Personality and Affect

Personality and Affect Question 1: Personality is one of the major psychological aspects used to describe the behaviors of the people, and it refers to the discrepancies in the unique patterns of thinking and feeling, in addition to behavior. Personality can be used as a measure of personal characteristics. Affect, on the other hand, depicts the level of positive attributes portrayed by a person that can be influential on others. A major question that has been asked by many is whether these perceptions have a solid base on which strong arguments regarding personality and affect can be grounded.

These perceptions are believed to develop a great deal of questions regarding the manner in which people can actually have positive and negative emotions installed in their body to an extent that they can be clearly identified by others.

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Further studies need to be carried out to determine how feelings corresponding to, and impelling certain emotional, physical, and spiritual responses may get into the affective repertories of body expressivity. Based on the fact that affect is largely a resultant aspect of the minds activities, academicians question the perception of psychologists who point out that since the mind interacts with all other parts of the body, an outer behavior that translates to personality is developed. It has been argued that this may not be the case since the working and the feelings created by the mind, in addition to an individual’s outer behavior, are dependent on accumulated experiences (Matthews, Deary & Whiteman, 2003).

Question 2: Even though simple perceptions cannot be used to offer detailed description of affect and personality, it should be noted that there is an optimum level of positive or negative affect.

Positive and negative aspects have been extensively used across cultures as a measure of emotional dynamism (McCrae & Allik, 2002). Despite the fact that positive and negative affects typify independent aspects of emotions as portrayed by the people, these two elements result in totally contradicting outcomes. Whereas positive affect is believed to increase socialization and interaction between the people, negative affect on the other hand is has been shown to dampen possible chances of positive correlation.

Affect is believed to play a major role in determining how emotional elements portrayed by an individual shape the life of the individual in question. It is always important for people to down regulate their negative affect under all circumstances since high levels of negative affect can result in development of destructive behaviors. Negative affect, for instance, has been shown to devalue speakers from minority communities. Those who present with high levels of negative

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affect should employ effective mood repair strategies in order to easily interact with other people in activities that call for relaxed and positive mood.

Despite the fact that a high level of positive affect is beneficial to an individual and to other people, extremely high levels of positive affect can at times be devastating. However, high levels of positive affect are beneficial since they result in high functional support. It is only through positive interactions that a stable society can be developed. Quite a number of studies have been carried out to determine the effects of minimal and high levels of positive or negative affect. Considering that affect is the conscious subjective characteristic of an emotion, also described as the observable features of emotions that an individual experiences subjectively, it can be argued that human beings do have the ability to regulate their emotions (McCrae & Allik, 2002).

One of the main questions that have been lingering in the minds of psychologists is whether affect is a typical representation of an instinctual reaction to stimulation that usually takes place before the cognitive processes, which are essential for the development of more complex emotions (Mroczek & Almeida 2004). It has been argued out that the instinctual reaction to stimuli is experienced by all human beings, and that it is the basic reaction for most of the smaller organisms. It is important to note that affect may at times take place without extensive cognitive and perceptual encoding. Affective emotions may also occur with greater confidence as compared to cognitive judgment in some people. Nevertheless, the level to which an individual expresses emotional affect is believed to have the capacity to impact on his or her life, as well the lives of other people. Therefore, people should try to down regulate their negative affect under all circumstances.

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The question on whether a high level of positive affect is good has elicited a controversial debate among psychologists and academicians. Affect is largely considered post cognitive, and therefore, a resultant factor of specific cognitive processing of information. High levels of cognitive affect imply that an individual may have engaged his or her mind in extraneous cognitive processing (McCrae & Allik, 2002). It has also been pointed out that affective emotions are pre-cognitive and can be produced by very minor emotional responses. It should, however, be noted that that affect is post cognitive and, therefore, it can be produced by thoughts emanating from a particular emotional response (Mroczek & Almeida 2004). Scholars point out that affect is important in enabling individuals to make practical modes of cognition; this is the point where controversy occurs. From the scholars’ point of view, it can be argued that high levels of affect are beneficial. This article proposes a study which, through extensive evaluation of published work, journal articles and other legitimate sources, will help determine whether there is an optimum level of positive or negative affect, whether a high level of positive affect is always good and also whether people should try to down regulate their negative affect under all circumstances.

Affect may be divided into unconscious affect and conscious affect. Non-conscious affect differs greatly from conscious affect since its mode of processing is not dependent on environmental stimuli. Through a monohierarchy view point, cognition processing and affect are believed to consider the arousal, evolutionary constraints, and covert perception, as well as affective primacy as the key factors that determine sensing and discrimination (McCrae & Allik, 2002). Emotions are considered to be intricate chains of events that result from specific stimuli.

Nonetheless, there is no particular way through which emotion can be described or controlled by knowing only some of its key components. It has been argued that all people have the capacity to

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control their feelings. It should, however, be noted that verbal reports on affect, emotional feelings and other psychological elements are somehow inaccurate since people may not describe their actual internal feelings. Also, it is highly likely that individuals may experience mixed reactions, thereby making it hard for them to tell the exact feeling resulting in response to a particular situation. Even though affective emotions are more basic and less challenging when it comes to assessment, this variation may make it hard for people to down regulate their affect.

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Hoyer, W. D., & MacInnis, D. J. (2008). Consumer behavior. New York, NY: Cengage Learning Matthews, G., Deary, I. J., & Whiteman, M. C., (2003). Personality traits. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

McCrae, R. R., & Allik, J. (2002). The Five-Factor Model of personality across cultures, Mahwah, NJ: Springer.

Mroczek, D. K., & Almeida, D. M. (2004). The effect of daily stress, personality, and age on daily negative affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(2): 355-378.