Collection Title: “High Sensitivity Through the Lens of Context - Challenges and Potential”

Guest Editor: Dr. Alon Goldberg, Tel-Hai College, Department of Education, Upper Galilee 12210 Israel. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3267-1947

Contact: alongol@telhai.ac.il

And

Dr. Mona Vintila, West University of Timişoara, mona.vintila@e-uvt.ro

Overview and Rationale

Highly sensitive personality (HSP) is a temperamental trait characterized by deep cognitive processing of sensory and emotional information, heightened emotional reactivity, and increased sensitivity to environmental subtleties. While high sensitivity has long been framed predominantly through a vulnerability lens, recent research suggests it may also confer adaptive advantages in certain contexts.

This collection would seek to broaden the scientific exploration of HSP by encouraging research that addresses both its challenges and adaptive potential across diverse contexts and by inviting empirical, theoretical, and conceptual contributions that reflect the full range of HSP-related outcomes. This includes studies that examine environmental mismatches resulting in distress or dysfunction, as well as investigations into creative adaptation, resilience, growth, and flourishing in supportive settings.

Aim of the Collections

The aim of the Collections would be to expand the focus on high sensitivity in psychology by exploring the dynamic interplay between the trait and environmental, social, cultural, and psychological contexts. We would particularly welcome contributions that adopt a contextualized lens, whether the outcomes are positive, negative, or complex. Our objective would be not to exclude studies that emphasize vulnerability but to broaden the scientific discourse to include variability in experiences and outcomes.

Scope and Topics

We would encourage a wide range of submissions from different psychological subfields, including but not limited to:

Developmental psychology

Individual differences and personality research

Clinical and counseling psychology

Educational psychology (e.g., how highly sensitive students respond to classroom demands, teacher-student dynamics or sensory stimulation in learning environments)

Occupational and organizational psychology (e.g., how highly sensitive individuals experience workplace demands, leadership styles, sensory overstimulation, or derive meaning and satisfaction in various occupational contexts)

Cognitive psychology - deep processing, attentional sensitivity, and adaptive decision-making in contextually supportive conditions

Socioemotional psychology - emotion regulation, positive emotionality, and prosocial behavior of those with HSP

Health psychology (e.g., association between HSP and health issues and onset of disease)

Neuroscience and genetics

Evolutionary psychology (e.g., theoretical frameworks examining HSP as an adaptive survival strategy)

Cultural psychology - cultural perceptions and expressions of high sensitivity, sensitivity in diverse sociocultural contexts and settings

Key Themes May Include:

The interaction of HSP with supportive vs. non-supportive environments

Adaptive and maladaptive responses to context among highly sensitive individuals

The role of creativity, imagination, or environmental shaping as coping mechanisms

Longitudinal trajectories and developmental factors influencing HSP

Context-sensitive interventions and clinical applications

Sociocultural or policy implications for educational, occupational, or therapeutic environments

Clarification on Inclusion Criteria

This collection would welcome studies that report on both strengths and vulnerabilities associated with high sensitivity. Manuscripts that address adverse outcomes, particularly when contexts are not aligned with the needs of highly sensitive individuals, would be, not only welcome, but considered essential to the goal of understanding variability. We also would like to invite theoretical or empirical work on mechanisms, including stress reactivity, differential susceptibility, biological sensitivity to context, and gene-environment interactions.

Article Types and Methodologies

We would be open to a variety of article types, including empirical research (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods), meta-analyses, systematic reviews, theoretical papers, and innovative methodological approaches. We also would encourage cross-disciplinary collaborations and perspectives that integrate multiple levels of analysis (e.g., biological, psychological, contextual). Submission deadline for full manuscripts Sep. 1, 2026

Guest Editor

Dr Marco Giancola

Department of Biotechnological and Clinical Sciences

University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy

marco.giancola@univaq.it

This Collection introduces a new lens for understanding personality, identity, and the self in digital environments through three main interdependent processes: Expression, Amplification, and Inference (EAI).

1. Expression (E) - Individuals express personality, identity, and the self through digital behaviours, including self-presentation (e.g., profiles, avatars), communication styles, and patterns of interaction. These expressions reflect both stable dispositions and context-dependent adaptations.
2. Amplification (A) - Digital environments amplify personality, identity, and the self through platform affordances (e.g., anonymity, visibility, feedback mechanisms), algorithmic reinforcement (e.g., recommendation systems), and social dynamics (e.g., virality, echo chambers), intensifying both adaptive and maladaptive traits.
3. Inference and Feedback (I) - Digital interactions generate rich behavioural traces, such as clicks, linguistic patterns, usage logs, and interaction networks, which can be used by computational systems, including machine learning and natural language processing, to infer, model, and predict personality, identity, and self-related processes. These inferred profiles may then be used to personalise digital environments, creating recursive feedback loops that shape future behaviours, identity expression, and self-perception.

Topics

To ensure conceptual coherence while maintaining breadth, this Collection welcomes contributions addressing the following three core domains.

1. Expression (E). Studies examining how individuals present, negotiate, and adapt their personality, identity, and self in digital contexts through self-presentation, communication styles, and avatar-based or AI-mediated interactions.
2. Amplification (A). Research exploring how digital environments intensify adaptive (e.g., prosocial behaviour and creativity) and maladaptive (e.g., cyber-aggression, manipulation, and problematic technology use) manifestations of personality, identity, and the self.
3. Inference and Feedback (I). Contributions investigating how digital behavioural traces, including clicks, linguistic patterns, usage logs, interaction networks, profiles, and avatars, can be used to assess, infer, model, and predict personality, identity, and the self, as well as how algorithmic systems personalise digital environments and shape future behaviour, identity expression, and self-perception.

Manuscript types

The Special Issue welcomes:

• Original articles, including quantitative (e.g., cross-sectional, longitudinal, experimental, and digital trace data analyses) and qualitative research (e.g., interviews, digital ethnography, and thematic analyses of online behaviours)
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
• Theoretical and conceptual papers
• Methodological papers

Interdisciplinary contributions are strongly encouraged.

Keywords

• Personality
• Identity
• Self
• Self-concept
• Big Five/HEXACO
• Dark Triad/Dark Tetrad
• Digital Personality
• Digital Identity
• Digital Self
• Social Media
• Online Behaviours
• Behavioural Traces
• Digital Phenotyping
• Algorithmic Personality Inference
• Psycho-informatics
• Machine Learning
• Computational Psychology
• Human-AI Interaction
• Problematic Technology Use
• Cyberpsychology