they get very happy. When they get down, they get very down. We say these
people are unpredictable, they fly off the handle, they ’re moody. Today they
might be pumped up and enthusiastic, tomorrow frustrated and hostile.
Personality researchers would say the two students differ in terms of their
affect intensity (Jones, Leen-Feldner, Olatunji, Reardon, & Hawks, 2009;Larsen & Diener, 1987). Affect intensity refers to the strength or degree to
which people typically experience their emotions. At one end we find peoplewho respond to emotional situations with relatively mild reactions; at theother we find people with strong emotional reactions. As shown in the two
students ’data, high-intensity people not only experience their emotions more
intensely, they also tend to be more variable. They experience higher highs
and lower lows. Notice that affect intensity applies to both positive and nega-
tive emotions. A person who experiences strong positive emotions also tends
to experience strong negative emotions (Schimmack & Diener, 1997). Wherewe find peaks, we also find valleys.
We might think that the difference between high- and low-intensity peo-
ple is that the former simply have more emotionally loaded events in their
lives. However, this does not seem to be the case. When researchers compare
the kinds of activities high- and low-intensity people experience, they find no
differences (Larsen, Diener, & Emmons, 1986). High- and low-intensity peo-
ple tend to go to the same number of parties and concerts, and they have the
same number of hassles and setbacks. The difference lies in how they react to
those events. In one study, researchers presented participants with identical
hypothetical situations, such as receiving a letter from a friend or discovering
a flat tire on your bicycle (Larsen et al., 1986). When asked to imagine how
they would respond, high-intensity participants said they would enjoy the
positive events to a greater degree and be more upset by the negative events
than did the low-intensity participants.
Even relatively mild situations can evoke strong reactions in high-intensity
individuals. High-intensity participants in one study had stronger emotionalreactions than lows to magazine ads for alcoholic beverages (Geuens & De
Pelsmacker, 1999). Other studies find that high-intensity people tend to over-estimate the extent to which events will affect them and are guilty of drawing
unwarranted conclusions based on one good or one bad experience (Larsen,
Billings, & Cutler, 1996; Larsen, Diener, & Cropanzano, 1987). To a high-intensity individual, one friendly smile suggests a blossoming relationship, one
bad grade the end of the world. No doubt high-intensity people are often told
they are overreacting by those from the other end of the affect intensitydimension.
These observations lead to another question: Is it better to be high on af-
fect intensity and really experience life or low on this dimension and maintaina steady and calm approach to achievements and calamities? In other words,
how does affect intensity relate to well-being? The answer is that high- and
low-intensity people tend to score about the same on measures of happinessand well-being (Larsen, Diener, & Emmons, 1985). High-intensity people ex-
perience more positive affect, of course. But this seems to be offset by the fact
that they also experience more negative affect (Kring, Smith, & Neale, 1994).Emotions 209