Psychological Bulletin
Vantage Sensitivity: Individual Differences in Response
to Positive Experiences
Michael Pluess and Jay Belsky
Online First Publication, October 1, 2012. doi: 10.1037/a0030196

CITATION
Pluess, M., & Belsky, J. (2012, October 1). Vantage Sensitivity: Individual Differences in
Response to Positive Experiences. Psychological Bulletin. Advance online publication. doi:
10.1037/a0030196

Psychological Bulletin
2012, Vol. 138, No. 6, 000© 2012 American Psychological Association
0033-2909/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0030196

Vantage Sensitivity: Individual Differences in Response to
Positive Experiences
Michael Pluess

Jay Belsky

King’s College London

University of California, Davis; King Abdulaziz University; andBirkbeck University of London

The notion that some people are more vulnerable to adversity as a function of inherent risk characteristics
is widely embraced in most fields of psychology. This is reflected in the popularity of the diathesis-stressframework, which has received a vast amount of empirical support over the years. Much less effort has
been directed toward the investigation of endogenous factors associated with variability in response topositive influences. One reason for the failure to investigate individual differences in response to positive
experiences as a function of endogenous factors may be the absence of adequate theoretical frameworks.
According to the differential-susceptibility hypothesis, individuals generally vary in their developmental
plasticity regardless of whether they are exposed to negative or positive influences—a notion derived
from evolutionary reasoning. On the basis of this now well-supported proposition, we advance herein the
new concept of vantage sensitivity, reflecting variation in response to exclusively positive experiences asa function of individual endogenous characteristics. After distinguishing vantage sensitivity fromtheoretically related concepts of differential-susceptibility and resilience, we review some recent empirical evidence for vantage sensitivity featuring behavioral, physiological, and genetic factors as moderators of a wide range of positive experiences ranging from family environment and psychotherapy to
educational intervention. Thereafter, we discuss genetic and environmental factors contributing toindividual differences in vantage sensitivity, potential mechanisms underlying vantage sensitivity, andpractical implications.
Keywords: vantage sensitivity, positive psychology, differential susceptibility, diathesis-stress, geneenvironment interaction

stimulated the emergence of the subfield of positive psychology atthe beginning of this millennium (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi,2000). In consequence, the last decade has witnessed an outpouring of positive psychology research focused specifically on theinvestigation of optimal human functioning (Linley, Joseph, Harrington, & Wood, 2006; Lopez & Snyder, 2011; Seligman, 2011;
Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005).
Though appreciated by many, positive psychology is not without its critics. Indeed, it has been chastised for pursuing a rather
simplistic agenda while failing to acknowledge individual differences in its application (Gable & Haidt, 2005; Held, 2004;
Lazarus, 2003). Whereas most subfields of psychology have a long
history of investigating factors associated with variability in response to a variety of influences, research with a focus on positive
psychology often appears based on the implicit assumption that
positive influences will benefit most, if not all, individuals to thesame degree. Nevertheless, variability in response to positive
influences is ubiquitous. It can be easily observed, for example,
that some children excel academically in a supportive educational
environment, whereas other children do not, or at least not to thesame degree. Similarly, not all children appear to achieve the samesocioemotional maturity when growing up in a warm and supportive family environment.
Besides these simple examples of individual differences inbenefit derived from positive environmental experiences and exposures, one can also consider variation in the effects of formal
psychological interventions (e.g., Dinkel et al., 2012; Forbes et al.,The notion that individuals often vary in their response to thesame experience is widely appreciated in most subfields of psychology. In clinical and developmental psychology, there is anespecially rich history of research aimed at investigating individual
characteristics that predict differences in response to environmental influences (e.g., Garmezy, 1991; Luthar, 2006; Masten &Obradović, 2006; Rutter, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2006; Werner, 1997).
Most such work is based, to varying degrees, on psychopathology
and problematic development, thereby resulting in a focus onvulnerability to adversity. In fact, many of today’s establishedconcepts and models in psychology derive from or are influenced
by a long history of empirical research on psychopathology and thetreatment thereof. Appreciation of this disproportionate psychopathological bias in so much psychological theory and research

Michael Pluess, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, London,
United Kingdom; Jay Belsky, Human and Community Development, University of California, Davis; Department of Special Education, King Abdulaziz University, Jedda, Saudi Arabia; and Department of Psychological
Sciences, Birkbeck University of London, London, United Kingdom.
We would like to express special appreciation to Stephen Manuck forproviding us with the term vantage sensitivity.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael
Pluess, Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of
Psychiatry, King’s College London, Box Number PO80, London SE5 8AF,
United Kingdom. E-mail: michael.pluess@kcl.ac.uk
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2012). After all, even the most generally efficacious treatments
benefit some individuals more than others (e.g., DeRubeis et al.,2005; Ginsburg et al., 2011; Kennard et al., 2006). Althoughvariability in response to treatment is generally appreciated in theliterature and nonresponse is routinely assessed in evaluations of
psychological interventions, the notion that individuals differ fundamentally in their general responsivity due to endogenous factors
rather than others—perhaps most especially fidelity of treatment—is rarely considered and therefore rarely investigated, except perhaps on a post hoc basis.
Conceivably, one important reason psychological research
generally fails to entertain, or at least systematically examine,variability in response to positive experiences as a function ofendogenous factors— beyond perhaps severity of disturbance—is due to the absence of theory stipulating that suchshould be the rule rather than the exception. It is the principal
purpose of this article to address this lacuna. After introducing a
new concept pertaining to variability in response to positive influences— derived from differential-susceptibility reasoning (Belsky& Pluess, 2009a)—we propose specific new terminology before
highlighting conceptual differences between the new concept andboth differential susceptibility and resilience. We then review
recent empirical evidence consistent with the proposed framework.
After subsequently addressing issues related to determinants andmechanisms of variability in response to positive experiences, weconclude by suggesting potential practical applications of the newconcept.

From Diathesis-Stress to Differential Susceptibility
The dominant role that diathesis-stress thinking has played inmuch psychological research (Monroe & Simons, 1991; Zuckerman, 1999) no doubt accounts in part for the dearth of theoreticalmodels addressing variation in response to putatively positiveenvironmental experiences and exposures, a point Belsky andPluess (2009a) recently made in this journal. The diathesis-stressframework presumes that some individuals are more vulnerable tothe adverse effects of negative experiences and exposures thanothers due to some endogenous “vulnerability” characteristic (e.g.,
negative emotionality, “risk gene”). Even if numerous empiricalfindings in many areas of inquiry prove consistent with diathesisstress thinking (e.g., Belsky, Hsieh, & Crnic, 1998; Caspi et al.,
2003; Cummings, El-Sheikh, Kouros, & Keller, 2007), it must be
acknowledged that this widely embraced framework has nothing to
say about variation in response to putatively positive experiences.
In fact, diathesis-stress reasoning suggests—at least implicitly—that there should be no differences between vulnerable and resilient individuals in the absence of adversity.
Recently, an alternative model of environmental action has been
advanced—differential susceptibility—which is not restricted tonegative effects of contextual adversity (Belsky, 1997, 2005; Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2007; Belsky &Pluess, 2009a). It shares with an independently developed andmore mechanistically focused complementary model, biologicalsensitivity to context (Boyce et al., 1995; Boyce & Ellis, 2005), theview that some individuals are disproportionately susceptible toboth positive and negative developmental experiences and environmental exposures (Ellis, Boyce, Belsky, BakermansKranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2011). Whereas these frameworks

have been recently referred to as neurobiological susceptibility(Ellis et al., 2011), for the sake of consistency with our previous
work (Belsky et al., 2007; Belsky & Pluess, 2009a, 2009b), andgiven its now widespread adoption, we employ the terminology ofdifferential susceptibility throughout this article.
Whatever terminology is employed, the theoretical framework
in question regards more susceptible individuals as not just especially “vulnerable” to adversity, but more generally “developmentally plastic” or “malleable” (Belsky & Pluess, 2009b; Boyce &Ellis, 2005; Ellis et al., 2011). Thus, many of those whom thediathesis-stress framework considers disproportionately likely tobe adversely affected by negative experiences and exposures may
also be disproportionately likely to benefit from supportive andenriching ones. In other words, differential-susceptibility thinking
encompasses both the “dark side” of environmental susceptibility,
which refers to response to negative experiences, and what
Bakermans-Kranenburg and van IJzendoorn (2011) have labeled
the “bright side” or response to positive experiences and exposures(see also Homberg & Lesch, 2011).
Importantly, the differential-susceptibility framework—like thatof biological sensitivity to context—is based on evolutionary reasoning rather than on clinical or other insights regarding origins of
psychopathology. One of the most basic assumptions of many
behavioral scientists is that humans are developmentally plastic,
shaped in a myriad of ways by their developmental experiences.
This is so whether one is an extreme environmentalist or a behavior geneticist appreciating the importance of nonshared environmental influences (Plomin & Daniels, 1987). What evolutionary
thinking brings to this perspective is the view that such developmental responsiveness evolved in the service of reproductive fitness, the successful dispersion of genes in future generations(Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991). Implicit if not explicit in both
evolutionary and nonevolutionary approaches to developmental
plasticity is the assumption that response to early environmental
influence serves to fit the organism to the environment in which it
would seem most likely to find itself as it develops. Whereas
evolutionists emphasize fit in terms of survival and reproduction,others conceptualize such developmental programming in mentalor physical-health terms.
What evolutionary-minded thinkers, like financial investors, arehighly appreciative of, however, is that the future is inherently
uncertain. As such, future environmental conditions for whichdevelopmental plasticity might have prepared an individual could
end up being rather different than anticipated. Hence, and as
stipulated by differential-susceptibility reasoning, natural selection
should have shaped individuals to differ in their degree of susceptibility to environmental conditions. That way, the negative consequences of a discrepancy or mismatch between anticipated andeventual environment would affect predominately those individuals who are more susceptible to environmental influences (i.e.,
those with a higher degree of developmental plasticity), but not
those generally less susceptible. This could be particularly beneficial if such interindividual variation in developmental plasticity
occurred within families, as siblings varying in susceptibility
would essentially provide “insurance” for each other—and theirparents vis-à-vis their inclusive fitness prospects (Belsky, 2005).
However logical such an analysis appears, we should makeclear, as Ellis and associates (Ellis et al., 2011) recently have, that
there remains uncertainty about the evolutionary dynamics ofVANTAGE SENSITIVITY

differential susceptibility. Alternative models have been advanced
to explain how variation in plasticity might evolve, some highlighting the bet hedging just described, some conditional versus
alternative strategies, and some frequency dependent selection.
The issues involved, however, are beyond the scope of this review.
Evolutionary reasoning should also be considered regarding theunderstanding of what “positive” means. The distinction between
negative and positive outcomes and environments, though sharedby many within a society and in some cases also across different
societies, may not be particularly relevant from an evolutionary
perspective: “The idea that any form of phenotypic variation in andof itself is necessarily positive or negative is an anathema tobiology” (Cameron et al., 2005, p. 846). What many conceptualize
as manifestations of “nonoptimal” development (e.g., insecureattachment, aggression, risk-taking, early sexual debut), then,evolutionary-minded thinkers regard as potential alternative tactics
for dispersing genes across generations and thereby enhancing
reproductive fitness under the ecological conditions that give riseto them. In view of the fact that environments can and do changeover time, however, what was once a fitness-enhancing characteristic at one point in time may undermine fitness at another point intime.
In light of the claim that, from an evolutionary perspective, weshould expect individual differences in developmental plasticity,
we make the case here that substantial variation in response topositive experiences should also be the norm. We derive thistheoretical conclusion from the differential-susceptibility claimthat individuals vary generally in the extent to which they areaffected by both (commonly regarded) negative and positive environmental experiences and exposures. Before reviewing empirical evidence substantiating the proposition that some individuals
are disproportionately susceptible to the benefits of positive environmental influences, we propose new terminology for such variability in response to positive experiences, making clear that while
related to differential susceptibility, it is not the same as it.

From Differential Susceptibility to Vantage Sensitivity
Since our 2009 review, ever more evidence consistent with thedifferential-susceptibility hypothesis has emerged (e.g., Clasen,
Wells, Knopik, McGeary, & Beevers, 2011; Dick et al., 2011;
Poehlmann et al., 2011; Wetter & El-Sheikh, 2012), so much so, in
fact, that a special section of the journal Development and Psychopathology was devoted recently to this topic, edited by Ellis
and Boyce (2011), authors of the Biological Sensitivity to Context
framework (Boyce & Ellis, 2005), which is closely related todifferential susceptibility (Belsky, 1997, 2005; Belsky & Pluess,2009a), as mentioned earlier. Intriguingly, some of the most recent
work informed by differential-susceptibility thinking involves experiments designed to evaluate the beneficial effects of interventions intended not just to address the “dark side” by amelioratingproblematic functioning (e.g., Eley et al., 2012) but also the “brightside” by promoting explicitly positive functioning (e.g., Cassidy,
Woodhouse, Sherman, Stupica, & Lejuez, 2011). Because suchwork does not address the diathesis-stress concepts of risk andresilience, and because it is difficult to identify the linguistic
converse of “vulnerability” (Belsky & Pluess, 2009a)—that is, aword that captures the notion that some are more likely than others
to benefit from environmental support and enrichment—it is clear

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that new terminology is called for. Especially important to note inthis regard is that the terms protection and buffering commonlyused in the vulnerability-resilience literature to denote the positive
consequence of not succumbing to an adverse experience do not fit
the “bright side” of the differential-susceptibility framework. As it
turned out, the only term that Belsky and Pluess (2009b) could
identify—in tongue-and-cheek fashion—to characterize those disproportionately likely to benefit from positive experiences andexposures was “lucky.” And this was after asking speakers ofdiverse languages, including French, German, Italian, Chinese,
Czech, Spanish, Korean, and Polish, whether there was a word orterm in their native tongue that captured the “bright side” ofdifferential susceptibility. The fact that there did not seem to besuch a term in any of these languages raised the intriguing possibility that one reason variability in response to positive—as opposed to negative— experiences went unnoticed, or at least unheralded, for so long was that we simply lack terminology to direct
attention to it.
Recently, Manuck and associates (Manuck, 2011; Sweitzer etal., 2012) introduced the term Vantage Sensitivity to characterize
the “bright side” of differential susceptibility and more generally
variability in response to positive experiences. Vantage is short foradvantage, but in addition to implying benefit, gain or profit, it isalso defined as “a position, condition, or opportunity that is likely
to provide superiority or an advantage” (Houghton Mifflin, 2000).
In Manuck’s own words (S. B. Manuck, personal communication,
January 18, 2011), vantage “bespeaks a position conferring advantage, benefit or gain, without bearing the singularity of a particularadvantage.” We embrace and promote the term vantage sensitivity
to describe the notion that some individuals are more sensitive andpositively responsive to the environmental advantages to which
they are exposed. These advantages may take the form of securityof attachment derived from sensitive parenting, academic achievement resulting from high-quality child care, prosocial behavior due
to supportive friendship networks, and life satisfaction stemmingfrom positive life events, as well as sense of efficacy following
psychotherapy, to name just a few possibilities.
We propose the following concepts to characterize variability inresponse to positive experiences: (a) vantage sensitivity reflects thegeneral proclivity of an individual to benefit from positive andpresumptively well-being- and competence-promoting features ofthe environment, just as vulnerability depicts the tendency to
succumb to negative effects of adversity in the diathesis-stressframework; (b) the degree of vantage sensitivity is a function of thepresence of vantage-sensitivity factors (i.e., promotive factors),
just as vulnerability/risk factors increase vulnerability to negative
effects of adversity in the diathesis-stress framework; (c) vantage
resistance describes the failure to benefit from positive influences,
just as resilience characterizes resistance to negative effects ofadversity in the diathesis-stress framework; and (d) the degree of
vantage resistance is a function of the presence of vantageresistance factors or absence of vantage-sensitivity ones, just as
protective factors increase resilience to negative effects of adversity in the diathesis-stress framework. In summary, vantagesensitivity factors increase vantage sensitivity to the beneficial
effects of positive experiences and exposures, whereas vantageresistance factors diminish or even completely eliminate positive
response to the same supportive conditions. (see Figure 1 forgraphical illustration.)

PLUESS AND BELSKY

4

Level of Functioning

high

low

Vantage Sensitivity

Vantage ResistanceIndividual A
Individual B

Positive
Exposure
Time

Figure 1. Graphical illustration of vantage sensitivity; in response to a positive exposure, the level offunctioning increases in Individual A, reflecting vantage sensitivity, whereas it remains unchanged in Individual
B, reflecting vantage resistance.

Though derived from and therefore closely related to differential
susceptibility, vantage sensitivity represents more than just the“bright side” of that concept. Because the reasoning behind thisclaim may not be entirely clear, we next clarify conceptual differences between vantage sensitivity, differential susceptibility andalso the resilience component of the diathesis-stress framework
before reviewing empirical evidence consistent with vantage sensitivity.

Vantage Sensitivity Versus Differential Susceptibility
There are several reasons not to automatically equate vantage
sensitivity with differential susceptibility. First, it is conceivable that, whereas some individuals might be more sensitive tothe benefits of a supportive or enriching environment as afunction of vantage-sensitivity factors, the same individual attributes may not make them more susceptible to the negative
effects of contextual adversity. Thus, some individual differences in developmental response to environmental experiencesand exposures may emerge exclusively under supportive conditions. To the extent that this is so, one would speak of vantage
sensitivity, not differential susceptibility—which implies disproportionate sensitivity to both positive and negative experiences and exposures.
A further distinction between the two concepts being discussed emerges when we consider that individuals may be both
highly responsive to environmental support (i.e., showing increased vantage sensitivity) and unresponsive to and protectedfrom adversity (i.e., showing increased resilience), and this
could be due to the very same endogenous characteristic. Consider, for example, a highly intelligent child who might profit
disproportionately from high-quality education. There is no
theoretical or empirical reason to presume that such a student
would also be more adversely affected by low-quality schooling. On the contrary, children with high IQs tend to be more

resilient in the face of adversity (e.g., Masten et al., 1999).
Thus, the same individual characteristic—in this case high
IQ—may serve both a protective function in adverse environments (Rutter, 1987) and a promotive/vantage-sensitivity function in supportive environments (Sameroff, 2000).
Another distinction to be made between vantage sensitivity anddifferential susceptibility pertains to the empirical conditions required to evaluate each. Whereas demonstration of differential
susceptibility is based ideally on investigation of contextual conditions that range from the negative to the positive (Belsky et al.,2007; Belsky & Pluess, 2009a), this is not so for vantage sensitivity. In fact, many truly positive exposures do not range from thepositive to the negative but only from the positive to the absenceof the positive (e.g., psychological intervention versus no intervention). Consequently, it cannot be inferred from a vantagesensitivity finding chronicling an individual’s disproportionate response to, say, therapy, that the same person would be equally
responsive—and more responsive than others—to adversity. The
latter would be required to draw a conclusion of differential
susceptibility. Finally, the same “range of measurement” issue
applies to the outcome of interest. Whereas it should cover both theadaptive and the maladaptive spectrum in order to reflect true
differential susceptibility, this is irrelevant to the evaluation ofvantage sensitivity. This is because vantage sensitivity is exclusively about the positive benefit derived from an enriching or
supportive experience, whether this is reflected in the reduction ofproblems or dysfunction (e.g., depression, antisocial behavior) or
the enhancement of competence/well-being (e.g., prosocial behavior, academic achievement). Ultimately, the point to be made isthat, whereas some individuals may be disproportionately likely tobe affected positively and negatively by, respectively, positive andnegative contextual conditions, others may only be susceptible tothe former—and thus manifest vantage sensitivity rather thandifferential susceptibility.

VANTAGE SENSITIVITY

Vantage Sensitivity Versus Resilience
Resilience, reflecting the absence of problematic functioning
despite exposure to contextual adversity, is a concept central to
many subfields of psychology ranging from clinical to developmental to positive psychology, to name just a few (e.g., Cicchetti& Garmezy, 1993; Masten & Obradović, 2006; Werner, 1997).
Though not completely unrelated to vantage sensitivity, it is important to highlight fundamental differences between the twoconcepts. This is especially important given inconsistent use of theterms “resilience” and “protection” in different psychological literatures. Specifically, some have mistakenly referred to vantagesensitivity-like findings as evidence of “protection” (for review,see Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000), most probably due to thelack of a conceptual framework for thinking about variability inresponse to positive contextual conditions. While resilience is what
“protective” factors and processes engender— by preventing an
individual from succumbing to or being harmed by some contextual adversity (Rutter, 1987), vantage sensitivity refers to “promotive” influences (Sameroff, 2000) and is about an individual benefiting—more than others—from a positive environmental
experience or exposure. Ultimately, then, vantage sensitivity is
about variation in the promotion of well-being or competent functioning when exposed to an experience presumed to have a beneficial effect, whereas protection is about not having one’s wellbeing or competence undermined when subject to a negative
experience.
To summarize, whereas the concept of resilience reflects protective processes within a diathesis-stress framework and refers toindividual differences in response to adversity, it makes no claims
about the potentially promotive function of particular protective
factors in response to positive experiences. And whereas the concept of vantage sensitivity pertains to individual differences in
response to positive contextual conditions as a function of promotive factors, it has nothing to say regarding the potentially protective function of the same factors in the face of adversity. Differential susceptibility, on the other hand, is based on the view thatthe same factors that increase vulnerability to adversity will also
increase vantage sensitivity in positive environments and thatfactors that make some resilient to adversity will also make themless responsive to positive experiences.

Recent Evidence of Vantage Sensitivity
In our extensive analysis of evidence chronicling differential
susceptibility to both negative and positive environmental influences, we identified three different categories of endogenous susceptibility factors (Belsky & Pluess, 2009a; see also Obradović &Boyce, 2009): (a) behavioral factors (e.g., negative emotionality;
Pluess & Belsky, 2010), (b) physiological factors (e.g., cortisol
stress reactivity; Obradović, Bush, Stamperdahl, Adler, & Boyce,2010), and (c) genetic factors, perhaps most notably polymorphisms in the serotonin transporter (e.g., Taylor et al., 2006) andthe dopamine receptor D4 genes (e.g., Bakermans-Kranenburg &van IJzendoorn, 2006).
In what follows, we review a selection of mostly very recent
studies that provide substantive empirical evidence for individual
differences in vantage sensitivity as a function of behavioral,
physiological, and genetic factors. Rather than attempting to exhaustively delineate and summarize vantage-sensitivity findings,

5

we present here carefully selected evidence, for illustrative purposes, which derives from high-quality research that has appeared,
with few exceptions, since the original Belsky and Pluess (2009a)
review.
It is important to mention that the majority of the work selected
for consideration is not positioned to test whether individuals thatare more responsive to positive exposures are also more responsive
to negative ones. This would be required, however, in order todistinguish vantage sensitivity from differential susceptibility,with the former predicting disproportionate responsiveness to only
positive conditions and the latter predicting disproportionate responsiveness to both positive and negative conditions. Investigation of individual differences in response to both adverse andsupportive conditions would be necessary in order to determine
whether some people are more responsive to both positive andnegative conditions (i.e., differentially susceptible), some to justsupportive conditions (i.e., vantage sensitivity) and some to justadversity (i.e., diathesis stress).

Behavioral Vantage-Sensitivity Factors
Infant temperament and the personality trait of high sensoryprocessing sensitivity, both of which emerged as behavioral susceptibility factors in our previous review (Belsky & Pluess,2009a), also appear to function as vantage-sensitivity markers.
Infant temperament. Developmental psychology has a long
history of investigating the interaction between child temperamentand early experiences (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). Most such research has been informed, implicitly if not explicitly, by thediathesis-stress perspective (Belsky & Pluess, 2009a), thus addressing how infant negative emotionality or difficult temperamentpredisposes infants to be negatively affected by adverse rearing
conditions (e.g., poverty, harsh parenting). A growing body ofevidence, informed by differential-susceptibility thinking, however, provides evidence that these putatively “vulnerable” children
also show a higher degree of vantage sensitivity, benefitting disproportionately from positive environments.
Longitudinal data collected as part of the National Institute ofChild Health and Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child
Care (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2005) revealed
that when children with more difficult and negatively emotionaltemperaments in their first 6 months of life experienced highquality nonmaternal child care and more sensitive maternal carethey scored higher on, respectively, social competence at 4.5 years(Pluess & Belsky, 2009) and academic competence and social
skills at age 6 years (Stright, Cranley Gallagher, & Kelley, 2008).
Similar results emerged when the predictor was maternal sensitivity across the first 4.5 years of life and the outcome was the growthof teacher-rated social skills from 4.5 years until 11 years (Pluess& Belsky, 2010). Indeed, when Roisman and associates (2012)subjected the latter findings to especially stringent evidentiary
criteria, they found that children rated by their mothers as having
difficult temperaments at 6 and 12 months had significantly moresocial and academic skills at 11 years of age when they experienced high-quality parenting in early life. Children with less difficult temperaments, on the other hand, did not benefit frompositive parenting to the same degree.
The vantage sensitivity accruing to children with difficult or
negatively emotional temperaments also emerged in a large British

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PLUESS AND BELSKY

cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children(ALSPAC). Ramchandani, van IJzendoorn, and BakermansKranenburg (2010) tested whether infant negative reactivity moderated effects of father involvement on prosocial behavior, findingthat it did, but only for the almost 2,500 girls included in theiranalysis: Girls rated as highly reactive at 6 months manifested
significantly more prosocial behavior at 6.5 years of age if fathers
were highly involved in caring for the child during the early years.
Nonreactive girls, in contrast, evinced no such benefit from father
involvement.
Further evidence for the augmented vantage sensitivity of children high in negative emotionality comes from Kim and Kochanska’s (2012) investigation of the influence of infant negative
emotionality and mother– child relationship quality on the development of child self-regulation (i.e., effortful control) with asample of 100 boys and girls. For children with low observed
negative emotionality in infancy, there was no significant association between observer-rated mother– child relationship quality at
7 months and the child’s ability at age 2 years to suppress adominant response (e.g., unwrapping a gift) in favor of a subdominant response (e.g., waiting to unwrap a gift). Children who as
infants were highly negatively emotional, however, manifested themost self-regulation in response to these challenging demands
when mother– child relationship was of particular high quality, afinding consistent with vantage sensitivity.
Overcoming the causal-inference limits of correlational studies
such as those just cited, Cassidy et al. (2011) sought to determine
whether newborn irritability, observationally assessed within thefirst month of life, would moderate the effects of a brief parenting
intervention on attachment security, measured using the Strange
Situation at 12 months of age, in a randomized controlled study
involving 169 families. Only in the case of highly irritable infants
did the intervention succeed in promoting attachment security. In
subsequent work focused only on the control group (n ⫽ 84),
Stupica, Sherman, and Cassidy (2011) extended their investigationof vantage sensitivity, evaluating whether infant irritability moderated the effect of infant attachment security, a marker for thequality of the early environment, on sociability measured at 18 and24 months. Children highly irritable as newborns who had established secure attachments to their primary caregiver proved to themost sociable of all children in this inquiry.
High sensitive personality. Vantage sensitivity as a functionof behavioral and psychological characteristics is not restricted totemperamental traits very early in life. One psychological attributemeasured in adulthood that has emerged recently as a moderator ofenvironmental influences is high sensory-processing sensitivity, apersonality trait measured with the Highly Sensitive Person Scale(Aron & Aron, 1997). According to Aron, Aron, and Jagiellowicz(2012) about 20% of the population is characterized by a highsensitive personality encompassing a highly sensitive nervous system, increased awareness of subtleties in surroundings, as well as
the deep processing of them and a tendency to be more easily
overwhelmed when in a highly stimulating environment.
Building on this work while testing the a priori hypothesis thatchildren characterized by high sensitivity would be more responsive to psychological intervention, Pluess and Boniwell (2012)
investigated variation in the anticipated positive effects of aschool-based resilience-promoting program (Pluess, Boniwell,
Hefferon, & Tunariu, 2012) administered to a sample of 166

11-year-old girls in one of the most deprived areas in London,
United Kingdom. The intervention led to a significant decrease ofdepression symptoms observable up to the 12-month follow-up
assessment, but, consistent with vantage sensitivity, exclusively
among children who scored in the upper tercile of the highly
sensitive-child questionnaire (Pluess et al., 2012). All other children failed to benefit from the intervention, at least regarding
changes in depression symptoms.
The only published randomized experiment of high sensitive
personality of which we are aware included 160 male and female
undergraduates (Study 4: Aron, Aron, & Davies, 2005). All participants completed a very brief version of the Highly Sensitive
Person scale (Aron & Aron, 1997), and participants were thenasked to solve problems adapted from intelligence tests. For half ofthe sample, the problems were relatively easy, and for the other
half, the problems were very difficult. After completion, participants rated their state negative affect. For those participants scoring low on high sensitivity, experimental condition had no effecton negative affect. Participants who were highly sensitive, on theother hand, reported not only more negative affect when the test
was difficult but also the least negative affect when the test waseasy. In other words, high-sensitive individuals were more sensitive to the emotional reward of successfully completing the test,
thereby providing evidence for vantage sensitivity as a function of
behavioral characteristics in adulthood. Admittedly, vantagesensitivity would have been more compellingly documented had
the outcome measured been positive affect and the findings thesame.

Physiological Vantage-Sensitivity Factors
The notion that high physiological reactivity would render individuals highly susceptible to both positive and negative experiences is central to Boyce and Ellis’s (2005) Biological Sensitivity
to Context hypothesis. Physiological reactivity in the context of thestress response is controlled by both the autonomous nervous
system (ANS), which is further divided into the sympathetic (SNS)and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), and the neuroendocrine system. The SNS controls activities that are mobilizing
during stress and anxiety (e.g., accelerated heart rate, increased
blood pressure, sweating, etc.), whereas the PNS controls physiologically opposing activities serving relaxation of the body andrestoration of energy stores (e.g., decreases in heart rate, bloodpressure, sleep, etc.). The neuroendocrine response to stress is
primarily controlled by the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis
(HPA). Corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH)—which is released from the hypothalamus in response to stress—activates thesecretion of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) from the pituitary gland, which then causes the adrenal cortex to release cortisol
into the bloodstream. Finally, cortisol stimulates numerous anddiverse physiological and metabolic changes that prepare the organism for optimal functioning under stressful conditions (e.g.,increase of blood pressure and blood sugar, breakdown of lipids
and proteins, reduction of immune responses).
Empirical evidence examining the moderating role of physiological reactivity focused on indisputably positive experiences isrelatively rare. However, there are a small number of studies
indicating increased vantage sensitivity in children with high cor-

VANTAGE SENSITIVITY

tisol or high Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA; a cardiac measure for the activity of the PNS) activity and reactivity.
In a preliminary analysis of a longitudinal evaluation of anintervention provided to 22 10-year-old boys with disruptive behavior disorder, van de Wiel, van Goozen, Matthys, Snoeck, andvan Engeland (2004) investigated whether cortisol stress reactivity
would influence symptom severity 9 months later. Following treatment, boys who scored high on cortisol stress reactivity before
treatment had significantly lower parent-rated aggression and oppositional behavior scores than boys whose cortisol stress reactivity was low, thereby providing the first experimental evidence thathigh cortisol reactivity is a marker of increased vantage sensitivity.
Similar results emerged in a recent observational study by
Obradović et al. (2010) investigating effects of family adversity on
prosocial behavior in 338 5- and 6-year-olds. For children with low
cortisol reactivity, family adversity proved unrelated to prosocial
behavior (based on child, parent, and teacher ratings). Children
with high cortisol reactivity, however, were more prosocial whenfamily adversity was especially low, suggesting greater vantage
sensitivity, that is, enhanced capacity to benefit from a more
supportive environment. In the same study, Obradović et al. (2010)
also evaluated the moderating effect of RSA. Children with high
RSA reactivity showed the highest school engagement (based onchild, parent, and teacher ratings) of all children not exposed tohigh family adversity—and who thus experienced a more supportive rearing milieu—whereas this was not the case for children with
low RSA reactivity.
The finding that RSA measures index vantage sensitivity also
emerged in Eisenberg et al.’s (2012) recent work of 213 toddlers
and their families. Baseline RSA moderated effects of the homeenvironment (based on a composite of maternal and paternal
education, family income, and marital quality) in early childhood
on repeatedly assessed child aggression. For children with high
RSA activity, high environmental quality was associated with lessaggression at 54 months, whereas children characterized by low
RSA activity— displaying vantage resistance— did not benefit
from high quality environments at all.

Genetic Vantage-Sensitivity Factors
Two polymorphisms identified as potential “plasticity genes” inthe Belsky and Pluess (2009a) analysis of differential susceptibility have consistently emerged in more recent work as markers ofvantage sensitivity, DRD4, and 5-HTTLPR.
The dopamine receptor D4 gene. The dopaminergic system
plays an important role in attentional, motivational, and reward
processes and a polymorphism of the dopamine receptor D4(DRD4) gene has been much studied in gene-⫻-environment(G⫻E) interaction research. Variants of the DRD4 differ by the
number of 48-base pair tandem repeats in Exon III, ranging from
2–11. The 7-repeat variant has been regarded as a vulnerability
factor due to its links to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder(Faraone, Doyle, Mick, & Biederman, 2001), high novelty seeking
behavior (Kluger, Siegfried, & Ebstein, 2002), and low dopamine
reception efficiency (Robbins & Everitt, 1999), among other correlates. Findings of a recent meta-analysis of G⫻E studies onchildren up to age 10 years involving DRD4 and other dopaminerelated genes indicate that those carrying less efficient dopaminerelated genes are more vulnerable to negative environments but,

7

supporting a differential susceptibility model, also show higher
vantage sensitivity in response to positive environments(Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2011). Indeed, in thiswork the vantage-sensitivity or “bright side” of the differentialsusceptibility framework vis-à-vis dopamine-related genes proved
stronger than the diathesis-stress or “dark side.” In other words, theapparent benefits of carrying putative “risk alleles” in the face ofenvironmental support or enrichment was greater than the apparent
costs under conditions of contextual adversity. Had what we arecalling vantage sensitivity, after Manuck (2011; Sweitzer et al.,2012), not been considered, this finding surely would have been
missed.
In their pioneering experimental study evaluating genetic moderation of a psychological intervention, Bakermans-Kranenburg,
van IJzendoorn, Pijlman, Mesman, and Juffer (2008) investigatedwhether DRD4 interacted with a video-feedback parenting intervention in reducing externalizing behavior in a sample of 157
families with 1-year-old to 3-year-old children randomly assigned
to treatment condition. Providing evidence for vantage sensitivity,
the intervention proved effective in decreasing externalizing behavior— but only for children carrying the DRD4 7-repeat allele.
Children without the DRD4 7-repeat did not benefit from theintervention at all. Follow-up analyses revealed that the only
children in the experimental group who actually benefited from theintervention were those carrying the DRD4 7-repeat whose mothers’ parenting behavior improved as a result of it. The presence of
the DRD4 7-repeat coupled with no change in mothers’ positive
discipline did not result in a decrease of externalizing behavior,
thereby suggesting that it was the mother’s increase in positive
discipline as a result of the intervention that children with
the DRD4 7-repeat were more sensitive to. This observation begs
the question, what accounted for the vantage sensitivity of somemothers relative to others, an issue not addressed in this inquiry;that is, why did the positive discipline of only some mothers in theintervention group increase? Consideration of this question raises
the prospect that parenting interventions to enhance child functioning may prove most effective when both members of theparent– child dyad— or all members of the family system— havegenetic, physiological, temperamental, or other bases that makethem highly susceptible to environmental support and enrichment.
Focusing on a indisputably positive outcome rather than reduction of a negative one, Kegel, Bus, and van IJzendoorn (2011)
investigated genetic sensitivity as a function of the DRD4 7-repeat
vis-à-vis a computer based literacy instruction program (N ⫽ 182
4-year-old to 5-year-old boys and girls). Two intervention groups,
one with positive feedback and one without, were compared to acontrol group on the development of emergent literacy skills. Only
children carrying the DRD4 7-repeat increased their early literacy
skills in response to the intervention. Notably, the positive effect of
the intervention in children with the DRD4 7-repeat was restricted
to the group that received positive feedback as part of the computer
program. In the absence of positive feedback, there was no difference in literacy skills between children in intervention or control
group, thereby suggesting that the presence of the DRD4 7-repeat
allele predicted vantage sensitivity to the positive feedback component of the intervention.
In a cross-sectional analysis of a longitudinal prospective study,
Knafo, Israel, and Ebstein (2011) investigated whether DRD4
moderated the effects of mother reported positivity in parenting on

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PLUESS AND BELSKY

prosocial behavior in early childhood in a sample of 167 3.5-yearold boys and girls. Among children who did not carry the DRD4
7-repeat allele, there was no significant relation between positivity
in parenting and prosocial behavior. Among children carrying the
DRD4 7-repeat allele, however, evidence of increased vantage
sensitivity emerged, as more positive parenting by the mothers
proved related to more prosocial behavior by their children.
Similar findings emerged when Belsky and Pluess (in press)
evaluated whether DRD4 moderated the effects of early nonmaternal child care quality in the first 4.5 years on repeatedly assessedsocial skills across middle childhood using a subsample of 508
Caucasian boys and girls from the aforementioned NICHD Studyof Early Child Care. Although better quality child care—reflectiveof more attentive, positively affectionate, and stimulating caregiving—proved unrelated to yearly teacher ratings of social skills
from 4.5–11 years for children without the DRD4 7-repeat, in thecase of children carrying this allele, the anticipated positive association emerged between predictor and outcomes at kindergarten
and first grade.
The serotonin transporter gene. A large proportion of G⫻E
studies is based on genetic variants in the serotonergic system,
most prominently the serotonin-transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR), which is a degenerate repeat polymorphic region in SLC6A4, the gene that codes for the serotonin transporter.
Most research focuses on two variants—those carrying at least one
short allele (s/s, s/l) and those homozygous for the long allele(l/l)—though more variants than these have been identified (Nakamura, Ueno, Sano, & Tanabe, 2000). The short allele has generally been associated with reduced expression of the serotonintransporter molecule—which is involved in the reuptake of serotonin from the synaptic cleft—and thus considered to be related todepression, either directly (Munafò et al., 2009; Sen, Burmeister,& Ghosh, 2004) or in the face of adversity (Karg, Burmeister,
Shedden, & Sen, 2011; Risch et al., 2009). However, in a substantial proportion of these studies, results are actually more indicativeof differential susceptibility than diathesis-stress, with 5-HTTLPR
short allele carriers having the worst outcomes under adverse
conditions and the best outcomes under supportive— or at least
benign— conditions (Belsky et al., 2009; Belsky & Pluess, 2009a).
Here, we summarize recent studies that investigated the moderating effect of 5-HTTLPR specifically in response to positive experiential factors. Before doing so, however, we call attention to a
recent meta-analysis of research on 2,276 Caucasian children
under the age of 18 years, which shows that those with one or two
short alleles benefited more from positive environmental exposures than children without them (van IJzendoorn, Belsky, &Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2012).
Kochanska, Kim, Barry, and Philibert (2011) investigatedwhether 5-HTTLPR moderated the effect of mothers’ repeatedly
observed responsiveness across the first 4 years on children’s
moral internalization at 67 months. Moral internalization for children carrying the 5-HTTLPR short allele was significantly higher
when mothers were more responsive, whereas those homozygous
for the long allele appeared resistant to the same beneficial effects
of high maternal responsiveness.
Similar findings emerged in Hankin and associates’ (Hankin etal., 2011) recent research on the interaction of 5-HTTLPR andpositive parenting in predicting positive emotionality in middle
childhood/adolescence using three independent samples totaling

1,874 9-year-old to 15-year-old boys and girls. Results from two of
the three samples were supportive of vantage sensitivity, withchildren carrying the 5-HTTLPR short allele showing the highest
positive affect scores when positive parenting was high, suggestingthat these children were particularly sensitive to the benefits ofhigh positive parenting.
Vantage sensitivity as a function of the 5-HTTLPR short allele
is not restricted to positive experiences within the parenting domain, as revealed by Eley et al.’s (2012) evaluation of whether
5-HTTLPR moderated effects of cognitive behavioral therapy foranxiety disorders. Clinical diagnoses of anxiety disorders andsymptom severity were assessed before and after treatment, as well
as 6 months after treatment ended. Although all children appeared
to benefit from the treatment, the positive effect of the intervention
was particularly pronounced in the case of those children carrying
the short allele in this work with 6-year-old to 13-year-old boys
and girls (N ⫽ 359). More specifically, those homozygous for the
5-HTTLPR short allele showed a significantly greater reduction insymptom severity from pretreatment to follow-up assessment, somuch so, in fact, that they proved 20% more likely than others tobe free of anxiety disorder at the 6-month follow-up assessment.
Through this point, all work considered involving 5-HTTLPR
relied on observational data that do not afford strong causal inference, making findings from a recent randomized controlled study
especially noteworthy. Using data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP), Drury et al. (2012) sought to determine
whether 5-HTTLPR would moderate the effect of early rearing on
indiscriminate social behavior when children were 54 months old.
Indiscriminant social behavior is often regarded as a “signature
consequence” of deprived, institutional care. In the BEIP, 136
abandoned children between 6 and 30 months of age were randomly assigned to standard institutional care or a newly developed
high-quality foster care program (Zeanah et al., 2003). Children
homozygous for the 5-HTTLPR short allele randomly allocated tothe high-quality foster care condition had the lowest indiscriminatesocial behavior scores of the whole sample at 54 months, whereas
for children with the 5-HTTLPR long allele there was no beneficial effect of high-quality foster care. These data are the firstexperimental evidence highlighting the vantage-sensitivity character of 5-HTTLPR.
Vantage sensitivity associated with the 5-HTTLPR short allele
is not restricted to experiences in childhood. Pluess, Belsky, Way,
and Taylor (2010) tested the hypothesis that 5-HTTLPR would
moderate effects of recent life events on neuroticism in a crosssectional study involving 118 healthy young men and women.
Individuals homozygous for the 5-HTTLPR short allele scoredlower on neuroticism than all other genotypes if they experienced
positive life events, suggesting that the short allele of the
5-HTTLPR increases vantage sensitivity to recent positive experiences in adulthood, at least with regard to self-reported neuroticism. Similar results emerged recently in a study involving 367
young adults (Kuepper et al., 2012) with women homozygous forthe short allele scoring significantly lower in neuroticism than
women homozygous for the long allele when having a history of
predominately positive life events. In the same study both men andwomen homozygous for the short allele also scored significantly
higher on a measure of life satisfaction than those homozygous forthe long allele if they experienced a preponderance of positive life
events.

VANTAGE SENSITIVITY

Evidence of increased vantage sensitivity in adulthood as afunction of the 5-HTTLPR also emerged in recent work by
Schoebi, Way, Karney, and Bradbury (2012), whose focus ofinquiry was sensitivity to affective interpersonal cues among 76
married couples. Husbands and wives each reported positive andnegative affect before and after a lab-based discussion of a marital
disagreement. Although there was no significant effect of preinteraction partner positive affect (i.e., the environmental exposure)on postinteraction positive affect (i.e., the outcome) for individuals
homozygous for the 5-HTTLPR long allele, findings were different in the case of individuals carrying the 5-HTTLPR short allele.
For them, the greater the partner’s preinteraction positive affect,
the greater the increase in their own positive affect from before toafter the interaction, supporting the view that short alleles can be
regarded as markers of heightened vantage sensitivity.

Discussion
The claim inherent in the concept of vantage sensitivity—asproposed herein—is that individuals differ fundamentally in their
responsivity to positive experiences and exposures, a theoretical
proposition derived from differential susceptibility reasoning. In
this follow up to our rather recent report making the case fordifferential susceptibility (Belsky & Pluess, 2009a), we focus onvery recent and diverse, cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental studies chronicling vantage sensitivity. Some but not all of
this work has been directly stimulated by our earlier writings.
Consistent with the predictions of vantage sensitivity, someindividuals proved especially likely to benefit from positive experiences, whereas others failed to do so completely or at least did
not benefit to the same extent. In most cases the evidence wasbased on research that measured effects of positive environmental
experiences on positive functioning (e.g., prosocial behavior),
though in some studies benefit was demonstrated as reduction ofproblematic functioning (e.g., aggression).
The individual differences in vantage sensitivity highlighted
in the research reviewed are associated with similar or in manycases the same behavioral, physiological, and genetic characteristics that have often been conceptualized as “risk” or “vulnerability” factors in the psychological and psychiatric literatures (Rutter, 1987). The empirical observation that many ofthese putative “risk factors” are also associated with increased
vantage sensitivity to positive effects of supportive environments lends further weight to the claim that in many cases thesecharacteristics should be reconceptualized as “plasticity markers” (Belsky et al., 2009; Belsky & Pluess, 2009a). However, it
is important to differentiate between those plasticity markers
that confer both risk and vantage sensitivity—that is, differential susceptibility—from those that confer only one or the other.
In this section, we discuss this issue briefly, then turn attention
to determinants of vantage sensitivity and mechanisms that
could account for the phenomena under consideration before
drawing some final conclusions regarding implications of thisanalysis of vantage sensitivity.

Risk, Vantage-Sensitivity, and DifferentialSusceptibility Factors
Although the same factors often seem to moderate effects ofenvironmental influences whether they are exclusively negative

9(i.e., diathesis-stress), exclusively positive (i.e., vantage sensitivity), or ranging from the negative to the positive (i.e., differential
susceptibility), it is important to caution against inferring thatevery risk factor will also, by default, function as a vantage
sensitivity or susceptibility factor. There may very well be specificfactors that play a predominant role in diathesis-stress but not invantage sensitivity and vice versa. Whether an individual characteristic represents a risk, vantage-sensitivity, or differentialsusceptibility factor depends not only on the observed interaction
pattern but also on the nature and range of the environmental andoutcome constructs subject to investigation. Most important,whether variability in response to environmental experience andexposure as a function of a specific moderating factor proves moreconsistent with diathesis-stress, vantage sensitivity, or differential
susceptibility can only be determined empirically using adequate
statistical approaches (Roisman et al., 2012). The most suitableapproaches for differentiating between these models of environmental interaction, at this point, include the “regions of significance” analytic approach (Preacher, Curran, & Bauer, 2006) and a
recently developed confirmatory and hypothesis-driven method
using reparameterization of regression models (Widaman et al., inpress). Unfortunately, these new methods have been applied too
rarely to be used in evaluating the evidence reviewed in thepreceding section.
An important issue raised in our previous analysis of differential susceptibility is whether some individuals are generally
more susceptible to all kinds of environmental influences orwhether susceptibility is confined to specific susceptibility factors in specific domains, with people being more or less susceptible in different areas (Belsky & Pluess, 2009a). Similar
questions have to be considered regarding vantage sensitivity.
Thus, is it the case that an individual likely to benefit disproportionately from one positive environmental exposure withrespect to a specific positive outcome is more or less likely tobenefit from other positive environmental exposures with respect to other positive outcomes? Or is it the case that people
vary in what they do or do not show vantage sensitivity to? Not
unrelated, could some individuals be vantage-sensitivity generalists, evincing disproportionate positive response to a myriadof positive experiences and with regard to a diverse set of
positive outcomes, whereas others are vantage-sensitivity specialists, proving especially responsive to only some positive
contextual conditions and with regard to only some positive
outcomes? However attractive the notion may be that individuals are more specialists than generalists vis-à-vis what they arelikely to benefit from, we would be remiss if we did not callattention to findings from the two Dutch experiments reviewed,
one dealing with the enhancement of maternal positive discipline and reductions in externalizing behavior (BakermansKranenburg et al., 2008) and the other with computerized
literacy instruction and the development of reading skill (Kegelet al., 2011). The fact that children carrying the DRD4 –7Rallele proved most responsive to both of these experiments
highlights the very real possibility that some are simply more
susceptible to a host of environmental “nutrients” than areothers. Clearly, though, far more research is called for before
such a broad-sweeping conclusion can be embraced with any
confidence.

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Determinants of Vantage Sensitivity
Given the obvious advantage of being more sensitive to thebenefits of positive experiences, one important question is whether
the capacity for vantage sensitivity represents an inherited disposition or whether it can be influenced and fostered through developmental experiences, including intervention. The G⫻E studies
reviewed earlier would seem to suggest, at first glance, that individual differences in vantage sensitivity have a primarily genetic
basis. This reading would seem to be further substantiated byevidence linking putative vantage-sensitivity genes with other putative vantage-sensitivity markers that are behavioral in character(e.g., infant difficult temperament and DRD4; Holmboe, Nemoda,
Fearon, Sasvari-Szekely, & Johnson, 2011) or physiological innature (e.g., cortisol reactivity and 5-HTTLPR; Gotlib, Joormann,
Minor, & Hallmayer, 2008). It must be acknowledged, however,that such direct relations between genetic and behavioral or physiological attributes are only inconsistently chronicled in the literature (e.g., Alexander et al., 2009; Armbruster et al., 2009; Pluess
et al., 2011).
Some evidence that environmental exposures can influence vantage sensitivity is found in research on the putatively adverse
effects of maternal stress during pregnancy (for review, see Ruiz &Avant, 2005). After all, research on “fetal programming” indicatesthat prenatal adversity predicts both elevated infant negative emotionality and physiological reactivity (for review, see Pluess &Belsky, 2011), developmental phenotypes that our analysis ofvantage-sensitivity evidence revealed to be potential markers ofvantage sensitivity. Apparent programming of vantage sensitivity
would also seem operative postnatally, given evidence, for example, of effects of early maternal sensitivity on infant difficult
temperament (Kaplan, Evans, & Monk, 2008) and of a childhood
family bereavement program on cortisol reactivity (Luecken et al.,2010). Considered together, these data make clear that the study ofpotential determinants of vantage sensitivity should not be restricted to genetic factors (Boyce & Ellis, 2005; Ellis et al., 2011).
Moreover, the fact that recent evidence also indicates that some of
the genetic polymorphisms already identified as plausible vantagesensitivity factors (e.g., 5-HTTLPR) interact with the early environmental experience to predict behavioral vantage-sensitivity factors (e.g., infant negative emotionality; Pluess et al., 2011) raises
the possibility that some individuals may be genetically predisposed to the environmental inducement of vantage sensitivity.

Mechanisms Accounting for Vantage Sensitivity
Although explicit efforts to identify mechanisms and processesof vantage sensitivity have not been undertaken yet, a range ofstudies focusing on behavioral and neurological correlates of someof the endogenous characteristics that emerged as vantagesensitivity factors in our review indicate that there are likely
multiple processes involved in vantage sensitivity. One may concern the degree of attention directed to qualitative aspects ofexperiences. For example, infants rated high on negative emotionality have been found to look longer at new stimuli, suggesting
increased visual attention and cognitive engagement may play arole in accounting for vantage sensitivity (Vonderlin, Pahnke, &Pauen, 2008). Not inconsistent with this inference is evidence that
healthy adults carrying the 5-HTTLPR short allele outperform
others on the Wisconsin card sorting test, a task that requires,among other things, good functioning in attention and visual
processing (Borg et al., 2009). The notion that some individuals
benefit more from positive experiences due to attentional processes is consistent with Suomi’s (1995, 1997) claim that highly
fearful, inhibited, “up-tight” rhesus macaques learn more thanothers about how to function effectively in their social environment because they spend more time than other young monkeys
observing the world around them.
The attentional processes implicated in the above-cited work
may themselves be a function of deeper central nervous functioning, as recently shown in an imaging study of 18 healthy adults(Jagiellowicz et al., 2011). Participants scoring high in selfreported sensory-processing sensitivity took longer to respond tominor changes in neutral photos and showed more activation invisual attentional brain areas, suggesting they attended moreclosely to the subtle details of the photos.
Other work suggests that some of the putative vantagesensitivity factors highlighted in this report may be related toenhanced attention to emotionally relevant stimuli in particular.
For example, healthy adults carrying 5-HTTLPR short alleles
show attentional bias to both negative and positive emotional
compared to neutral stimuli (Beevers, Wells, Ellis, & McGeary,2009). Yet other research suggests that this attentional bias foremotionally relevant aspects related to the 5-HTTLPR short allele
may actually be stronger for positive stimuli (Beevers et al., 2011);
were this the case, it could help explain why individuals with thisgenotype benefit more than others from positive influences. The
fact, however, that other studies report a stronger bias for negative
stimuli only (for meta-analysis, see Pergamin-Hight, BakermansKranenburg, van IJzendoorn, & Bar-Haim, 2012) or no emotional
bias at all (Fox, Ridgewell, & Ashwin, 2009) certainly invites
caution before any conclusions are drawn as to why short-allele
carriers seem to evince greater vantage sensitivity than do others.
One potential explanation for the inconsistent findings justsummarized may be that short-allele carriers are not so muchinherently biased toward negative or positive stimuli but, rather,that their attentional bias is more easily influenced. Evidence
consistent with this claim is found in a recent experimental study
involving a standard Attention Bias Modification (ABM) procedure in which adults with 5-HTTLPR short alleles developed
stronger biases for both negative and positive affective pictures
than those with long alleles (Fox, Zougkou, Ridgewell, & Garner,2011). Consequently, the authors concluded that individuals carrying the 5-HTTLPR short allele should gain most from therapeutic interventions such as ABM. This suggestion fits nicely with thefindings of a recent study by Clarke, Chen, and Guastella (2012) inwhich the ability to adopt selective attentional processing wasassessed with ABM before adult patients went through group CBTtherapy for social anxiety disorder. Confirming and extending Fox
et al.’s (2011) proposition, those most ready to adopt selective
attentional processing (toward threatening stimuli) in the ABM
experiment were also those who showed the most positive change
in response to treatment.
Another potential mechanism involved in vantage sensitivity
may be that individuals who benefit more from positive influences
are especially sensitive to social forces. On the basis of empiricalobservations that individuals with the 5-HTTLPR short allele often
prove more sensitive to social aspects of the environment, Way
and Taylor (2010) recently made the case that activity within theVANTAGE SENSITIVITY

serotonin system might be critically involved in setting sensitivity
to social experiences. This is certainly intriguing given the fact thatmost of the earlier-reviewed evidence of vantage sensitivity as afunction of 5-HTTLPR include positive experiences and exposures
predominately of a social nature (e.g., parenting, child care, psychotherapy).
Differences in reward sensitivity may be another mechanism
underlying vantage sensitivity. In an experimental study by Roiser,
Rogers, Cook, and Shahakian (2006) individuals with 5-HTTLPR
short alleles attended to differences in the probability of winninggambles more than those with long alleles, suggesting that theformer have greater reward sensitivity. Similar results emerged foradolescents with a history of childhood inhibited temperament in
an imaging study (Bar-Haim et al., 2009). Teenagers who weremore behaviorally inhibited in early childhood—and thus morenegatively emotional—showed more activity in reward-related
brain regions in experimental conditions in which they believedthat their choice of an action determined reward acquisition.
As suggested by the Biological Sensitivity to Context framework(Boyce & Ellis, 2005) and more recently in the Adaptive Calibration Model (Del Giudice, Ellis, & Shirtcliff, 2011), vantage sensitivity may also be a function of a highly reactive stress response
system (e.g., high cortisol reactivity). According to this view,
the stress response system plays an important role in regulating
sensitivity to environmental resources. Indeed, it can be regarded
as an information-acquisition device that relays to the inside of the
body what is going on outside the body.
According to the differential-susceptibility framework (Belsky& Pluess, 2009a) as well as the concept of sensory-processing
sensitivity (Aron & Aron, 1997; Aron et al., 2012), the primaryreason why some individuals are more responsive to positive
influences than others may be because they have a more sensitive
central nervous system on which experiences register more easily
and deeply. In a simple attempt to integrate this “neurosensitivity”
claim with the empirical observations already made regarding
three different categories of vantage-sensitivity factors, we speculate that specific gene variants (e.g., 5-HTTLPR short allele,
DRD4 7-repeat) contribute to the increased sensitivity and responsivity of specific brain regions. The increased neurosensitivity inthese brain regions then manifests itself in increased negative
emotionality and physiological reactivity (Pluess, Stevens, & Belsky, in press), in part because highly sensitive individuals areeasily aroused.
One brain region that seems very likely to be involved invantage sensitivity (as well as differential susceptibility) is theamygdala, which is part of the limbic system and plays an important role in the processing of emotional stimuli (Sander, Grafman,& Zalla, 2003). Importantly—and contrary to the outdated viewthat the amygdala primarily functions to detect and process fearfulstimuli (Adolphs et al., 1999; Davis & Whalen, 2001)—recent
research shows that it responds even more strongly to positive
stimuli (for meta-analysis, see Sergerie, Chochol, & Armony,2008). It is no stretch of the imagination, then, to infer that
amygdala reactivity might be one possible central nervous mechanism by which vantage sensitivity operates. Certainly consistent
with this claim is evidence that amygdala reactivity is greater inindividuals carrying the 5-HTTLPR short allele (Munafò, Brown,& Hariri, 2008) and in individuals with difficult infant temperament (Pérez -Edgar et al., 2007; Schwartz, Wright, Shin, Kagan, &11

Rauch, 2003), both of which we have identified already as
vantage-sensitivity factors.
Also important—and consistent with our contention that vantage sensitivity may be environmentally induced—is recent research chronicling effects of early environmental quality on
amygdala size (Lupien et al., 2011; Tottenham et al., 2010).
Regardless of whether amygdala reactivity should be conceptualized as a neurological mechanism underlying vantage sensitivity, it
would be a mistake to conclude that it is the only or even necessarily most important neurological substrate of vantage sensitivity.
Most likely, vantage sensitivity is the function of different central
nervous mechanisms, including processes related to attention, reward sensitivity, social cognition, and the stress response system.
Whether these different mechanisms represent independent anddomain-specific vantage sensitivity or whether they are all a function of general vantage sensitivity, due to being associated witheach other, remains to be determined.
Finally and on a related note, some vantage sensitivity factors
may build over time in response to positive and supportive exposures. Consider in this regard the fact that adults with higher initiallevels of vagal tone (measured as RSA), which as noted earlier isrelated to increased vantage sensitivity (Eisenberg et al., 2012;
Obradović et al., 2010), increased in positive emotions and social
connectedness more rapidly than others over a period of 9 weeks,
and these increases themselves forecast further growth in vagal
tone independent of baseline RSA measures (Kok & Fredrickson,2010). In other words, the individual propensity for vantage sensitivity may increase over time as a result of exposure to positive
influences— consistent with the notion of upward spiral dynamics(Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002). Given that such an upward andpositive spiral could characterize some more than others, one
might expect interindividual differences in vantage sensitivity to
become larger over time in a positive environment. For example,
individuals with high cognitive abilities (i.e., IQ) may be more
likely to benefit from high quality education which then increases
their cognitive abilities even further and with that the probability
that they will also benefit more from future high quality education
experiences.

Conclusion
There is now emerging evidence that individuals differ in theirpositive response to beneficial experiences and exposures. Suchvariation is not simply a result, at least in intervention studies, ofthe quality of service delivery but also a function of endogenous—
behavioral, physiological, and genetic— characteristics of individuals. Not until the move from diathesis-stress to differentialsusceptibility thinking, though, has this become especiallyapparent. As we have sought to make clear, while the vantage
sensitivity concept we are formally and explicitly introducing here
is indisputably related to differential susceptibility, it is not thesame, just as differential susceptibility is also not the same asdiathesis-stress. Whereas differential susceptibility calls attention
to individual differences in developmental plasticity—for betterand for worse—and diathesis-stress calls attention to the forworse, “dark side” only, vantage sensitivity is only about thefor-better, “bright side.”This distinction raises the intriguing possibility that whereassome individuals may be disproportionately susceptible to nega-

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tive experiences and exposures, consistent with diathesis stress,
others may be disproportionately susceptible to positive environmental conditions, consistent with vantage sensitivity. Still others
may be disproportionately susceptible to both— or to neither.
Besides calling special attention to individual differences in response to positive experiences and providing terminology (borrowed from Manuck, 2011; Sweitzer et al., 2012) to facilitate
discussion, this analysis of vantage sensitivity should stimulate
researchers, perhaps especially those within the subfields of clinical and positive psychology, to pay more attention to endogenous
determinants of variation in response to presumptively beneficial
experiences and exposures. Failure to do so will most likely leadto misestimation of treatment effects: For those who are especiallyvantage sensitive, treatment effects will be underestimated,
whereas for those who are vantage resistant they will be overestimated.
Clearly, more research is required to address at least two important questions related to vantage sensitivity. First and in linewith an observation we made prior to reviewing empirical evidence for vantage sensitivity, the majority of existing studies do
not afford determination of whether a vantage-sensitivity findingreflects simply the positive end of differential susceptibility, due tothe fact that only positive components of the environment havebeen studied, or exclusively vantage sensitivity as defined herein,increased sensitivity to supportive but not to adverse environmental conditions. Consequently, whether a moderating factor represents a diathesis-stress-related risk factor, a vantage-sensitivity
factor, or both (i.e., a general susceptibility factor) can only be
determined if both the diathesis-stress and vantage sensitivity
components of differential susceptibility are tested within the same
study using adequate statistical procedures (Belsky, Pluess, &Widaman, 2012; Roisman et al., 2012; Widaman et al., in press).
While it is possible to compare associations between naturally
occurring variation in environmental quality and outcomes acrossdifferent individuals—with some being exposed to a more negativeand others to a more positive environment—it must be appreciatedthat it is rather challenging to carry out experimental research inwhich the same individuals are exposed to both negative andpositive conditions as it would be very unethical to purposefully
expose study participants to negative experiences. What will becalled for—and remains almost completely absent even in studies
of differential susceptibility—are repeated-measures investigations that evaluate the responsiveness of the same individuals—not
just individuals sharing the same plasticity factors—to naturally
occurring changes over time in both positive and negative environmental conditions (e.g., Verschoor & Markus, 2011). Second,
future research should address whether there are psychological,
behavioral, or neurobiological mechanisms that are specific tovantage sensitivity.
It is not difficult to imagine the practical benefits that might
accrue from the theoretically anticipated discovery of such variation in response to treatments intended to benefit children, parents,and others, be those treatments intended to remediate problems,
prevent them from developing in the first place or becoming
worse, or promote positive functioning. After all, if one could
identify in advance— due to explicit consideration of vantage
sensitivity—those most likely to benefit from a treatment or intervention and the endogenous resistance factors most likely to undermine service effectiveness, then that service could perhaps be

provided on a more efficient basis. Consider in this regard not justthe financial cost of endeavoring to enhance the functioning of
someone who evidence indicates is unlikely to benefit— or at least
not to the degree of others— but also the disappointment experienced by such recipients and their service providers.
On the basis of the notion—as of yet untested—that vantage
sensitivity might be domain specific, the preceding discussion
should not be regarded as inherently pessimistic vis-à-vis those
who seem to be vantage resistant and thus unlikely to benefit froma particular treatment. If vantage-sensitivity resistance factors undermining treatment efficacy could be identified, then it mightprove possible to match individuals to particular treatments. But if
such an effort is going to succeed, one must first begin with thenotion of vantage sensitivity and, as a result, entertain promotive
and resistance factors when planning and providing a service.
Although it is not news to argue that different people may requiredifferent treatments to achieve the same outcome—whether that be
the amelioration of some problem or the promotion of some valued
outcome—we have until recently lacked theory and evidence
regarding what endogenous factors might matter in this regard.
Just to be clear here, the range of treatments we are considering
extends well beyond those provided in clinical settings to “patients” and “clients,” and thus includes widely utilized routine
child care, educational, and other services.
A final and related point concerns whether vantage sensitivity
itself can be directly influenced through intervention. Evidence
cited earlier suggesting that some vantage-sensitivity factors areshaped by early environmental influences certainly suggests that
this might be possible. If so, efficacy of existing psychologicalinterventions and services might be increased drastically by interventions that target the promotion of vantage sensitivity.
In conclusion, vantage sensitivity provides a new concept for theubiquitous observation that individuals differ generally in their
response to positive experiences. Application of vantage sensitivity reasoning to clinical, developmental, and educational psychology may significantly enhance the person-environment fit for avariety of interventions and services, eventually maximizing efficacy on an individual basis.

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Received March 28, 2012
Revision received July 25, 2012
Accepted August 13, 2012 䡲