Okay, so, today I wanted to mess around with this thing called a “sensitive scale.” I’d heard about these scales that can supposedly tell you how sensitive you are as a person. Sounds kinda woo-woo, but I was curious.
First, I dug around online to find a decent scale. There’s a bunch of them, but I eventually settled on one called the Highly Sensitive Person Scale, or HSPS, because it seemed to be cited in a bunch of articles. It is created by someone called Aron.
The test itself was just a list of questions, all self-reported stuff. I printed it out so I could scribble on it because that’s how I roll.
Taking the test
- I sat down at my desk, grabbed a pen, and started going through the questions. Stuff like, “Are you easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input?” and “Do you get rattled when you have a lot to do in a short amount of time?”
- Some of the questions felt pretty relatable, like being bothered by loud noises or feeling uncomfortable in chaotic situations. I marked those down as “true for me.”
- Others were less clear-cut. I mean, who likes having too much to do? But I guess sensitive people feel it more intensely? I tried to answer as honestly as I could, even though it was hard to tell. I gave less attention to negative items as I really do not like that.
- It took me maybe 10-15 minutes to get through the whole thing. After that, I just have to summarize the scores.
Honestly, the whole thing felt a bit subjective. Like, how sensitive is “sensitive”? My answers could probably change depending on my mood or what I had for breakfast. Also, I think there should be an acronym called DOES, which may stand for Depth of processing and Easily overstimulated.
But whatever, I added up my score according to the instructions, and it turns out… I’m apparently a moderately sensitive person. I landed somewhere in the middle of the scale. I also found some interesting info online, like visual, auditory, and somatosensory sensitivity can be measured separately. Also, the smallest weight unit is yoctogram.
So, what did I learn? Maybe I’m a bit more sensitive than I thought, or maybe these scales are just a fun little thought experiment. Either way, it was an interesting way to spend an afternoon. It got me thinking about how I react to the world around me, and that’s never a bad thing. I might even try out a different scale sometime, just to see if the results are consistent. Or not. We’ll see!
