Download - Emotion and Personality. Emotions Components of Emotions (e.g., fear): Distinct subjective feelings (e.g., anxiety) Accompanied by bodily changes.

Emotion and Personality

EmotionsEmotions

Components of Emotions (e.g., fear):

Distinct subjective feelings (e.g., anxiety)

Accompanied by bodily changes (e.g., increase heart rate)

Accompanied by action tendencies, or increases in the probabilities of certain behaviors (tendency to fight or flight)

Emotions

• People differ in emotional reactions, even to the same event, so emotions are useful in making distinctions between persons

Issues In Emotion ResearchIssues In Emotion Research

Emotion States versus Emotion Traits

Categorical Approach to Emotions versus Dimensional Approach

The Content versus Style of Emotional Life


Emotion states are transitory and depend more on the situation than on the specific person

An emotional trait is a pattern of emotional reactions that a person consistently experiences across a variety of life situations

Emotion States versus Emotion Traits


Categorical Approach

Emotions are a small number of primary and distinct emotions

Dimensional Approach

Emotions are broad dimensions of experience

Anger, Joy, Anxiety Pleasant Unpleasant


Content: specific kinds of emotions

Style: how emotions are experienced and expresses

Content versus Style of Emotional Life

The Content of Emotional LifeThe Content of Emotional Life

Pleasant Emotions

versus

Unpleasant Emotions


Pleasant Emotions

Pleasant emotions: Happiness and life satisfaction (Subjective Well-Being)

Researchers have defined happiness in two complimentary ways:

(1) Judgment that life is satisfying

(2) Predominance of positive relative to negative emotions

Happiness not just absence of negative emotions

The Content of Emotional Life

• Are self-reported happier people really happier?• Self-report and non-self-report measures of

happiness correlate with self-report scores on social desirability– Part of being happy is to have positive

illusions about the self, an inflated view of the self as a good, able, desirable person (Defense Mechanisms)


Survey measures of happiness and well-being predict other aspects of people’s lives we would expect to relate to being happyCompared to unhappy people, happy

people are less abusive, less hostile, report fewer diseases, are more helpful, creative, energetic, forgiving, and trusting

Thus, self-reports of happiness are valid and trustworthy


What We Know About Happy People

No difference between the genders

No difference between age groups; however, the circumstances that make us happy changes with age

No differences with race or ethnicity


• Money?– Within a country?– Over time?

• Education?

• Marriage?

• Children?

• Religion?


Personality and Well Being

Two personality traits that influence happiness Extraversion Neuroticism

Two different models Indirect model: Personality causes a person to

create a certain lifestyle, and lifestyle causes emotion reactions

Direct model: Personality causes emotional reactions


• Explanations– Goal Satisfaction vs. Activity (goal

striving)

– Top down (trait) vs. Bottom up (state)


Unpleasant Emotions

Trait anxiety, negative affectivity, or neuroticism

Depression and melancholia

Anger-proneness and hostility


Anxiety, Negative Affectivity, or Neuroticism

Eysenck’s Biological Theory

Neuroticism is due primarily to the tendency of the limbic system in the brain to become easily activated


Anxiety, Negative Affectivity, or Neuroticism

Cognitive Theories

Neuroticism is caused by styles of information processing—preferential processing of negative (but not positive) information about the self (not about others)

Related explanation holds that high neuroticism people have richer networks of association surrounding memories of negative emotion—unpleasant material is more accessible


Anger-Proneness and Hostility

Type A personality: Syndrome or a cluster of traits, including achievement strivings, impatience, competitiveness, hostility

Research identified Type A personality as a predictor of heart disease

Research subsequently identified hostility as a trait of Type A most strongly related to heart disease


• Hostility: Tendency to respond to everyday frustrations with anger and aggression, to become easily irritated, to act in a rude, critical, antagonistic, uncooperative manner in everyday interaction

• Hostility in Big Five: Low agreeableness, high neuroticism

Emotional StyleEmotional Style

Affect Intensity as an Emotional Style

Assessing Affect Intensity and Mood Variability

Research Findings on Affect Intensity


High Affect Intensity

Individuals who experience emotions strongly and are emotionally reactive and variable

Low Affect Intensity

Individuals who experience emotions only mildly and with only gradual fluctuations


Assessing Affect Intensity and Mood Variability

Affect Intensity Measure

Beeper studies


Research Findings on Affect Intensity

High affect intensity subjects tend to evaluate the events in their lives (both positive and negative) as having more emotional impact

Individuals high on the affect intensity dimension exhibit more mood variability

Affect intensity relates to the personality dimensions of high activity level, sociability, and arousability

The Interaction of The Interaction of Content and Style in Emotional LifeContent and Style in Emotional Life

Hedonic balance interacts with affect intensity to produce specific types of emotional lives that may characterize different personalities

SummarySummary

Emotions as States or as Traits

Emotional Content

Emotional Style