The True Meaning of '1 in 5 People' are HSP [HSP, Empath, High Sensitivity]
Continuing from last time, following our basic discussion on HSP and empaths, I will talk about some misconceptions that are spreading in society regarding HSP.
Please note that some of this content may overlap with past posts.
It is generally said that 1 in 5 people are HSP. However, the idea that one-fifth of the world's population is HSP and the other four-fifths are non-HSP is not accurate.
As I will explain in later lectures, human personality traits cannot be discussed in a binary way, such as whether one is HSP or not. Furthermore, high sensitivity is not divided into highly sensitive HSPs and less sensitive non-HSPs.
People who know the '80/20 rule,' also known as the Pareto Principle discovered by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, tend to think that 20% of the world is HSP and the remaining 80% is non-HSP, but this is a mistake.
The '2:6:2 rule,' also known as the 'Worker Ant Law,' might be closer to representing the distribution of human sensitivity.
Basically, everyone has a certain degree of sensitivity. It is just that the degree differs.
According to research by Dr. Iimura, Dr. Michael Pluess, and others, the variation in sensory processing sensitivity and environmental sensitivity follows a normal distribution.
A normal distribution is a graph like the one below.
In other words, the meaning of 1 in 5 people being HSP roughly means that 15-20% of the world's population has high sensory processing sensitivity, 60-70% has average sensitivity, and the remaining 15-20% has low sensitivity.
Sensory processing sensitivity represents individual differences in the ease of receiving sensory stimuli, as well as attention and vigilance.
Sensory processing sensitivity was proposed in the field of personality psychology in the late 1990s by HSP proponent Dr. Elaine Aron and her husband, Dr. Arthur Aron.
Also, around the same time in the late 1990s when Dr. Aron and others proposed sensory processing sensitivity, the concept of differential susceptibility was proposed in the field of developmental psychology by Dr. Jay Belsky. Dr. Jay Belsky discovered that highly sensitive children are influenced for better or worse by good and bad environments, especially mother-child relationships, and called this differential susceptibility.
Later, in the late 2010s, British developmental psychologist Dr. Michael Pluess and others proposed environmental sensitivity, which integrated sensory processing sensitivity, differential susceptibility, and biological sensitivity proposed in 2005. In short, environmental sensitivity is the sensitivity to stimuli from the environment.
In the research by Dr. Michael Pluess and others regarding the distribution of environmental sensitivity, 30% of people are considered to have high environmental sensitivity, 40% have average sensitivity, and 30% have low sensitivity.
Next time, I will talk about sensitivity and DOES.
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