However, there does seem to be a difference in the way these two kinds
of people experience happiness. For high-intensity people, happiness means a
lot of exhilarating and enlivening experiences. For low-intensity people, hap-
piness takes the form of a calm, enduring sense of contentment (Larsen &
Diener, 1987). In short, these people simply lead different, not necessarily bet-
ter or worse, emotional lives. Moreover, both kinds of individuals can be pro-
ductive, but again in different ways. One researcher found that scientists tend
to be low in affect intensity, whereas artists tend to be high (Sheldon, 1994).These findings fit the stereotypes of the pondering scientist satisfied with in-
cremental steps toward his or her goal and the temperamental artist operating
on bursts of inspiration-driven energy. Both get where they want to be, buteach takes a different emotional route.
Emotional Expressiveness
If I tell you Maria is an emotional person, you probably have little difficultyimagining what she is like. The “emotional ”people I know cry at sad movies,
tell friends they are loved, and move about excitedly when given good news.If Maria is an emotional person, you could probably tell me what kind of
mood she is in just by seeing the expression on her face. No doubt her friends
share her joys as well as her disappointments. Most of us know someone like
Maria, but what is it that makes these people stand out from the crowd?
By now it should be clear that the kinds of emotions we experience
(affectivity) and the strength of our emotions (intensity) represent importantaspects of our emotional lives. Yet when we identify someone as an “emo-
tional ”person, we probably aren ’t referring exactly to either of these individ-
ual differences. Rather, I suspect what distinguishes these people from most ofus is that they are high in what researchers call emotional expressiveness.
Emotional expressiveness refers to a person ’s outward display of emo-
tions. Some people tend to be particularly expressive of their feelings. We say
these individuals “wear their emotions on their sleeves ”or that we can “read
them like a book. ”If they ’re feeling a little down today, it shows. They move
slowly; their shoulders sag; they wear sad faces. And if these same peoplehave just received good news or simply feel good about what they ’re doing,
we can tell in a minute. They bounce when they walk; they grin. We hearthe enthusiasm in their voices. When highly expressive women in one study
were told they had answered some difficult problems correctly, they could
not keep themselves from smiling (Friedman & Miller-Herringer, 1991).
As with affectivity and intensity, researchers find relatively stable differ-
ences in the extent to which we express our emotions (Friedman, Prince,Riggio, & DiMatteo, 1980; Gohm & Clore, 2000; Kring, Smith, & Neale,
1994). Like other personality traits, we can place people along a continuum
ranging from those who are highly expressive to those who show few outward
signs of how they are feeling. Consistent with common observations, research-
ers find that women tend to be more expressive of their emotions than men(Gross & John, 1998; Kring & Gordon, 1998; Lavee & Ben-Ari, 2004;
Timmers, Fischer, & Manstead, 1998). Interestingly, women also tend to be bet-
ter than men at reading the emotions in other people ’s faces (McClure, 2000).210 CHAPTER 8 The Trait Approach