Surwit, 2002). That is, people who score high on measures of negative affect re-
port more health problems than people with low negative affect. And we aremore likely to find high negative affect people in a doctor ’s office than people
who are low on this dimension.
But these findings raise another question: Do people high in negative
affect really suffer from more health problems, or do they simply complain
more? Maybe people high in negative affect simply think about their symp-
toms more than most of us. To test this possibility, one group of healthy vo-lunteers was deliberately exposed to cold and flu viruses (Cohen et al., 1995).
The participants were then quarantined in a hotel for several days where they
were monitored for real symptoms as well as daily self-reports of their symp-toms. The researchers found that the volunteers characteristically high in neg-
ative affect reported more cold and flu symptoms than those who scored low
on this dimension. However, when the investigators looked at actual symp-toms (such as mucus excretions), they found no difference between those
high and low in negative affect.
But before we dismiss the higher rate of health problems among negative
affect people as exaggerated complaining, consider that both of these possibil-ities may be true— perhaps people high in negative affect complain more, but
they also may experience more genuine symptoms. This was the conclusion of
a 7-year study looking at patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis (Smith,
Wallston, & Dwyer, 1995). Patients high in negative affect did report more
symptoms and more severe symptoms than those on the other end of this di-
mension. However, it also was the case that these patients had higher levels
of physical ailments that could not be explained away simply by their ten-
dency to focus on the negative. In short, patients high in negative affect com-
plained more than the symptoms warranted, but they also had more
legitimate reasons to complain.
This last observation leads to a final question: Why should different levels
of negative affect be related to one ’s physical health? As of yet, no clear answers
to this question are available. One possibility is that people high in negative
affect have difficulty dealing with stress, which subsequently affects their health.It might also be the case that mood affects health-related behaviors. High and
low negative affect people might have different exercise, eating, or health habits.
Finally, it ’s possible that people who suffer from a lot of health problems
become more negative about their lives in general.
Affect Intensity
Students participating in one psychology experiment were asked to keep daily
records of their emotions for 84 consecutive days (Larsen, 1987). Each day
the students completed a short scale indicating the extent to which theyhad experienced positive emotions, such as happiness and fun, and negative
emotions, such as sadness and anger. The researchers plotted each person ’s
emotional pattern for the length of the study.
What were these investigators looking for? Consider the data from two
of the participants in that study, shown in Figure 8.3. The average amount
of positive and negative emotion was about the same for each of theseEmotions 207