Randy J. Larsen

Affect intensity as an individual difference characteristic: A review

Abstract Affect intensity is a stable individual difference characteristic defined in terms of the typical strength of an individuals responsiveness. Evidence is reviewed suggesting that the intensity of an individuals affective responsiveness generalizes across specific emotion categories, implying a general temperament dimension of emotional reactivity and variability. Two methods of assessing affect intensity are evaluated and found to exhibit desirable psychometric properties. Substantive research on the validity of the affect intensity construct is reviewed. Affect intensity is related to a variety of specific personality characteristics, has identifiable antecedents in childhood behavior, and relates to a broad range of cognitive, affective, and health-related consequences. An arousal regulation theory is proposed to account for individual differences in affective response intensity. Other plausible theories are mentioned, and directions for future research are discussed.

Affect intensity and reactions to daily life events.

Deux etudes effectuees aupres de 249 sujets examinent les differences individuelles dans lintensite de la reponse affective a des niveaux identiques de stimulation declenchant une emotion

Person × Situation interactions: Choice of situations and congruence response models.

Two models of Person x Situation interaction wee examined. The first model predicts that there is a relation between personality and the situations people naturally choose to be in; the second model predicts that when there is congruence between the situation and personality, a person will experience more positive and less negative affect. These models were investigated by using mood and activity reports gathered on 3,512 occasions sampled randomly from the everyday lives of 42 subjects. Situational dimensions were related to some but not all personality variables investigated. Need for order predicted choice of typical situations and extraversion correlated with time spent recreating socially. However, it was found that individuals did not spend more time in those settings where they experienced more positive emotions nor less time in those situations where they experienced more negative affect. In terms of the affect-congruence model, several predicted relations wee found, but several others did not reach significance. The failure of the affect-congruence model to be consistently supported was probably because the affect of individuals was relatively consistent across situations. The present results suggest that although some theoretically meaningful Person x Situation interactions do occur, they are not necessarily strong or easily predictable.

AN EVALUATION OF SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING MEASURES

A number of subjective well-being scales were compared and evaluated. The Satisfaction With Life Scale emerged as a good measure of general life satisfaction and the Affective Intensity Measure appeared to adequately assess the characteristic level of emotional intensity. Most other scales seemed to reflect both life satisfaction and duration of positive versus negative affect. Of the single item measures, those created by Fordyce were the strongest, whereas for the multi-item scales, several performed at adequate levels. The widely used Bradburn scales showed several undesirable psychometric properties and alternative scales are suggested.

A multitrait-multimethod examination of affect structure: hedonic level and emotional intensity

Abstract Past research on the personality structure of affect suggests that hedonic level and emotional intensity are two separate major dimensions. The present study employed a multitrait-multimethod approach to verify this finding. Seventy-four University of Illinois students completed daily mood reports and self-report questionnaires, and their parents completed a questionnaire about them. Both hedonic level and intensity measures were used. The convergent validities (monotrait-multimethod correlations) were all significant and tended to be highest for emotional intensity. The multitrait-monomethod coefficients were nonsignificant, as were the correlations based on different measures of different traits. The data were interpreted as supporting the distinction between hedonic level and affect intensity, as well as supporting the validity of the measures.

Cognitive operations associated with individual differences in affect intensity.

There are wide individual differences in the characteristic intensity of affective response to the same emotion-evoking event. The processes whereby individuals come to experience strong or mild emotional responses when exposed to the same affect-provoking stimuli are still unclear. In these studies, we propose that individual differences in affect intensity are associated with certain cognitive operations used during exposure to emotion-relevant stimuli. Specifically, cognitive operations that involve personalizing, generalizing, and selective abstraction were hypothesized to discriminate subjects high and low in affect intensity. Two studies replicated support for the hypothesis that subjects high on the affect-intensity dimension engage in more personalizing/empathic and more generalizing/elaborative cognitive operations than do subjects low on the affect-intensity dimension. The same cognitive operations discriminated groups high and low in affect intensity in response to both positive and negative emotional stimuli. Also, the cognitions that discriminated subjects high and low in affect intensity occurred only in response to affective stimuli; neutral stimuli did not evoke divergent cognitive operations for these two groups. Finally, a high degree of consistency was found in the use of emotion-relevant cognitive operations across positive and negative affective stimuli.

Individual differences in circadian activity rhythm and personality

Individual differences in circadian activity rhythms were assessed in terms of peak activity time, rising time and retiring time reported every day for 84 consecutive days. A 19-item Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) was found to significantly correlate with time-of-day effects on these three circadian activity measures, as well as with parental report of the Ss peak activity time. Several measures of extraversion were also found to correlate significantly with the MEQ, as well as with rising and retiring time, suggesting that extraverts are evening types. However, when the differential effects of sociability and impulsivity were examined it was found that the sociability component of extraversion was most responsible for the time-of-day differences. This result diverges somewhat from previous findings that suggest impulsivity is the component responsible for time-of-day effects. This apparent contradiction is discussed in terms of arousal being a non-urinary construct, with different indices of circadian arousal allowing for differential correlates with specific personality components.

CHOICE OF SITUATIONS AND CONGRUENCE MODELS OF INTERACTIONISM

Abstract Recent studies of person-situation interactions have focused nearly exclusively on the statistical rather than reciprocal form of the concept. In an attempt to reverse this trend, two models of reciprocal interactionism are offered: choice of situations and congruence response models. The choice model proposes that individuals select situations and avoid others on the basis of certain underlying needs and dispositions. According to the congruence model, individuals should experience greater positive affect and less negative affect in situations which are congruent with their personality characteristics. Individuals indicated the frequency with which thay had recently participated in various recreation situations and also reported the affects they felt when in those situations. Some support was found for both models of interactionism, thus the choice of model appeared stronger. Implications of the choice model for the personality consistency issue and personality assessment are discussed, and suggestions for future research are offered.

Internal focus of attention and depression: A study of daily experience

The present study investigated the relationship between self-focus of attention and depression, using a naturalistic experiential sampling methodology. Daily ratings of mood and descriptions of daily life events were obtained from 62 subjects over a period of 56 consecutive days. Daily events were rated for severity and coded as referring to a self-focused or external-focused event. Scores on private self-consciousness (PSC) and depression question-naires both correlated significantly with the number of daily events coded as self-focused and negative. Self-focusing to positive life events did not correlate with depression or with PSC. If depression and high PSC individuals do respond with negative mood to internal events, then their daily moods should be more unpredictable from the objective conditions of their daily life. This hypothesis was examined by assessing the linkage between daily moods and objective life events for each subject. Mood-event linkage scores were computed as within-subject correlations between each subjects daily mood ratings and the raters evaluation of the severity of the subjects life events each day. High PSC individuals showed daily moods that were less linked to the objective conditions of their daily life. Again, this effect held only for negative life events. Results are discussed in terms of attentional biases and the relative importance of self-referential processing of negative rather than positive life events in the maintenance of depression.

Gender Schema Theory and Sex Role Inventories. Some Conceptual and Psychometric Considerations

In this study we assessed whether the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) and the PRF ANDRO are appropriate for investigations of gender schema theory (Bem, 1981a). Because these instruments were developed for entirely different theoretical purposes, it is important to empirically examine the validity of these measures for investigating the construct of gender schema. On the basis of the propositions of gender schema theory, we made several predictions about the psychometric properties that should be exhibited by a valid measure of this construct. Responses to the PRF ANDRO and the BSRI were factor analyzed separately for sex-typed and non-sex-typed groups. Results show consistent and theoretically predictable differences in the factor solutions of these two groups. The sex-typed or gender-schematic group obtained bipolar factors, with masculine items loading with one sign, whereas feminine items loaded with the other sign on each factor. Also, sex of subject loaded highly on almost every factor for this group. The non-sex-typed group, however, obtained few such distinctly dichotomous factors, and sex of subject loaded only on the weaker factors. Results are interpreted as providing support for the construct validity of at least the BSRI and the PRF ANDRO for use in researching the implications of this approach.