 21. Emotion and Personality  449
in more specific terms (e.g., fear, disgust, 
pride ) alluding to their situational cause 
and prototypical physiological, cognitive, 
and behavioral aspects. Emotions are com -
monly defined as coherent, multicomponent 
responses, evoked by one’s interpretation 
of the personal significance of the eliciting 
event, that include distinct nonverbal expres -
sions, patterns of visceral activity, changes 
in cognitive processing, and action tenden -
cies geared toward resolving the eliciting sit -
uation (Levenson, 1999); although theorists 
debate the extent to which coherence among 
these emotion-  related processes is “real” 
and species-  typical versus reflecting learned 
social/psychological constructs (Barrett, 
Mesquita, Ochsner, & Gross, 2007; Lench, 
Flores, & Bench, 2011; Lindquist, 2017; Shi -
ota, 2021). How specific emotions, such as 
gratitude, differ from related mood-like ex -
periences, such as feeling appreciative, and 
coalesce into trait-like tendencies, such as a 
grateful disposition, remain essential ques -
tions in need of empirical attention (Mc -
Cullough et al., 2002).
Sensory experiences  represent the fourth 
and most temporally precise level of analy -
sis (Kahneman, 1999). Sensory experiences, 
such as an itch or the taste of butterscotch, 
or hearing the sound of the air conditioner, 
have unique temporal dynamics and con -
tribute to the subjective life of the individual 
in many ways (Fredrickson & Kahneman, 
1993). When sensations are filtered through 
an individual’s appraisals of social goals, 
aspirations, and concerns, sensations can 
develop into emotions. For example, Paul 
Rozin (1996; Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 
2008) and colleagues have offered an ac -
count of how “distaste” for noxious smells 
and tastes (a sensory experience) evolved 
into “core disgust,” an emotional response 
preventing contamination by physical tox -
ins, and thence into “moral disgust,” a re -
sponse to the potentially contaminating ac -
tions and traits of others within the social 
environment. How sensory experiences, 
particularly those early in development— 
patterns of touch, exposure to loud and 
harsh sound, visual scenes of natural beauty 
(or the lack thereof), recurrent experiences 
of hunger—  are transformed into individual 
differences in emotions remains an area rich 
with possible discoveries.Approaches to Personality and Emotion: 
A First Wave of Science
Individual differences in affect and emotion 
have been infused into personality psychol -
ogy throughout the modern development of 
the field (R. Larsen & Ketelaar, 1991). The 
fundamental dimensions in Hans Eysenck’s 
(1967) early model of personality were ex -
traversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism, 
with the first explicitly linked to positive 
emotionality and the second to negative 
emotionality (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985). 
Cattell (1973) emphasized extraversion and 
neuroticism as higher-  order traits as well. 
Building on Eysenck’s interest in the biologi -
cal mechanisms of personality, Gray (1981) 
proposed that extraversion and neuroticism 
are rooted in individual differences in the re -
activity of distinct neural circuits mediating 
emotional responses to rewards and threats, 
respectively.
The emphasis on extraversion and neu -
roticism as higher-  order dimensions of per -
sonality stimulated a similar emphasis on 
positive versus negative affect in the emerg -
ing science of emotion. Explicitly applying 
Eysenck’s model to this domain, Watson and 
Tellegen (1985) proposed a two-  dimensional 
structure of trait and state affect with posi -
tive and negative axes, supported by a body 
of research using factor analysis, multidi -
mensional scaling, and related statistical 
techniques to identify patterns of covaria -
tion among affect items rated by participants 
for similarity and/or current experience. 
Cacioppo, Berntson, Norris, and Gollan’s 
(2011) evaluative space model posits a simi -
lar dimensional space but emphasizes stim -
ulus evaluation and physiological reactiv -
ity rather than subjective experience. In his 
own research on the structure of subjective 
feelings, Russell (1980, 2003) proposed that 
core affect  is defined by orthogonal dimen -
sions of valence (pleasure vs. displeasure) 
and activation. The resulting space is simi -
lar to that identified by Watson and Telle -
gen (1985) but rotated 45 degrees, so that 
positive and negative affect cannot be ex -
perienced at the same time. Although con -
troversy continues over the nature of “bit -
tersweet” moments—  a beloved child’s move 
from home to college, or watching your best 
friend marry your former secret crush—the 