There were no inclusion or exclusion criteria for participation, except being at least 18 years old, as this was an online questionnaire and anybody could participate if they had given informed consent. Three hundred and eight nine people participated in the survey. Of these, 296 participants completed the questionnaires relating to SPS, openness and creativity, and all but 5 of these individuals also completed the empathy measure.

Out of the 296 participants, 66 (22.3%) identified as male, 224 (75.7%) as female, and for 2% this variable had missing data. The mean age was 44.3 years [standard deviation (SD) = 14.8 years; range: 18–78 years]. The distribution of participants' highest educational level was: secondary education, 16 (5.4%); vocational education, 42 (14.2%); bachelor's degree from a university of applied sciences, 75 (25.3%); master's degree from a university of applied sciences, 22 (7.4%); bachelor's degree from a university, 34 (11.5%); and master's degree from a university, 102 (34.5%).

SPS was assessed using the 12-item Highly Sensitive Person scale (12-HSP scale) (Pluess et al., 2023) in Dutch (Bröhl et al., 2022), which includes 4 items on AES, 3 on LST and 5 on EOE. An example of an AES item is: “I am deeply touched by art or music”, an example of LST is: “Intense stimuli, like hard sounds or chaotic situations I find annoying” and an example of EOE is: “I feel rushed when I have a lot to do in a short time”. The scale was scored on a 7-point Likertscale (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely) and mean scores were calculated for the SPS total score and each subscale.

Openness to experience was assessed using items from the Dutch Big Five Inventory (BFI) (Denissen et al., 2008; John et al., 1991). An example of an item is: “I see myself as someone who has a vivid imagination”. Questions were scored on a 5-point Likertscale (1 = don't agree at all to 5 = completely agree) and a mean score was calculated.

Everyday creativity was assessed with two different questionnaires: The first is the Runco Ideation Behavior Scale (RIBS) (Runco et al., 2001), measuring creative ideas and problem solving. An example of an item is: “I come up with an idea or solution that other people have never thought of”. This questionnaire had 23 items on a 5-point Likertscale (1 = never to 5 = very often). A mean score was calculated. The second questionnaire is the Biographical Inventory of Creative Behaviors (BICB) (Batey, 2007), which contained 34 items about creative activities, such as “Have you, in the past 12 months written a short story?” (0 = no, 1 = yes). A BICB sumscore was calculated, to give an idea of the total amount of creative activities.

To assess empathy, the Dutch Basic Empathy Scale was used (Jolliffe and Farrington, 2006; Raadsen, 2017; Van Langen et al., 2014). This questionnaire gives rise to a total score and three subscales: affective empathy (six items; e.g., “I get easily carried away by the feelings of others”), cognitive empathy (eight items; e.g., “I understand how people feel, often before they tell me”), and emotional disconnection (six items, e.g., “My friends' feelings don't matter much to me.”) (Carré et al., 2013), scored on a 5-point Likertscale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Negatively stated items were reversed (Raadsen, 2017), so that higher scores indicated greater affective and cognitive empathy and less emotional disconnection.

Gender and age were measured as an open question. Gender was coded as two categories, as all respondents identified as either male (0) or female (1). Only six persons didn't answer the question about gender, these were therefore missing data. Education was measured as a multiple choice question. Level of education was coded as follows for the analyses: primary education (1), secondary education (2); vocational education (3); bachelor's degree from a university of applied sciences (4); master's degree from a university of applied sciences (5); bachelor's degree from a university (6); and master's degree from a university (7).

Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. The mean total SPS score in our Dutch study sample was 4.50 (SD 1.04) [95% CI (4.38; 4.62)] and for AES 4.97 (SD 1.10) [95% CI (4.85; 5.09)] which was higher than in school- and population-based samples in the literature where a mean total SPS score of 3.99 (SD.80) [95% CI (3.91; 4.07)] and AES of 4.26 (SD 1.12) [95% CI (4.15; 4.37)] (Belgian sample) (Bröhl et al., 2022) and an AES score of 4.42 (SD 1.06) [95% CI (4.34; 4.50)] (UK sample) (Pluess et al., 2023) were found with the same questionnaire. Only the mean total SPS score of the UK sample was comparable to ours 4.34 (SD 0.89) [95% CI (4.28; 4.40)] (Pluess et al., 2023). Although cultural differences may also explain these differences, given our recruitment strategy, this likely indicates that our participants had higher than population average SPS and especially AES scores.

Pearson correlations, and visually display of significant correlations arranged into a network, revealed a positive association between higher SPS and more creative ideas, but not with creative activities (Figures 1, 2). Another notable finding was that affective empathy showed most correlations with AES, EOE and LST; whereas cognitive empathy showed small correlations with EOE and LST, but most associations with AES.

Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that higher SPS associated significantly with more creative ideas, but not with more creative activities (Table 2). Running the same main association models with covariates openness in step two and openness, gender, age and education in step three revealed that especially the covariate openness reduced the strength of the association between SPS and creative ideas; however, all associations remained significant. Creative ideas showed greater associations with male gender and younger age.

More AES was associated with more creative ideas and with more creative activities (Table 3). Evaluating the same main association models but separately including covariates openness, LST, EOE, gender, age and education, revealed that especially the inclusion of openness at step two led to a reduction in association strength of AES with creative ideas and creative activities; for creative ideas, however, the association remained significant, whereas for creative activities it did not, suggesting that the latter association can entirely be attributed to openness. When all covariates were added to the model in step three, AES was no longer significantly associated with neither creative ideas nor creative activities. Notably, even though AES did not account for unique variance in creative activities, EOE did (Table 3).

Higher SPS associated significantly with more empathy, and with more affective empathy, more cognitive empathy, and less emotional disconnection (Table 4). Evaluating the same main association models with covariates openness at step two and openness, gender, age and education at step three did not change these associations. Empathy and all aspects thereof were associated with both female gender and younger age.

More AES was associated with more empathy, and with affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and less emotional disconnection (Table 5). Running the same main association models but with covariates openness at step two and openness, LST, EOE, gender, age and education, at step three, it becomes clear that both AES and EOE each account for unique variance in empathy (Table 5). All three SPS subscales account for unique variance in affective empathy (Table 5). Also the association of AES with emotional disconnection appeared reduced when including LST or EOE at step three of the analysis. However, all associations remained significant.

Where much attention has been paid to negative correlates of SPS regarding internalizing behaviors such as anxiety, stress, burnout and depression (Bröhl et al., 2022; Pluess et al., 2023), the aim of this study was to examine whether SPS and its AES subdimension were related to different facets of two potential positive correlates: everyday creativity and empathy.

With respect to creativity, our study showed that higher SPS and AES were related to more everyday creativity, confirming hypothesis 1a and 1b. This study quantitatively confirms findings from a qualitative study that found that highly sensitive people reported being creative and having many new ideas (Bas et al., 2021). Furthermore, in a study of 288 people, SPS and AES were related to creativity at expert and genius levels, both in terms of creative ideas and activities (Bridges and Schendan, 2019b). In contrast, our study focused on everyday creativity, and found AES to be associated with both creative ideas and activities, but the SPS total score only with more creative ideas. This might suggest that especially in highly sensitive people in which AES is more pronounced, creative activities are undertaken. When openness to experience was included in the model, associations of SPS and AES with creative ideas were reduced, but remained significant, whereas the small positive association of AES with creative activities became non-significant. This suggests that openness to experience partially explains associations of SPS with creative ideas, but that SPS and AES also make independent contributions. In contrast, associations between AES and creative activities were fully explained by openness to experience. In recent work, SPS was divided into a vulnerable sensitivity and a confident sensitivity group, according to personality types (Bürger et al., 2024). The vulnerable sensitivity group scored lower on AES and higher on the negative sides of SPS, EOE and LST and had in their personality domains less openness. On the other hand, the confident sensitivity group scored higher on AES and lower on EOE and LST and had more openness and openness to action in their personality profile. As we can see that less EOE is correlated with more creative activities, it could be assumed that it is especially the confident sensitivity group of SPS with less EOE and more openness that will eventually turn their creative ideas into action.

Furthermore, this study showed that SPS was positively related to empathy, confirming hypothesis 2a. Furthermore, when focusing on three aspects of empathy, we found higher SPS was related to more affective and cognitive empathy and less emotional disconnection. All models remained significant when correcting for openness. This implies that highly sensitive people more easily empathize with other people both on an emotional level, sharing the emotions of others, and on a cognitive level, understanding other people's emotions better, independent of openness. Empathy in SPS, both affective and cognitive empathy, was previously shown to be independent of openness to experience (Tabak et al., 2022). Our findings therefore confirm previous findings and extend existing literature by showing that emotional disconnection appears to be reduced in highly sensitive people. As emotional disconnection is a defense mechanism that causes a person to respond less empathetically (Bensalah et al., 2016), this suggests that highly sensitive people use fewer defense mechanisms in engaging with others, possibly leading to faster emotional exhaustion in the interaction with others (Roxburgh, 2023). It has indeed been shown that people scoring high on SPS were more easily moved emotionally and experienced more personal distress when watching tense situations in movies (McQuarrie et al., 2023), suggesting they use less emotional disconnection to protect themselves against the emotional content they experience. In addition, the personal distress highly sensitive people experience seems to be more related to LST and EOE, the negative sides of SPS (Jakobson et al., 2024). Deep processing of others' thoughts and feelings, emotional responsiveness and also the tendency to be affected by other people's emotions seems to be related to both positive and negative trait clusters of SPS (Jakobson et al., 2024)

Lastly, confirming hypothesis 2b, the AES component of SPS was positively associated with empathy, independent of openness to experience. A previous study also showed that higher AES correlated with more empathy but did not control for openness to experience (Liss et al., 2008). Our study also demonstrated that higher AES related to more affective and cognitive empathy. This was in line with a recent study showing more affective empathy for both positive and negative emotions through positive sensory responsivity (a measure that is highly correlated to AES) and cognitive empathy (Tabak et al., 2022). This link between AES and various forms of empathy could be a result of other positive features of SPS, such as social-affective sensitivity, sensory comfort or pleasure and sensory sensitivity to subtle internal and external stimuli, making it easier to pick up interpersonal feelings, relationships and atmospheres (De Gucht et al., 2022). A new finding in our study was that AES was associated with less emotional disconnection independent of openness, LST and EOE. Furthermore, affective empathy also appeared related to EOE and LST. In contrast, cognitive empathy appeared more related to AES, whereas EOE and LST showed little association with cognitive empathy. A possible conclusion is that AES is more important for cognitive empathy and, LST and EOE more for affective empathy.

In contrast to many previous studies that included students between 20 and 25 years, the current study included a large group of 296 adults aged 18–78 years. Results therefore may be considered relevant to various age categories and life stages. New in this study was that creative thinking was measured separately from creative activities. This is especially relevant as deeper processing is considered a central characteristic of SPS, which could lead to creative ideas. Another novel feature is that the relationship between SPS and everyday creativity instead of expert creativity was studied. Lastly this study further disentangled relations between different components of empathy and SPS, with AES being related to all aspects of empathy, whereas EOE and LST appear to play an additional role in especially affective empathy.

In this cross-sectional study, no statement can be made about causality, which makes it unclear whether SPS leads to more everyday creativity and empathy, or vice versa. Furthermore, the study sample as it was largely taken from the researcher's personal network, consisting of women and highly educated people. Given that advertisement of our study was partially via private practices providing psychological and coaching services for high sensitivity, the mean total SPS in our study was higher than in literature. The results of this study are therefore not generalizable but should be interpreted within the context of a sample with elevated SPS scores. Lastly, the study was based on the assumption that empathy is a positive trait; however less emotional disconnection could lead to empathic exhaustion.