Читать книгу The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping our children thrive when the world overwhelms them - Elaine N. Aron, Elaine N. Aron Ph.D. - Страница 19

Any temperament trait is an innate, and thus very basic, aspect of a person’s behavior. It is genetically determined and usually present from birth. The basic temperament traits are found not only in humans but in all higher animals. Think of the temperaments typical in different breeds of dogs—the friendly Lab, the aggressive pit bull, the protective sheep dog, the proud prancing poodle. How they are raised matters, too, of course, but you cannot make a bulldog act like a Chihuahua. These personalities evolved, or were developed by breeders, because they are highly adaptive in certain situations. Therefore they are not disorders or impairments. All of them are normal dogs.

Biologists used to think that evolution guided every species toward a perfectly adapted prototype for living in a particular ecological niche. There is a design for an elephant that will work perfectly—a perfect length of trunk, height, thickness of skin. Elephants born with these features will survive while those that do not will die out.

Yet it turns out that in most or perhaps all animal species we find two “personalities.” A sizable minority are like your child—more sensitive, aware of subtleties, checking everything before proceeding—while the majority go boldly ahead without paying close attention to the situation or their surroundings.

Why would this difference exist? Imagine two deer at the edge of a meadow with grass that looks especially nutritious. One deer will pause a long time to be certain no predators are lurking. The other will pause briefly, then rush out and eat the grass. If the first deer was right, the second deer is dead. If the second deer is right, the first deer misses out on the best grass and, if this happens often, may suffer from malnutrition, become diseased, and die. So having two strategies, two “breeds” of deer in a herd, increases the odds of that group of deer surviving no matter what happens in the meadow that day.

Interestingly, even a study of fruit flies found this difference—and the gene that causes it. Some fruit flies have a place on their “forage” gene that makes them “sitters”—they do not forage far when food is present. Others are called “rovers” and do forage afar. Even more interesting, the gene causes the sitters to have the more sensitive, highly developed nervous systems!

In another animal experiment, looking at the “personality types” of pumpkinseed sunfish, a pond was filled with traps. According to the researchers, the majority of fish were “bold” and behaved “normally” by going into the traps, while the minority, the “shy” fish, escaped the traps. (What I want to know is why the two types weren’t called the stupid and the smart sunfish? Or at least the nonsensitive and sensitive!)