Threat Sensitivity
How fast uncertain becomes unsafe.
- Background scan
- Both ends cost
- Nervous-system safety
- Core EF
Threat Sensitivity is how your system reads a situation it cannot fully predict yet.
Before you consciously decide whether something is safe, a faster system has already taken a guess. This dial sets how protective that guess tends to be when the signal is ambiguous.
The range
Saturation curve: the middle tends to work best; both extremes cost something.
Lower
The world feels neutral by default, which is calm and efficient. The cost is that genuine warning signs can register late, so risk sometimes arrives before it feels significant.
Calibrated (middle)
Threat and safety signals get weighed in proportion to what is actually likely. Real danger still produces a fast, decisive response; ambiguity does not automatically read as danger, and the background scan stays quiet enough to leave room for everything else. This is the sweet spot the curve bends around.
Higher
Ambiguity reads as possible danger and the background scan runs continuously. This catches real risk fast. The cost is a high false-alarm rate, so safe rooms still get processed as demanding protection.
What it is not
- Not emotional size
- Threat Sensitivity sets how often the system goes on guard. Emotional Amplitude sets how big the feeling is once something has landed. One is frequency, the other is intensity.
I was not overreacting to one thing. I had been quietly braced all day.
the reaction we design for