 21. Emotion and Personality  463
an empirical fact in need of much more sys -
tematic study. Diary studies of people’s daily 
experiences routinely find striking variation 
in how often people feel different emotions, 
and with what intensity (e.g., Gordon et al., 
2017). Highly neurotic individuals often 
encounter the same contentious issues in 
romantic relationships as do less neurotic 
individuals, but they react with greater nega -
tive emotion (Bolger & Schilling, 1991). In -
dividual differences in emotion are the rule 
and not the exception. As empirical work 
continues to detail the mechanisms of emo -
tion with greater precision, this knowledge 
will yield critical advances in understand -
ing the sources of individual differences in 
emotional response, which, we shall see, has 
important clinical implications. We consider 
three examples here.
Appraisal  Biases
As noted earlier, most theories of emotion 
assume that emotions are trigged only in 
part by objective features of an eliciting 
situation—  the furrowed brow in a glare 
from an adversary, laughter of friends, the 
taste of ice cream, a child’s embrace—  as 
registered by the skin and brain. Appraisals 
of objective events as they relate to the sig -
nificance for the individual’s goals and well- 
being endow object events with meaning, 
and give rise to emotion. Early, automatic 
appraisals of the situation’s novelty, pleas -
antness, and goal relevance occur quick -
ly, perhaps within 300–500 milliseconds 
(Smith & Lane, 2015), and involve ancient 
regions of the brain such as the amygdala, 
the ventral striatum, and the periaqueduc -
tal gray (e.g., Kober et al., 2008). More 
complex appraisals may follow, transform -
ing broad affective responses into distinct 
emotions through processes that engage ad -
ditional brain regions, including evolution -
arily newer regions of the prefrontal cortex 
(Kober et al., 2008; Lindquist et al., 2012; 
Ochsner, 2008; Smith & Lane, 2015).
Prior to these neuroscientific discoveries, 
Magna Arnold (1960), a pioneer in appraisal 
theory, proposed that individual differences 
in emotion are rooted in appraisal biases, 
consistently nudging the individual toward 
experiencing some emotional responses 
rather than others. This proposal has been expanded by modern appraisal theorists, 
who emphasize differences in attention to 
emotional stimuli, idiosyncratic schemas for 
the conceptual meaning of events, biases in 
causal attribution and assessment of per -
sonal control, and other appraisal biases as 
important drivers of individual differences 
in emotional responding (e.g., Robinson, 
Vargas, & Crawford, 2003; Silvia, Henson, 
& Templin, 2009; Van Reekum & Scherer, 
1997).
There is an expanding literature, for ex -
ample, documenting associations between 
the individual’s tendency to perceive threats 
in social interactions, or rejection sensitiv -
ity, and the intensity of negative emotions 
such as anger, fear, and shame (Downey & 
Feldman, 1996; John-  Henderson, Stellar, & 
Mendoza-  Denton, 2015a, 2015b; Mendoza-  
Denton, 2014; Rheinschmidt & Mendoza- 
Denton, 2014). Rejection sensitivity has 
proven to be a proximal determinant, for 
example, of the elevated anxiety and fear 
among people of minority ethnic status 
and lower socioeconomic status (SES) back -
grounds (Rheinschmidt & Mendoza Den -
ton, 2014). Appraisal biases have been found 
to account for links between personality fac -
tors and individual differences in affect as 
well. For example, one experience sampling 
study found that higher neuroticism predict -
ed more negative appraisals over the course 
of 2 days; moreover, high-  neuroticism in -
dividuals showed stronger links between 
negative appraisals and the experience of 
anger, sadness, fear, and guilt (Tong, 2010). 
Dodge, Bates, and Pettit (1990) showed that 
children with a tendency toward aggressive 
behavior are more likely to attribute hostile 
intent to a peer’s videotaped frustrating be -
havior than did nonaggressive children, as 
long as the peer’s intentions were objectively 
ambiguous (see also Crick & Dodge, 1996; 
Hazebroek, Howells, & Day, 2001).
In contrast, a bias to appraise social con -
texts in terms of the rewards they offer 
and opportunities for goal satisfaction— 
approach-  related relationship goals— 
consistently predicts individual differences 
in positive emotions (e.g., Impett et al., 
2010). For example, romantic partners who 
report higher relationship approach goals, 
rather than goals emphasizing problem- 
avoidance, experience more positive emo -