Taking the middle ground, where the path is most clear: Reply to Smith (2013) and Denollet (2013)

We appreciate the thoughtful comments on Marin and Miller (2013). Both commentaries questioned the validity of our conclusions about interpersonal sensitivity (IS) and health, with Smith (2013) arguing that we overstated the conclusions and Denollet (2013) arguing that we did not take them far enough. Here we offer a middle-ground approach to interpreting the IS- health literature. We discuss our rationale for including introversion as an IS construct, and we point readers to high-quality evidence that specifically rules out some of the competing explanations raised by Smith (2013). Finally, we argue that additional work in this area is needed before specific hypotheses about biological mechanisms and the roles of age and disease stage as possible moderators can be tested.