Environmental Sensitivity And Individual Manifestation Differences In Different Environments

Individuals vary in their sensitivity to environmental stimuli.Environmental Sensitivity theory points out that individuals with different environmental sensitivity have differences in manifestation under different environments.Compared with low environmental sensitivity individuals,high environmental sensitivity individuals are more likely to be affected by negative environment and have more serious negative outcomes,but at the same time,they are also more likely to be affected by positive environment,thus producing more positive outcomes（Pluess,2015）.At present,many studies have focused on the impact of the interaction between environmental sensitivity and environment on individual development,and a large number of studies have demonstrated that individuals with high environmental sensitivities have their own unique manifestations in different environments（for a review,see Greven et al.,2019）.However,there are still some problems to be solved in the existing study.First,in order to better carry out relevant research in the field of environmental sensitivity in China,existing studies have revised the measurement scale of environmental sensitivity.However,the revised Chinese version of the Highly Sensitive Children Scale is controversial in terms of its factor structure and environmental sensitivity type,and the validity of the scale in all applicable groups（8-19 years old）has not been investigated.Secondly,in the current research on the differential manifestation of individuals with different environmental sensitivity under different environments,most of the individuals’differential manifestation in positive and negative aspects is independently investigated.However,this research method is not conducive to comprehensively and systematically understanding the performance differences of individuals with different environmental sensitivities.Third,until now,the reason why individuals with different environmental sensitivities differ in different environments has not been clear.According to the existing research results,some scholars have preliminarily proposed the reason behind it,which may be caused by the different attention bias of individuals with high and low environmental sensitivity in different environments.However,there has not been any direct empirical study on this speculation at present.In view of the above problems in the current research,three studies were conducted in this study.See below for detail.First,a preliminary study was conducted to further revise the Chinese version of the Highly Sensitive Children and Adolescents Scale,providing a good scale tool for the following two substudies in this paper.This study used 9091 participants from primary school to university to investigate the reliability and validity and factor structure of the scale,and tested the measurement invariance across genders and school stages.The results showed that,first of all,the scale has good reliability and retest reliability as well as convergent and discriminant validity,but its aesthetic sensitivity and low sensory threshold subscales reliability are slightly lower.Secondly,the scale factor structure conforms to the bifactor model.Third,the scale has the full configural,full metric and full scalar invariance across genders,and has full configural,full metric and partial scalar invariance across school stages,but the scalar invariance is not established.In addition,the Latent Class Analyses is used to further investigate the classification of environmental sensitivity types in China.The results showed that there were also high,medium and low environmental sensitive groups in China,with the proportion of 35.40%,40.28%,and 24.32%.Secondly,in study 1,the moderation model was constructed to investigate the different manifestation between positive and negative environments of individuals with different environmental sensitivities.A total of 3861(1671 males,2190 females,M_age=16.89,SD=3.40)participants were included.In this study,the objective index of family socioeconomic status was used to measure the quality of individual environmental conditions,and it was analyzed as a moderating variable.In addition,based on the Dual Model of Mental Health,the differences in positive and negative reactions of individuals with different environmental sensitivities were also investigated.In the positive reaction,the positive emotions and life satisfaction of the participants were investigated,and in the negative reaction,the negative emotions,depression,anxiety and stress were investigated.The results showed that the positive response of high environmental sensitivity individuals was lower than that of low environmental sensitivity individuals,and the negative response was higher than that of low environmental sensitivity individuals.In addition,with the increase of family socioeconomic status,the increase of positive response of high environmental sensitivity individuals is slower than that of low environmental sensitivity individuals,while the decrease of negative response is similar to that of low environmental sensitivity individuals.Finally,the second study used experimental methods to investigate the mechanism of attention bias of different environmental sensitive individuals to emotional stimuli under positive and negative environments,so as to try to explain the causes of the differences in manifestation of different environmental sensitive individuals.A total of 68 participants(35males,33 females,M_age=20.49,SD=1.07)were included.In this study,a mixed experimental design of 2 pressure environment（low pressure environment,high pressure environment）×2 environmental sensitivity group（high environmental sensitivity group,low environmental sensitivity group）×3 picture stimulus types（positive picture,neutral picture and negative picture）was adopted.In this experiment,the socially evaluated cold pressor test was used to induce the stress of the participants,and eye-tracking technology was used to investigate the difference in the attention bias of the four groups of participants to the positive and negative pictures by free-viewing task.Specifically,three eye-tracking indicators of the participants’first fixation,dwell time and fixation count were used to investigate.The results showed that,first of all,the difference of scores among the four groups was mainly reflected in the position of first fixation;Secondly,the difference of attention bias between positive and negative images in low environmental sensitive individuals was larger than that in high environmental sensitive individuals.Thirdly,under high pressure environment,high environmental sensitivity individuals tend to pay less attention to emotional stimuli than low environmental sensitivity individuals,while under low pressure environment,high environmental sensitivity individuals tend to pay more attention to emotional stimuli than low environmental sensitivity individuals.