Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Highly sensitive person


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. But cleanup to remove promotionalism, and consider merging with Sensitivity (human).  Sandstein  11:29, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Highly sensitive person

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I suspect this article is a WP:PROMO and should be deleted under G11 of speedy deletion as well as WP:DEL14 (not suitable for Wikipedia). The article attempts to conflate Highly Sensitive Person with other more well proven concepts such as "sensory processing sensitivity" and the Behavioral Inhibition System. It also attempts to use references that use the phrase "Highly sensitive person" or even "Highly sensitive personality" in the more general sense as to pass the term off as having more research related to it than it actually has. For this reason I believe it's a variety of WP:NEOlogism that is based mostly on the WP:OR writings of it's main promoter, Dr. Elaine N. Aron.

The article also contains phrases taken directly from Dr. Elaine's promotional material, phrases like "HSP's often describe themselves as having a rich and complex inner life." - "They may startle easily and get rattled when required to accomplish a lot in a short time." and "highly sensitive people, who compose about a fifth of the population" and "Although the term is primarily used to describe humans, something similar to the trait is present in over 100 other species."

I'd like to point out that G11 of speedy deletion isn't only limited to the promotion of businesses, but also extends to the promotion of ideas. If you go to the "highly sensitive person" official page, you will soon get an understanding of what this concept is really about. There's a questionnaire full of tautologies and generalities designed to encourage people to self-diagnose with "HSP" - there's a store selling books on HSP, HSP in the workplace, HSP relationships, HSP for children, HSP audiobooks, HSP videos, HSP seminars, and there's now even a feature length movie entitled "Sensitive: The untold story". The trailer for this feature length movie reveals celebrity endorsements, wishy washy statements, and out of context interviews that have been cut to shreds in the editing room - the usual bunk you'd expect to find in any late night self-help promotional material. Wikipedia should be promoting facts and good research, not lending authority to this sort of sales and marketing campaign which is only loosely associated to more credible terms and phrases.

We are not E.N.Aron's marketing team. Jobrot (talk) 18:27, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Behavioural science-related deletion discussions. North America1000 04:31, 3 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Strong keep. The article covers a concept that has garnered substantial notability over two decades—far beyond what could even be conjectured to be anyone's (alleged) "marketing": of the 1220 Google News hits (2016-01-03) for "highly sensitive person" (with quotes), only 274 (22.4%) included the word "aron"; more broadly, only 79,100 (22.8%) of the corresponding 346,000 Google Web hits included "aron". In other words, the concept has spread in notability. Aron, a Ph.D. Psychologist, may be considered the pioneering authority in the field, a reliable source herself, and it's fitting that her words be included, in context, in a Wikipedia article on this concept, even if—like many authorities—she publishes work readable by laymen. Like all psychology concepts, high sensitivity bears some difficulty of definition and application, but such objections can be dealt with by discussion within this Wiki article rather than by deleting it altogether. As far as the nominator's accusations of conflation: be aware that Behavioral Inhibition Syndrome is an entirely distinct concept, and Aron herself has specifically said that sensory processing sensitivity is one characteristic of highly sensitive persons (HSPs); there is no confusion or conflation on Aron's part. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:10, 3 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Well apart from some WP:GOOGLEHITS issues in what you've said, your argument seems to be against your position: As I stated in my nomination "highly sensitive person" is a general term used in many different articles in relation to many different stimuli... and that's what's at issue here - if you go to the hsperson website the first text on the page reads; "Are you easily overwhelmed by such things as bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens nearby?" this is a prime example of a fallacious self-fulfilling question (aimed at being a catch-all to serve confirmation bias). Most everyone can be overwhelmed by bright lights, strong smells or sirens close by - that's why these things are used by law enforcement and the military. To see that in any diagnostic criteria is perverse, the fact that it's a self-diagnostic is even more so. In fact, go do the test right now; I'm sure Aron will come out on top and have you as a HSP  here are just a select few questions: "I am bothered by intense stimuli, like loud noises or chaotic scenes." - "I try hard to avoid making mistakes or forgetting things." - "I am annoyed when people try to get me to do too many things at once." - "I tend to be very sensitive to pain.".


 * These are all just traits of being human. If this article is to stay it's going to (as G.11 cautions against) "need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic" - only if Aron is talking about the general phrase/trait "highly sensitive person" which we both agree appears in most in other papers - then this article shouldn't be focus so much on her work. It must be expanded to be an encyclopedic article about the general trait. But right now it just focuses on her work! And that's WHY it's promotional in nature.


 * Most of the first paragraph is taken from her own website! It's ridiculously WP:PROMO and should be deleted! --Jobrot (talk) 03:56, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
 * or merged. --Jobrot (talk) 09:03 15 January 2016 (UTC)


 * My reply is below, inline after Min al Khadr's intervening comment. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:58, 4 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep per rcraig Min al Khadr (talk) 14:02, 4 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Reaffirm: Strong Keep. striking out duplicate !vote  Onel 5969  TT me 14:20, 9 January 2016 (UTC)  (Reply to Jobrot's 03:56, 4 January 2016 reply) Nominator Jobrot's admonition that the article should be expanded so it doesn't focus "so much" on Aron's own work is a WP:NPOV (neutral point of view) issue remedied through ordinary editing, rather than a WP:NOTABILITY issue that should be the focus of AfD discussions.  Further, nominator's critique of the concept of high sensitivity (HS) is based, not on a predominance of reliable sources asserting HS is bogus or even fringe, but on nominator's personal opinion that HS's characteristics are "all just traits of being human"—when the literature indicates that only about 20% of humans are deemed HSPs. My 3 January 2016 references to Google (esp. News) hits were offered to show the low percentage (about 22%) of articles that are directly attributable to Aron, to demonstrate that the concept is not promotional. Edit; don't delete. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:58, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Well I'm sure the members of the "over 100 other species" who "feel overwhelmed by coarse fabrics" and "make a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows" will feel behooved by your re-affirming your vote. Meanwhile, the article is as I say - mostly concerning Aron's viewpoint (to the point of being cribbed from her promotional material) WP:NPOV and will require a complete re-write (as warned about in WP:G11) to convert it into being about a general character trait of human beings (something Aron states as well). It's a character trait which is fairly self-explanatory, and probably shouldn't be on wikipedia as per WP:DEL14. A highly sensitive person, is; a person who is highly sensitive. I'm glad you agree that the article requires editing. --Jobrot (talk) 16:20, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Onel 5969  TT me 14:21, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep There's plenty of coverage out there and so the topic is notable. The rest is then a matter of ordinary editing, not deletion. Andrew D. (talk) 00:14, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep but edit for POV and expand conceptually. This article has been around since 2004 and has had many editors. That tells me that it's a topic, not just one person's paean to Aron. Then, it turns out that there is a completely inadequate article Sensitivity (human) that has nothing worth keeping. Therefore, this could become an article on sensitivity in humans, both highly-, normal- and insensitive. I note that the references here that I looked at were mostly on the general topic of sensitivity, not solely about the topic of highly sensitive people. (One of the articles is about crickets, for criminey sakes!) And there is a whole section on shyness, which may be related but isn't the same as HSP. So this article already covers more ground than its title, but not well. A general article on sensitivity makes sense. (Pardon the pun.) LaMona (talk) 00:47, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with this comment and think this is the best course for the article. I think Sensitivity (human) has the better title of the two - but I can see from the talkpage that it's been a bit of a drift and lacking direction for a while. I think a merge and clean up might be in order with the structure you prescribe (highly- normal- and insensitive) or something similar. --Jobrot (talk) 10:42, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * LaMona makes an interesting point, but there would be little in a merged Sensitivity (human) article that isn't already in this HSP article, since there's apparently extremely little written about "normal" (unremarkable) sensitivity or about in sensitivity. The bottom line is: Aron popularized a term that has garnered significant coverage enduring two decades, a conclusion echoed by the fact that this HSP article receives a substantial ~12,000 views/month while Sensitivity (human) receives only ~1,100 views/month and "Insensitivity" doesn't have an article. It's Sensitivity (human) that should be changed to a re-direct, and this HSP article should merely be improved through normal editing. —RCraig09 (talk) 14:43, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, but as discussed earlier and mentioned in the nomination, "highly sensitive person" is a general term, it's a general character trait - which as demonstrated in the article's poor sourcing, is conflated with "highly sensitive personality" and being "highly sensitive to stimulus". It's all very obviously set out to be general. To claim that Aron "popularized a term that has garnered significant coverage enduring two decades" is a bit rich; The phrase "highly sensitive" predates Aron's work, and probably her existence on the planet. On top of this, she herself makes no bones about the fact she's talking about a general trait of people, and not a disorder or condition. There's no chance "HSP" will ever appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual; Aron makes this clear (to the relief of the psychology community as a whole no doubt). So as she's talking about human sensitivity in general - I think that Sensitivity (human) is the more sensible location of this sort of information and research on a general character trait. --Jobrot (talk) 15:01, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It's irrelevant that the broad terms "sensitive" and "highly sensitive" have long been in the colloquial or psychological vernacular.  Mainly because of Aron, this 11-year-old wiki article's specific term HSP is much more well-defined than what a layman would vaguely call a "general character trait": the 15-20% of the population who are HSPs are perceived by reliable sources to have a qualitatively different cluster of neurological/psychological traits, experiences, advantages, disadvantages and challenges, that have actually bolstered the concept of HSP as a meaningful and useful group designator qualitatively distinguishing its members from non-HSPs. "HSP" will not be in the DSM: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because it is not deemed a disorder—possibly due to Aron's and others' efforts to de–stigmatize that group.  In short, HSP is a quite well-defined and useful term distinguishing a subset group of (normal) people. The broad and vague range of Sensitivity (human) simply hasn't risen to the same level of coverage.  —RCraig09 (talk) 19:39, 10 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Clearly I'm going to have to quote from the article directly to get you to WP:LISTEN. Also, whether an article gets the most hits, or is the oldest - says nothing of the quality of its content; such arguments would be examples of the argumentum ad antiquitatem and argumentum ad populum fallacies which is why policies like WP:GHITS exist (as mentioned earlier).
 * Now on to the meat of our discussion. To quote the article directly:
 * "This article is about the personality trait."
 * "Although the term is primarily used to describe humans, something similar to the trait is present in over 100 other species."
 * "...the name is gaining popularity because it presents the trait in a positive light." (also an example of post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking).
 * "the trait is normal and advantageous"
 * "some people born with the trait of sensitivity"


 * I think I've made my point, but as you can see those quotes also drift towards "normalizing" aka generalizing the trait.


 * Again, to quote the article directly "According to Elaine N. Aron and colleagues as well as other researchers..." ('other researchers' being an example of WP:WEASELWORD) - highly sensitive people "...compose about a fifth of the population". Now; if something is a personality trait, found in all people, with 1 in every 5 people on the planet (showing that trait to a high degree, and others showing the trait to a lesser degree - hence the HSP scale); I think it's perfectly legitimate to describe it as a general degree of Sensitivity (Human). And to place it as a subsection of the personality trait 'sensitivity'. This would also simplify and provide impetus on editors to clean up the WP:PROMO parts of the article which have been cribbed from Aron's website (and probably violate WP:COPYRIGHT).
 * Aron is describing her chosen nomenclature as a personality trait, and it's perfectly valid to treat it as such. I hope that using her own language has effectively communicated this to you. The benefits of merging the the two pages on the personality trait sensitivity, and making it about degrees of this general personality trait out way any damage to Aron's promotional work. I'm not here to preserve advertising. Can we please WP:DROPTHESTICK already. --Jobrot (talk) 04:41, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I've already acknowledged that HSPs are characterized by a cluster of "traits"; nominator's posting of sometimes-unsourced "trait" quotes and the hatnote from the wiki article itself misses the point entirely: The crux, again, is that the nominator personally "thinks it's perfectly legitimate" to generalize to a continuous spectrum the "S" (sensitivity) portion of the specific term HSP, when reliable sources have given the specific entire term HSP a quite well-defined meaning. Just as critically: (Aron et al.'s) normalizing a trait has nothing to do with (nominator's) generalizing it. I have WP:LISTENed at length and have already explained reasons why I cited Google News hit percentages and wiki-article view comparisons (not as Latin-language fallacies), and why Aron's and others' works constitute reliable sources and not promo. Agreed: careful editing would benefit this article. —RCraig09 (talk) 12:00, 11 January 2016
 * Highly; a degree. Sensitive; a trait. Person; the subject. Personally I don't think "bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens nearby" or "a lot going on at once" or "overwhelming situations" are very specific indicators at all. But we'll have to agree to disagree. To reiterate - Aron's own material describes HSP as a trait, not a discrete condition, and I think it's fairly obvious from the name that it's a matter of degree: Yes, different people have different degrees of Sensitivity, that's part of the human condition. --Jobrot (talk) 17:46, 11 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment Aron's website does falsely claim that Sensory processing disorder and hence Sensory-Processing Sensitivity is the "scientific term" for HSP (if you search for the text "scientific term" on her website here you can see for yourself). However [Sensory processing disorder] is used in the analysis of various clinical disorders such as anxiety and depression - and is in fact NOT the "scientific term" for 'HSP'. But a separate and discrete measure associated with various disorders and conditions. As stated early WP:PROMO does extend to the promotion of ideas, and I believe that's Aron's purpose for big noting her theory contrary to the facts/research. She also has a lot of books to sell you, hence the tautological and broad makeup of her self-diagnostic survey which ends with this statement: "If fewer questions are true of you, but extremely true, that might also justify calling you highly sensitive" ultimately she's writing and hosting multiple websites (and producing films) on the subject for a purpose (to promote her work). I think the general character trait she's trying to create a market out of should be inserted where it belongs - under the wider heading Sensitivity (human). --Jobrot (talk) 17:59, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
 * In fact Aron's website states she researched "high sensitivity ... also calling it Sensory-Processing Sensitivity (SPS, the trait’s scientific term)" and two paragraphs later writes it is not a disorder—both explicitly contrary to nominator's 17:59, 11 January representations, which again conflate a multi-species trait with a defined category of normal persons and now further conflate it with a disorder.  I urge the admin to understand that nominator's AfD is replete with his personal (non-WP:RS) crude mechanical deconstruction of a term (which even has a popular abbreviation, "HSP") to which reliable sources, including Dr. Aron, have granted a specific meaning for two decades. Of course, relevance to notability of a psychologist's sales of self-help materials is nominator's speculation.  —RCraig09 (talk) 18:27, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:OR just because Aron expresses something on her own personal website aimed at selling books, seminars, horse retreats and now feature films to lay people - doesn't mean that the scientific community agrees with her. Hence my pointing out that SPS/SPD is not in fact the "scientific term" for HSP, but is in fact, a physical condition with hard research from people OTHER THAN Aron (research that isn't just aimed at selling books) and that has (as I pointed out) been linked in an evidentiary capacity to numerous other clinical conditions (anxiety, depression, OCD) that ARE listed in the DSM.
 * TO clarify, our page for Sensory processing disorder doesn't contain the terms 'HSP', 'Highly Sensitive Person', any of Aron's work at all. This is because it's standard Wikipedia page, not a WP:OR/WP:PROMO page. But even if you are correct (yes, I'm entertaining this possibility as everyone should) even if SPS/SPD is the "scientific term" for HSP that would still simply suggest some remedy involving merger/redirect/delete should be recommended (as WP:FORK - albeit at the risk of breaking Aron's strange monopoly on this terminology, or destroying what we agree is a poorly sourced, poorly written and possibly WP:COPYRIGHT riddled material).
 * Finally I'd like to caution you against losing WP:GOODFAITH with your fellow editors, accusations of personal bias against your fellow editors seldom reflects well on anyone. It's better to treat each other as rational actors behaving with a shared goal; the improvement of Wikipedia's content in line with policy. Thank you for making the effort here, and I look forwards to further reading your well articulated and well considered replies in the future. --Jobrot (talk) 00:28, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Facts for the admin: despite nominator’s representations, my criticism of the article was not about its substantive referencing (before 2016-01-14, only 11 of 31 footnotes are (co-)authored by Aron, and at least 20 of the 31 footnotes cite scientific journals); further, neither I nor Aron's website stated or implied that the SPD (disorder) is the scientific term for HSP, or that that HSPs have, or SPS is, a disorder (SPD disorder being irrelevant here).  —RCraig09 (talk) 16:50, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * "I began researching high sensitivity in 1991 and continue to do research on it now, also calling it Sensory-Processing Sensitivity (SPS, the trait’s scientific term)." -Elaine N. Aron Source. At any rate, merge due to WP:FORK; it's only a question of destination. This WP:PROMO page shouldn't be on Wikipedia. --Jobrot (talk) 19:02, 14 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep per Andrew D., and recommend that Sensitivity (human) gets expanded with suitable content. I considered suggesting a Merge under the latter, but will leave this to editors with better understanding of the topics. -- Deborahjay (talk) 19:40, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Merge or Delete with Sensitivity (human) as per LaMona --Jobrot (talk) 09:03, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. Popular-press reliable sources (example) widely use the specific term "Highly Sensitive Person"—often with first letters capitalized—and its abbreviation HSP, in favor of its defining trait SPS which is a scientific term. Contraindicating the proposed renaming/moving/merging are WP's guidelines for where content should be:
 * — Article titles: "The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize ... The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for" (italics added) —RCraig09 (talk) 17:15, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * — Article titles: "Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources)". (italics added) —RCraig09 (talk) 17:15, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * "When there are multiple names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others." -WP:COMMONTERM, but I'm sure everyone's happy enough to keep "Highly Sensitive Person" as a redirect to the appropriate section of the Sensitivity (human) article. That section would be discussing people of high sensitivity, so it would make sense to discuss "Highly Sensitive Person" there. --Jobrot (talk) 02:48, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Nominator's quotation re a subject with multiple fairly-common names is misapplied here because (1) this content's subject is specifically H S P s and not a sensitivity spectrum that exists in >100 species, and (2) the only alleged "problems" with the by-far-most-common term for this subject are those adduced, not by reliable sources but by the nominator himself—with a completely un-WP:RS "promo" conspiracy theory, a crude deconstruction of the longtime WP:RS-accepted name, repeated confusion with an irrelevant disorder (SPD), false representations of Dr. Aron's hsperson.com website content, a false representation that I agreed the article was poorly sourced, sarcasm toward Dr. Aron and toward me, ... . And nominator has adduced no more reason to be "sure" that "everyone's happy" with a redirect, than he once had that the entire article should be deleted. The underlying factual issues are clear to allow the admin to decide. —RCraig09 (talk) 05:21, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think you're wrongly attributing opinions. I never claimed that HSP "exists in >100 species" - that is in fact a claim plucked from the current article as well as found on Aron's promotional website: "Although the term is primarily used to describe humans, something similar to the trait is present in over 100 other species". Likewise, the claim that HSP appears on a spectrum/scale isn't mine, again it's from a page of Aron's website.


 * To clarify Sensory-Processing Sensitivity is associated with Sensory processing disorder, just as the HSP scale would be associated with HSP. I'm not stating otherwise, but Aron is explicitly stating that one (Sensory-Processing Sensitivity) is the "scientific name" for the other (HSP) (the claim is made on her website here). She's making this claim despite them having separate lines of evidence and research and despite them being associated with different conditions (with Sensory-Processing Sensitivity having far more hard evidence, and Aron piggy backing her concept onto that evidence in order to run retreats and sell books) - to the point that NONE of Aron's work appears as reference material for the Sensory processing disorder page - nor is HSP at all mentioned on that page (not in passing, nor as an alternative name). The same can't be said for the current HSP article, which is mostly made up of Aron's work, with some of the content coming directly from her websites and WP:PROMO material (such as the '100 other species' claim as seen in this video featuring Alanis Morissette). But as you say, we may need to request an admin closure on this matter. --Jobrot (talk) 10:27, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

-
 * All that said - the discussion does seem to have turned towards seeking an appropriate target should merger be the outcome. Currently Sensitivity (human) is the preferred option, but if you are (as it appears) in direct agreement with all or most of Aron's opinions on this matter - it's then up to you to suggest a redirect to a section on Sensory processing disorder or perhaps to a new page titled Sensory processing sensitivity. I'm sure the scientific community of Wikipedia would be interested in fact checking Aron's work should it come to that. That said, she doesn't seem interested in submitting her ideas to the scrutiny of the DSM, and appears to be quite happy to keep her "scale" and "trait" as a personal project contained to horse retreats, video seminars, a feature length movie (http://sensitivethemovie.com/) purporting to contain "the untold story" of "sensitives" and of course in her many many books and audio books on the subject now available in multiple languages (her titles include "The Highly Sensitive Person", "The Highly Sensitive Person Workbook", "The Highly Sensitive Person in Love", "The Highly Sensitive Child", "The Strong, Sensitive Boy", "Making Work Work for the Highly Sensitive Person", "The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide", "Understanding the Trait of High Sensitivity", "Thoughts on the Highly Sensitive Child" and of course "The Highly Sensitive Person Unabridged"). --Jobrot (talk) 10:50, 16 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.