Highly Sensitive Person

A highly sensitive person (HSP) is a person having the innate trait of high psychological sensitivity (or innate sensitiveness as Carl Jung originally coined it). According to Elaine N. Aron and colleagues as well as other researchers, highly sensitive people, who comprise about a fifth of the population, may process sensory data much more deeply and thoroughly due to a biological difference in their nervous systems.

This is a specific trait with key consequences that in the past has often been confused with innate shyness, social anxiety problems, inhibitedness, or even social phobia and innate fearfulness, introversion, and so on. The existence of the trait of innate sensitivity was demonstrated using a test that was shown to have both internal and external validity. Although the term is primarily used to describe humans, the trait is present in nearly all higher animals.

Read more about Highly Sensitive Person:  Usage, Epistemological Considerations, Research, Attributes and Characteristics, Measures, Contrast With Dabrowski's Over-excitability, Criticism

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