthermore, why not study the behavioral, biological, and psychological mechanisms of each affective brain system separately, rather than lumping all “rewards” together into a single BAS and all “punishments” together into a single BIS or FFFS? That would better allow us to consider specific and general “sensitivities” in each emotional or homeostatic affect system and further refine our definition of mammalian affective space—our genetically endowed sensitivities as well as life-span changes in sensitivities derived from addictive or traumatic experiences. … 

LeDoux & Pine, 2016.

lu figure 1

In the traditional “fear center” model, the subjective experience of “fear” in the presence of a threat is innately programmed in subcortical circuits that also control defensive behaviors and physiological responses. The two-system framework views “fear” as a product of cortical circuits that underlie cognitive functions such as working memory; subcortical circuits control defensive behaviors and physiological responses and only indirectly contribute to conscious “fear.” The traditional view thus requires different mechanisms of consciousness in the brain for emotional and nonemotional states, whereas in the two-system framework, both emotional and nonemotional states of consciousness are treated as products of the same system. In the two-system framework, what distinguishes an emotional from a nonemotional state of consciousness, and what distinguishes different kinds of emotional states of consciousness, are the input processes by the cortical consciousness networks.


See also LeDoux various, especially LeDoux, 1996b.


Casey, 2017.

There is currently a shift in the neurodevelopmental literature from simple dichotomies to circuit-based accounts of emotional development that may enhance a mechanistic understanding of changes in self regulation from childhood to young adulthood. These studies suggest that the development of the emotional brain, especially during adolescence, involves a cascade of changes in connections from subcortical to cortical circuits. Our neurodevelopmental account of these changes suggests that the instantiation of circuit changes is dependent on the preceding ones. first, increases in functional connectivity between the amygdala and ventral striatum correspond to increases in impulsive action toward emotional cues. Subsequent decreases in this subcortical connectivity are associated with diminished reactivity to emotional cues, and changes in medial PFC-amygdala functional connectivity mediate this association. By late adolescence “maturity” of medial PFCamygdala connectivity with the shift from positive to negative vmPFCamygdala connectivity appears to be a prerequisite for cognitive regulation of emotions via cortico-cortical projections. This shift may be a potential prerequisite for subsequent effective modulation of emotion (e.g., redirection of attention and reappraisal) by lateral prefrontal circuitry. Together, the findings suggest that hierarchical changes in circuit connectivity appear to be critical for the continuous development of regulatory processes in emotionally charged situations from late childhood to young adulthood.


Pessoa, 2013.

Pessoa emphasizes the interdependence and integration of cognitive and emotional processes and how emotional and motivational factors influence attention and executive functions.


van Zutphen, 2015.

In conclusion, emotional sensitivity, emotion regulation and impulsivity in BPD patients are important topics in neuroimaging research today. Emotional sensitivity, emotion regulation and impulsivity problems in BPD patients can be understood in terms of an impaired inhibition from the prefrontal brain areas on the limbic areas. However, the present review shows that results across the studies appear not that clear as previously suggested.


Telzer, 2014.

An essential component of youths’ successful development is learning to appropriately respond to emotions in socially appropriate ways. Such emotional competence is thought to arise through the parent–child relationship.

In the current study, we used a multifaceted approach that went beyond self-report measures and examined whether parental neural sensitivity to emotions predicted their child’s emotional competence above and beyond parents’ report of emotional expressivity and adolescents’ reports of the warmth and support of their parent relationships. We also examined whether adolescents’ neural responses to emotions mediated the link between parental neural sensitivity and adolescents’ emotional competence. Such a methodological approach allowed us to assess more implicit forms of emotional experiences. … Results indicate that parents who recruited the amygdala, VLPFC, and brain regions involved in mentalizing (i.e., inferring others’ emotional states) had adolescent children with greater emotional competence. = In addition, adolescents recruited neural regions involved in mentalizing during affect labeling, which significantly mediated the associated between parental neural sensitivity and adolescents’ emotional competence, suggesting that youth are modeling or referencing their parents’ emotional profiles, thereby contributing to better emotional competence.

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