engleski

Sensory processing sensitivity, coping strategies and negative psychological symptoms

Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) is an innate trait characterized by increased sensitivity to external and internal stimuli, such as loud noises, crowds, pain, hunger etc. and a tendency to process subtle stimuli more deeply and get easily overwhelmed. This trait has been mainly explored as a risk factor for developing negative affect such as anxiety and depression. However, this research aims to distinguish variables that could moderate the relation between SPS and negative affect. We examined the moderation of strategies of coping with stress on the relationship between SPS and anxiety, stress and depression. A total of 348 participants (54 male, 294 female, age M = 21.57, SD = 2.91) completed an online questionnaire which included The Highly Sensitive Person Scale (Aron & Aron, 1997), brief COPE (Carver, 1997), with “problem focused“, “emotion focused” and “avoidance focused” strategies, and DASS-21 (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) as a measure of negative affect. In accordance with expectations, SPS was related to higher levels of negative affect. Moreover, the results of regression analyses showed that the only significant predictor of negative affect among coping strategies were the avoidance focused strategies, which together with SPS explained 31.9% variance of depression, 25.8% of anxiety and 24.6% of stress. The moderation effect was observed only in the relationship between SPS and anxiety, indicating that if someone scores higher on SPS and uses avoidance focused coping strategies more, he/she is more prone to report higher levels of anxiety. Taken together, these results suggest that using avoidance focused coping strategies such as self-distraction, denial and self-blame is generally linked to higher levels of distress, and is especially harmful for those scoring high on SPS.

sensory processing sensitivity; coping strategies; anxiety; stress; depression

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