AFFECT INTENSITY AND INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN INFORMATIONAL STYLE

Although individuals differ widely in the typical intensity of their a ffective experience, the mechanisms that create or maintain these diff erences are unclear. Larsen, Diener, and Cropanzano (1987) examined th e hypothesis that individual differences in affect intensity (AI) are related to how people interpret emotional stimuli. They found that hig h AI individuals engaged in more personalizing and generalizing cognit ions while construing emotional stimuli than low Al individuals. The p resent study extends these findings by examining cognitive activity du ring a different tast-the generation of information to communicate abo ut life events. Participants provided free-response descriptions of 16 life events. These descriptions were content coded for five informati onal style variables. It was found that the descriptive information ge nerated by high AI participants contained significantly more reference s to emotional arousal, more focus on feelings, and more generalizatio n compared to participants low in AI. These results are consistent wit h the notion that specific cognitive activity may lead to, or at least be associated with, dispositional affect intensity. In addition, the informational style variables identified in this study were stable ove r time and consistent across situations. Although men and women differ in AI, this difference becomes insignificant after controlling for in formational style variation. Overall results are discussed in terms of a model of various psychological mechanisms that may potentially crea te or maintain individual differences in affect intensity.