Michael Pluess

University of Surrey · School of Psychology

This study investigated the psychometric properties of the Highly Sensitive Child-Rating System (HSC-RS), the existence of sensitivity groups, and the characterization of sensitivity at behavioral, genetic, and physiological levels in 541 preschoolers (M(SD) age = 3.56(0.27); 45%male; 87%Caucasian). Temperament, genetic, cortisol, and electroenceph...

Sensitivity to environmental influences varies among individuals, with some more responsive to both negative and positive experiences. Individual differences in sensitivity are linked to psychological, physiological, and genetic factors and can be measured using the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) scale. Over three decades, the conceptualization of s...

Around 30% of children are highly sensitive to their environment and process experiences particularly deeply. To facilitate research into highly sensitive children in primary school, we developed a new teacher-report measure. The scale was initially implemented and analysed in a multi-informant sample of two hundred twenty 6–9-year-old Swiss childr...

Importance Exposure to war is associated with poor mental health outcomes. Adverse and traumatic experiences can lead to long-lasting DNA methylation changes, potentially mediating the link between adversity and mental health. To date, limited studies have investigated the impact of war on DNA methylation in children or adolescents, hampering our u...

School teachers are among workers most exposed to stress and burnout—a relevant occupational phenomenon leading to psychological and economic costs. The Environmental Sensitivity individual trait—as captured by the psychological marker of sensory processing sensitivity (SPS)—has been found to have a relevant role in stress and emotional exhaustion...

Forcibly displaced children often face separation from their parents, particularly fathers. These children endure the hardships of war, displacement, and the loss of a key attachment figure. Despite the critical role of attachment in children's well-being during periods of heightened stress, the impact of separation due to war and displacement has...

Background In recent years, the number of forcibly displaced persons has risen worldwide, with approximately 40% being children and adolescents. Most of them are hosted in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Many individuals meet the criteria for mental health issues, which can also be exacerbated by a number of risk factors, including low so...

Forcibly displaced children often experience separation from their parents, primarily fathers. Separation can be the result of father’s death, being forced to take part in military fighting, or fleeing in search for safety elsewhere. Children who grow up in such conditions experience the severe adversities of war and displacement, as well as separa...

Several theories suggest that people differ significantly in their environmental sensitivity, defined as the capacity to perceive and process information about the environment. More sensitive people, who make up between 25% and 30% of the population, are not only more negatively affected by adverse experiences but also benefit disproportionately fr...

People differ in their responses to experiences with some showing a heightened Environmental Sensitivity (ES) for better and for worse. Highly sensitive people tend to get easily overwhelmed in adverse conditions but also to flourish in enriched environments. Yet, no studies have investigated whether people with a heightened ES may experience a pos...

Cooperation, as a mutual collaboration, is a defining feature of human social life. Individual characteristics can influence cooperation. Recent studies have shown a quadratic relationship between cardiac vagal tone (CVT), an index of self‐regulation, and prosocial behaviors. Individual differences in cooperation might also vary as a function of pe...

Background For investigating the individual–environment interplay and individual differences in response to environmental exposures as captured by models of environmental sensitivity including Diathesis‐stress, Differential Susceptibility, and Vantage Sensitivity, over the last few years, a series of statistical guidelines have been proposed. Howev...

Individuals with high environmental sensitivity have nervous systems that are disproportionately receptive to both the protective and imperilling aspects of the environment, suggesting their mental health is strongly context-dependent. However, there have been few consolidated attempts to examine putative markers of sensitivity, across different le...

Around a third of children perceive and process their environment more deeply and are more impacted by its quality. To obtain a more comprehensive and objective measure of this Environmental Sensitivity (ES) in primary school children, we developed a semi-structured, multi-informant interview. Study 1 captures the item development while Study 2 cov...

Much research in psychology relies on data from observational studies that traditionally do not allow for causal interpretation. However, a range of approaches in statistics and computational sciences have been developed to infer causality from correlational data. Based on conceptual and theoretical considerations on the integration of intervention...

Positive and negative aspects of intimate relationships influence mental health and well-being in couples. According to the environmental sensitivity framework, individuals differ in how strongly they are affected by their environment, with some individuals being more or less sensitive to both negative and positive experiences. The present study ex...

For numerous issues of convenience and acceptability, hair hormone data have been increasingly incorporated in the field of war trauma and forced displacement, allowing retrospective examination of several biological metrics thought to covary with refugees’ mental health. As a relatively new research method, however, there remain several complexiti...

Objective: Identification of the most relevant factors leading to severe and persistent Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) presentation in refugee children is critical for prevention and treatment. Using causal inference tools for observational studies, we aimed to estimate the total putative causal effects of the most relevant factors for persi...

The field of developmental psychopathology has made significant contributions to our understanding of both typical and atypical development. However, while there are established theories for developmental psychopathology with detailed criteria for pathological outcomes, there is less agreement regarding development under optimal conditions and the...

Despite growing concern about climate change, there remains a significant gap between individuals' environmental concern and their actual behaviour. Humans' personal relationship with nature is a key contributor to pro‐environmental behaviour (PEB), which may account for this gap. Those individuals with high levels of sensory processing sensitivity...

Children differ substantially in their sensitivity to the quality of their environment. Some are more sensitive and more likely to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in response to Childhood Adversities (CAs), but might also benefit more from Positive Home Experiences (PHE). The aim of this study is to investigate the role of Environment...

People differ in their responses to experiences with some showing a heightened Environmental Sensitivity (ES) for better and for worse. Highly sensitive people tend to get easily overwhelmed in adverse conditions but also to flourish in enriched environments. Yet, no studies have investigated whether people with a heightened ES may experience a pos...

Background Refugee children are at high risk of mental health problems but face barriers to accessing mental health services, a problem exacerbated by a shortage of mental health professionals. Having trained lay counsellors deliver therapy via telephone could overcome these barriers. This is the first study to explore feasibility and acceptability...

Refugee children are at increased risk for mental health problems, including post‐traumatic stress, depression, and externalizing problems. The refugee environment, maternal mental health, and parenting may reduce or exacerbate that risk. This study investigated their direct and indirect associations with child mental health cross‐sectionally in a...

Becoming a parent includes exposure to intense sensory and emotional stimuli. Hence it is reasonable that the individual trait of Sensory Processing Sensitivity, capturing individual differences in the capacity of Environmental Sensitivity to stimuli, holds important implications for parenting. Available evidence suggests that SPS regarding parenti...

Refugee children are often exposed to substantial trauma, placing them at increased risk for mental illness. However, this risk can be mitigated by a capacity for resilience, conferred from multiple ecological systems (e.g., family, community), including at an individual biological level. We examined the ability of hair cortisol concentrations and...

Background: Although the evidence-base for mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions in humanitarian settings is growing rapidly, their mechanisms of change remain poorly understood despite the potential to improve the effectiveness and reach of interventions. Objective: This study aimed to explore the mechanisms or factors th...

The main goal of the current study was to examine the direct and moderating effects of civic discussions with parents and environmental sensitivity using both the total score and its specific dimensions (i.e., Aesthetic Sensitivity, AES; Ease of Excitation, EOE; Low Sensitivity Threshold, LST) on youth civic engagement (attitudes and behaviours). T...

Increasing research shows pubertal development accelerates following threats while it decelerates following deprivation. Yet, these environmental stressors are unlikely to occur in isolation. We investigated how war exposure and energetic stress impact pubertal development using data from the longitudinal Biological Pathways of Risk and Resilience...

The instability hypothesis proposes that family structure transitions lead to negative child outcomes through the pathway of stress. However, in many cases, family structure transitions are not associated with stress or negative child outcomes, suggesting that there are specific circumstances under which transitions are more or less stressful. Usin...

According to several theories, people differ in their sensitivity to environmental influences with some more susceptible than others to both supportive and adverse contextual conditions. Such differences in environmental sensitivity have a genetic basis but are also shaped by environmental factors. Herein we narratively build on our previous work p...

We describe an effort to develop a consensus-based research agenda for mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions in humanitarian settings for 2021-30. By engaging a broad group of stakeholders, we generated research questions through a qualitative study (in Indonesia, Lebanon, and Uganda; n=101), consultations led by humanitarian...

Millions of people are currently displaced. About half of them are children who are at increased risk of mental health problems. While some risk factors such as war exposure are well established, less is known regarding the effects of the local refugee environment. Here we show that the prevalence and comorbidity of mental health problems in Syrian...

Introduction: Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) describes a genetically influenced trait characterized by greater depth of information processing, lower sensory threshold, and ease of overstimulation. It is hypothesized that SPS plays a crucial role in the context of chronic pain.Objectives: This exploratory study examined SPS as a correlate of...

Children differ in their environmental sensitivity (ES), which can be measured observationally or by self-report questionnaire. A parent-report scale represents an important tool for investigating ES in younger children but has to be psychometrically robust and valid. In the current multistudy, we validated the parent-report version of the Highly S...

Background Environmental sensitivity (ES) is considered a significant personality factor in the development and maintenance of depressive symptoms in adolescents. However, a clear instrument that can capture ES in Chinese adolescents is lacking. The current study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the Highly Se...

Altered secretion of cortisol, the primary effector of the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis, has been proposed as a means by which traumatic experiences compromise later mental health. However, despite the popularity of cortisol as a potential biomarker for stress and adversity, findings are inconsistent, and little is known about the impact of...

Schizophrenia (SCZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD) are complex psychiatric disorders which contribute substantially to the global burden of disease. Both psychopathologies are heritable with some genetic overlap between them. Importantly, SCZ and MDD have also been found to be associated with environmental risk factors. However, rather than be...

Previous research suggests that children differ substantially in their sensitivity to positive and negative parenting qualities. In a Swiss sample of N = 264 (Mage: 6.0 years, 50.4 % female, 15% migration background), we examined the interaction between parenting and children’s sensitivity on executive functions (EF). Results showed that EF perform...

Introduction: Displaced refugee children with a history of war exposure are at risk of developing complex and severe forms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Objectives: Search for the most relevant causal predictors of com- plex PTSD in a prospective cohort of Syrian refugee children living in informal settlements in Lebanon (N=1007). Metho...

Post-migration stress and parenting adolescents can reduce parental self-efficacy. This study tested the effects of strengthening parental self-efficacy in refugee parents of adolescents and whether this makes parental self-efficacy less impacted by post-migration stressors. Using a within-subject experimental design, experience sampling data w...

The current paper presents an examination of the associations between Five-Factor Model (FFM) personality facets and Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) to understand which personality facets are especially relevant for SPS. Associations between SPS and the FFM personality domains and facets were examined in older adolescents and young adults (Stu...

Happiness is an increasingly prominent topic of interest across academia. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how it is created, especially not in a multidimensional sense. By ‘created’ we do not mean its influencing factors, for which there is extensive research, but how it actually forms in the person. The work that has been don...

Elevated rates of mental health difficulties are frequently reported in conflict-affected and displaced populations. Even with advances in improving the validity and reliability of measures, our knowledge of the performance of assessment tools is often limited by a lack of contextualization to specific populations and socio-political settings. This...

Objectives War‐exposed refugee children are at elevated risk for mental health problems, but a notable proportion appear resilient. We aimed to investigate the proportion of Syrian refugee children who can be considered resilient, and applied a novel approach to identify factors predicting individual differences in mental health outcomes following...

Background: Whilst genetic and environmental risk factors for schizophrenia (SCZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD) have been established, it is unclear whether exposure to environmental risk factors is genetically confounded by passive, evocative or active gene-environment correlation (rGE). Study objective: This study aims to investigate: (a...

Heightened sensitivity to the environment characterizes approximately 30% of the population and is associated with a higher reactivity, positive or negative, to the surrounding environment. Little attention has been devoted to study the association between this trait and the response to nature and animals, despite the potential benefits of the natu...

Research suggests that both genetic and environmental risk factors are involved in the aetiology of schizophrenia (SCZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD). Importantly, environmental and genetic risk factors are often related as evidenced in gene–environment correlation (rGE), which describes the observation that genetic and environmental factors...

Aims Children's responses to war and displacement are varied; many struggle, while others appear resilient. However, research into these outcomes disproportionately focuses on cross-sectional data in high-income countries. We aimed to (1) investigate change in resilience across two timepoints in a highly vulnerable sample of Syrian refugee children...

In this study, we investigated the association between positive emotion expression in children’s writing at age 11, as indicated by objective raters, and age 50 self-reported well-being outcomes—positive emotions, optimism, life satisfaction, meaning in life, social well-being, and physical health. Using a representative sample (N = 436) from the U...

Increasing research shows pubertal timing accelerates in response to threats while it decelerates in response to deprivation. Yet, these environmental stressors are unlikely to occur in isolation. Drawing from a highly unique sample of Syrian refugee children living in temporary settlements in Lebanon, we investigated how exposure to the Syrian Civ...

Children differ in their Environmental Sensitivity (ES), which can be measured observationally or by self-report questionnaire. A parent-report scale represents an important tool for investigating ES in younger children but has to be psychometrically robust and valid. In the current multi-study, we validated the parent-report version of the Highly...

The BIOPATH cohort was established to explore the interplay of psychosocial and biological factors in the development of resilience and mental health problems in Syrian refugee children. Based in Lebanon, a middle-income country significantly impacted by the refugee crisis, it is the first such cohort of refugees in the Middle East. Families were r...

The interplay of parenting and environmental sensitivity on children’s behavioral adjustment during, and immediately after, the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions was investigated in two longitudinal studies involving Italian preschoolers (Study 1, N = 72; 43% girls, M years = 3.82(1.38)) and primary school children (Study 2, N = 94; 55% girls, M years...

Young adolescents are hypothesized to differ in their environmental sensitivity, at both phenotypic (i.e., Sensory Processing Sensitivity [SPS]) and physiological (i.e., biological stress response) level. This is the first study that investigated whether individual differences in environmental sensitivity at physiological level could be predicted b...

Objective: Relationship education programs have proven effective in promoting relationship quality and preventing divorce among married couples. However, according to theories of Environmental Sensitivity, people differ for genetic reasons in their sensitivity to environmental influences with some more affected by both negative and positive experi...

Heightened sensitivity to the environment characterizes approximately 30% of the population and is associated with a higher reactivity, positive or negative, to the surrounding environment. Little attention has been devoted to study the association between this trait and the response to nature and animals, despite the potential benefits of the natu...

The current paper presents a detailed examination of a lay theory perspective on the Sensory-Processing-Sensitivity (SPS) personality profile within the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality. The lay SPS personality profile was assessed by asking self-identified highly sensitive people to rate themselves on a Five-Factor Model questionnaire (NEO-P...

Elevated rates of mental health difficulties are frequently reported in conflict-affected and displaced populations. Even with advances in improving the validity and reliability of measures, our knowledge of the performance of assessment tools is often limited by a lack of contextualization to specific populations and socio-political settings. This...

Much research in psychology relies on data from observational studies that traditionally do not allow for causal interpretation. However, a range of approaches in statistics and computational sciences have been developed to infer causality from correlational data. Based on conceptual and theoretical considerations on the integration of intervention...

Introduction Globally, around 10% of children are born preterm and are more at risk of negative developmental outcomes. However, empirical evidences and theoretical reasoning also suggest that premature birth can be a susceptibility factor, increasing sensitivity to the environment for better and for worse. Because available findings are controvers...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02130-7

Humans differ substantially in how strongly they respond to similar experiences. Theory suggests that such individual differences in susceptibility to environmental influences have a genetic basis. The present study investigated the genetic architecture of Environmental Sensitivity (ES) by estimating its heritability, exploring the presence of mult...

En général, on pense et on s’attend à ce que tout le monde bénéficie à un degré similaire des effets positifs des expériences favorables. Toutefois, selon les théories de la sensibilité environnementale (SE), la sensibilité des individus aux influences de leur environnement varie considérablement. Nous abordons ici ces différences dans le contexte...

Adolescents differ in their degree of Environmental Sensitivity, that is, the ability to perceive and process information about their environment. The present study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of the Highly Sensitive Child scale (HSC), a self-report measure of Environmental Sensitivity, in two Belgian and UK samples with a tota...

Some children are more affected than others by their upbringing due to their increased sensitivity to the environment. More sensitive children are at heightened risk for the development of internalizing problems, particularly when experiencing unsupportive parenting. However, little is known about how the interplay between children’s sensitivity an...

The BIOPATH cohort was established to explore the interplay of psychosocial and biological factors in the development of resilience and mental health problems in Syrian refugee children. Based in Lebanon, a middle-income country significantly impacted by the refugee crisis, it is the first such cohort of refugees in the Middle East. Families were r...

Syrian children affected by the civil war are at increased risk of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and externalizing behaviour problems. Screening questionnaires are designed to identify individual children who require further assessment and treatment, and also estimate the need for ment...

This cross-sectional study explored whether the association between perceived family support and child well-being was moderated by the individual trait of Environmental Sensitivity (the ability to register, process, and respond to stimuli) and cardiac vagal tone (CVT, an index of self-regulation) in a sample of children living in socioeconomically...

There is significant variation in the response to adversity, with a substantial proportion of individuals displaying psychological resilience. Epigenetic mechanisms are hypothesised to be one molecular pathway of how experiences can become biologically embedded and contribute to individual differences in resilience. However, not much is known regar...

In the field of developmental psychology, resilience is broadly understood as positive adaptation despite exposure to adversity. The concept provides an explanation for the wide variability in mental health outcomes observed in children exposed to adverse experiences. Although resilience has become an important and influential concept in the field,...

The quality of the school environment and the teacher-child relationship play an important role in the positive development of children with long-term influences. However, as suggested in theories of individual differences in Environmental Sensitivity such as Differential Susceptibility, children may differ substantially in their sensitivity to the...