Measuring porosity without circularity

Porosity — how much of the surrounding field enters a person — does explanatory work in this model only if it can be measured independently of the outcomes it predicts. A scale that infers porosity from distress, and then predicts distress, predicts nothing.

The requirement, stated as a constraint: a porosity measure must be performance-based, not self-reported — built from demonstrated sensitivity to others’ affective states (for instance, accuracy and speed in registering affect that the person was not asked to attend to), not from endorsement of items about being sensitive.

With such a measure in hand, the model makes two predictions. First, porosity and reactivity should dissociate: some individuals will register field-level material with exceptional immediacy while remaining emotionally steady. Second, porosity should predict differential susceptibility — greater cost in incoherent relational environments, greater benefit in coherent ones — while a compromised boundary should predict cost everywhere, coherent or not. The distinction between a porous filter and a failing one is clinically decisive, and it is testable.

This proposal rests on a structural model of psychological life — the Shared Field Model. The full architecture is here.