WEEK 8-9 A Change
Last two weeks, some things happened in China, which made me feel desperate and I decided to change my research topic.
I took part in the course Learning and resilience which fits well with my research interests in psychology and mental health. The topic of my assessment is about highly sentisitive person (HSP) and how to help them to flourish and get well-being.
HSPs have a sensitive nervous system that makes it harder to filter out stimuli and easier to get overwhelmed by our environment. They account for approximately 20 per cent of the total human population.
This process inspired me, and I actually found some inequality issues existing in the workplace for HSP. In fact, high sensitivity is their natural personality trait which is caused by a sensitive nervous system, just like a kind of temperament which is impossible to be changed. However, there are some cultural discrimination, and a more sensitive, empathetic and deeper processing style are often seen as weak, faulty, too slow. And many highly sensitive employee has often endured shame because of their sensitivity.
These remind me of the inequalities that disabled and LGBTQ people experience in the workplace (course exclusion and inequality inspired me). I start to think whether high sensitivity is just like a special and invisible “disability” when they work in an unsuitable workplace. Such “disability” will lead to some unequal treatment.
Therefore, I hope I could explore the inequality they experience caused by cultural prejudice. Besides, I hope to have some quantitative data to support my research, and I can apply the statistical modelling methods I am familiar with. Now I have two ideas separately. One way is to combine interviews and online questionnaires which would focus on quantitative data. The other one is to use web crawler or text mining, which could focus on qualitative data.
But I still have two concerns about this topic.
1 If web crawler is used, for example, to count the occurrence times of a certain word, the data to be counted may not necessarily be highly sensitive people, and the data will be rather messy. After all, there are some people who are accustomed to calling themselves “sensitive,” but may not be naturally HSP.
2 At present, it seems that there are few researches on high sensitivity and workplace discrimination, and I did not find too much relevant literature. Much of the literature is about purely psychology like the studies of HSP and its measurement scales. Or some literature is more about general workplace inequality like gender, LGBTQ, skin colour, and so on. I’m not confident in this topic, because I cannot find literature support. I’m not sure whether it’s a kind of inequality, whether it’s worth being researched…
It’s definitely worth being researched and I find your topic rather interesting. However, for research involving HSP, especially if you intend to interview some of them, I suppose the ethical review would take longer. I would recommend you to have a look into this and see whether there is anything that can be prepared ahead when you’ve got some spare time.