PLEASURE OF LEISURE-PLEASURE OF WORK - PERSONALITY MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

It seems natural to enjoy leisure more than work. However, time sampli ng studies on emotions in everyday life situations revealed large and consistent individual differences in the leisure/work discrepancy of m ood. By reanalyzing data of 7 different studies (N = 188) performed wi th die time sampling diary of Brandstatter (1977; Bericht uber den 30. Kongressder DGfPs in Regensburg 1976. Gottingen: Hogrefe), subjects h igh and low in leisure/work discrepancy of mood could be identified by the 16PF second order factors emotional stability and extraversion. F or 16 (4 by 2 by 2) categories of situations, classified according to the presence of other persons, leisure-work, and at home-out of home, two indices of stimulation intensity were calculated. During leisure a s well as during work only extraverts, and not introverts, felt much b etter in situations with high stimulation than in situations with low stimulation. Although, on average across types of situations and perso ns, leisure situations were not more activating than work situations, extraverts compared to introverts used the freedom of leisure time for choosing more often highly stimulating activities. Moreover, it could be shown (a) that leisure provides better opportunities for satisfyin g social motives than work, and (b) that extraverts have stronger soci al motives which can more easily be satisfied during leisure than duri ng work. Thus, individual differences in the need for stimulation and in the strength of social motives on the one hand, and environmental d ifferences in activation and in the opportunities for satisfying socia l motives are most likely the causes of the differences between introv erts and extraverts in the leisure/work discrepancy of mood. As predic ted and tested with a new data set, the connotative meaning of ''leisu re'' and ''work'' is different for introverts and extraverts, and thes e differences on the valence and arousal dimension correspond to the d ifferences found in the diary data.