Psychological Reports, 1990, 66, 1159-1169. @ Psychological Reports 1990

PERSONALITY CORRELATES AND CYCLICITY IN POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE AFFECT ' MOSHE ALMAGOR University of Haifa

AND

SHARON EHRLICH Ray D. Wolfe Centre for the Study of Pychological Stress, University of Haifa

Summary.-The current study investigated over time variation of Positive and Negative Affect and the relation between mood level and personality characteristics. 68 male undergraduate volunteers completed the Multidimensional Personality Quescionnaire and then recorded mood ratings daily over a 29-day period. Spectra time series analyses showed a distinct and significant seven-day cycle for Positive Affect and Negative Affect, with the peak in Negative Affect occurring approximately three days after that of Positive Affect. Positive Affect was significantly correlated with scores on Well-being, Social Closeness, Social Potency, and Absorption scales of the questionnaire, while Negative Affect was significantly related to scores on the Stress-Reaction, Alienation, and Aggression scales.

Mood research has advanced substantially over the past decade. A number of studies have examined the structure and nature of self-reported mood (6, 12, 14, 3 1, 34, 35, 38, 42), indicating the existence of two broad bipolar dimensions, termed Positive and Negative Affect. Positive Affect represents the extent to which an individual avows a zest for life. Persons with high Positive Affect describe themselves as attentive, interested, alert, and enthusiastic, while a state of low Positive Affect is characterized as sleepy and tired. Negative Affect reflects the extent to which a person conveys feelings of distress and unpleasant arousal. A person high in Negative Affect is characterized as fearful, hostile, angry and guilty, while a low Negative-affective state is described by calm and contentment. Watson and Tellegen (38) demonstrated that Positive and Negative Affect emerge consistently as the first two rotated dimensions in orthogonal factor analyses or as the first two second-order factors derived from oblique solutions. The relationship between personality characteristics and the two mood dimensions has been studied in a number of studies. Bradburn (6) studied well-being and found that positive and negative affect differentially correlated with certain personal characteristics. Bradburn is cited by Costa and McCrae (10) as reporting in 1977 that Positive Affect is associated with

'We gratefully acknowled e the assistance of Ms. Dorothy R. Raney in planning and data cabction, Prof. Auke ~ e % e ~ efor n h i s k t i e n c e and invaluable assistance at each step of conducting the research, analyzing the ata, and commenting on this manuscri t, and &so Yossef Ben-Porath from the University of Minnesota for his help in editing the finafmanuscrqx. Requests for reprints should be sent to Moshe Almagor who is currently at the Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel 31999.

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social interest, sociability and activity, while Negative Affect correlates with psychosomatic symptoms, anxiety, worries and poor role adjustment. Costa and McCrae (10) found that Negative Affect was more highly correlated with Eysenckls Neuroticism than Positive Affect. The latter correlated with extraversion higher than did Negative Affect. Similar findings were reported by others (e.g., 13, 15, 33). Tellegen (30, 31) noted that self-reported current mood correlated with second-order factors of his Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire. Current positive mood was highly correlated with a Positive Emotionality factor which is associated with trait measures of well-being, social potency and achievement. Current negative mood was highly correlated with the Negative Emotionality factor which is linked to stress reaction, alienation and aggression. A third second-order factor, labeled Constraint, is associated with impulsiveness, danger seeking, and traditionalism and was unrelated to current mood. The above-cited studies indicate differential relations between mood dimensions and personality characteristics, a further support for their independence of each other. As noted by Watson and Tellegen (38), the use of the two-factor mood model should not be construed as implying that all affective experience can be reduced to only two variables. Rather, the two factors should be viewed as higher-order dimensions underlying the more numerous and circumscribed "discrete emotion" factors posited by other investigators (e.g., 17, 18, 21). The two-factor model, however, "captures the more general aspects of mood variation and complements rather than contradicts the more fine grained multifactorial solutions" (35, p. 690). The existence of a systematically developed and extensively researched model of mood has allowed its use in the study of mood variation over time. The association between the two mood factors over different periods of time have been investigated in a number of studies. Diener, Emmons, and Sandvik, mentioned by Diener and Iran-Nejad (12) reviewed the relevant literature and concluded that the two affects were uncorrelated when measured over long periods of time. Other studies reported low or nonsignificant correlations between the two affect dimensions (e.g., 1, 15, 24, 41). While Diener and Emmons (11) found some instances for which the two affect dimensions correlated over time, Watson and Tellegen (38) have speculated that these results reflect the use of mood adjectives that are a more complex mixture of Positive and Negative Affect. Adjectives such as content or friendly load strongly on Positive Affect but also serve as significant markers of low Negative Affect and therefore mark opposite poles of a PleasantUnpleasant dimension. The use of these adjectives may produce negative correlations as was the case in the studies of Diener and Emmons cited above. Watson (35) studied this issue by investigating the relation between the two affect dimensions across six different time periods using an instrument

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(PANAS) including pure markers of Negative and Positive Affect (37). The results indicated that, when pure markers of Positive and Negative Affect are employed, there is no systematic time-effect. An important and closely related issue is that of variation of mood or affect over time. Exploration of this issue may further our understanding of the nature of mood change over time and the relationship between the two affect dimensions. Research on this issue focused mainly on female subjects and was based upon the study of endocrine effects on the menstrual cycle (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 , 23). Proceeding from a model of interaction between hormones and behavior, Rossi (26) suggested that mood cyclicity in females is multidetermined by biological, physiological, psychological and sociocultural factors. The few reported studies of mood cycles in men have yielded inconsistent and inconclusive results. Hersey (16) identified a five-day cycle in a sample of industrial workers, but Wessman and Ricks (39) found no clear cyclic pattern in their study. CatteU (7) reported a daily cycle on the Surgency vs Desurgency factor that he assumed to be metabolically regulated. Later research by Rossi and Rossi (27) and Rossi (26) investigated mood cycles in men and women using measures of negative and positive mood. They found a consistent pattern over a 40-day period and concluded that men's cyclicity is associated with days of the week more clearly than is women's. However, the generalizability of Rossi and Rossi's (27) findings with regard to men is quite limited. Their sample included only 15 men and focused primarily on the menstrual aspect of mood variation among their 67 women subjects. A detailed description of the male sample was also lacking. Recently, Stone, Hedges, Neale, and Satin (29) examined men's prospective and retrospective mood self-reports and found no evidence for the "Blue Mondayy'effect. The aim of the present study was to assess, through repeated daily measurements, mean levels and variation of Positive and Negative Affect in a sample of men. Our objectives were, first, to replicate the two-factor model, then estimate relations between personality variables and the two affective dimensions, and explore possible cyclicity in mood variation over time. A male-only sample was chosen to avoid possible complications from any effects of menstruation and the menstrual cycIe on mood (cf. 2). Systematically constructed and analyzed mood measures (42) provided estimates of Positive and Negative Affect.

Subjects Sixty-nine male undergraduate students enrolled at the University of Minnesota in a course on introductory psychology volunteered to participate

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for additional course credit. Their mean age was 20.3 yr., with a standard deviation of 2.5 yr. One student did not complete the Mood Checklist regularly so his data were excluded from analysis. Measures Mood Check List.-The 60-item checklist constructed by Zevon and Tellegen (42) contains 20 mood categories. Each category consists of three adjectives. Subjects were asked to describe their current mood on the checklist by rating each adjective on a five-point scale ranging from "very much" to "not at all." Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPa).-This questionnaire was developed by Tellegen (30). I t is a 300-item truelfalse questionnaire which yields 11 substantive scales and six validity scales. The questionnaire has a clearly discriminant multidimensional structure and its substantive scales are designed to represent a wide range of distinctive personality traits (30). The scales have internal consistencies ranging from .80 to .92 (Mdn = .86) and have significant external correlates (30). The substantive scales include the following: Well Being: Characteristics such as optimism and happiness Social Potencv: Dominance and a desire to make a social i m ~ a c t Achievement: Commitment to hard work, setting high achievement standards for oneself Social Closeness: Gregariousness, affiliation Stress Reaction: Nervousness; strongly related to Eysenck's Neuroticism, though it is more independent of the Introversion-Extroversion markers and more compatible with the Stress Reaction Syndrome Alienation: Feeling of being unfairly treated and taken advantage of Aggression: Readiness to "get even," willingness to hurt others Control: Tendency to be reflective, cautious, components usually associated with Eysenck's Extroversion dimension Harm Avoidance: Preference For safer. less threatening- activities Traditionalism: Endorsement of traditional values. conservatism Absorption: Responsiveness to music, art, etc., tendency to get involved in fantasy.

The questionnaire scales load on three higher-order factors as reported by Tellegen (30, 31): Positive Emotionality (Well being, Social Potency, Achievement, and Social Closeness), Negative Emotionality (Stress Reaction, Alienation, and Aggression), and Constraint (Control, Harm Avoidance, and Traditionalism). Procedure The study was conducted in two stages. The questionnaire was administered to small groups of subjects, who then received instructions for completing the mood checklist. Subjects were instructed to fill out the checklist daily, balanced for time of completion (two days in the morning and two days in the afternoon), over a month (February, a 29-day month). They were then given two-day supplies of checklist forms which they had to

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return to prearranged locations to obtain new forms. This procedure was maintained throughout the experimental period. In addition, research assistants telephoned the subjects daily to remind them to fill out the checklist. This proved to be unnecessary for the great majority of subjects. Prior to the beginning of the study, subjects were asked to read and sign a consent form which contained a description of the study.

RESULTS A total of 1,972 (68 subjects x 29 days) mood checklists were completed by the subjects. The first step in data analysis involved an evaluation of item response variability to detect restriction of range. As a result, three adjectives with zero variances were dropped from further analysis. To avoid confounding within- and between-subjects variance, each subject's raw data were standardized to a mean of O and standard deviation of 1. This procedure was been recommended on the assumption that intraindividual variance is fairly comparable across subjects (8, p. 193). Previous analyses of sets of data for single subjects support this assumption (36, 42). The resultant matrix of 1972 observations by 57 items was then subjected to principal factor analysis with squared multiple correlations serving as communality estimates and a varimax rotation following Zevon and Tellegen (42). The plot of the eigenvalues of the principal factors indicated the presence of five factors with eigenvalues over 1.0. Of these five, the first two dimensions accounted for 78% of the total variance. The across-subject correlation between the extracted first two factors was .19 and their content closely resembled the Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA) factors described by Zevon and Tellegen (42). Congruency coefficients (32) were computed between the two factors and the inter-(R) and intra-(P) subject loadings reported by Zevon and Tellegen (42). The obtained coefficients of .98 for Positive Affect and .97 for Negative Affect with the P factors, and .98 and .99 with the corresponding R factors, indicate high similarity.

Mood Level and Personality Characteristics Subjects' mean factor scores on Positive and Negative Affect dimensions across the 29-day period served as an index of mood level. Correlations between the questionnaire's scale scores and mood level are presented in Table 1. Scores on Well being, Social Closeness, Social Potency, and Absorption scales correlated significantly with Positive Affect, while scores on Stress Reaction, Alienation, and Aggression correlated positively and significantly with Negative Affect. The correlations between the higher order factors and affect dimensions indicate that Positive Emotionality is positively and significantly correlated with Positive Affect but is not significantly correlated with Negative Affect. Negative Affect is significantly correlated with Negative Emotionality, but not with Positive Emotionality. Constraint is not sig-

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nificantly correlated with both Positive and Negative Emotionality. The pattern depicted in Table 1 clearly demonstrates the differential relationship of the two affect dimensions to the various person&ty factors. &%.ARSON

TABLE L CORRELATIONS BETWEENMIILTIDIMENSIONAL PERSONALJTY QUESTIONNAIRE SCALESCORESAND &AN MOODFACTORSCORES(N= 68) Scales

Positive Affect

Negative Affect

.44$ .30* .29* .30" .17 -.02 .15 .13 -.I7 -.I7 .21 .39$ -.20

-. 15

Well Being Social Closeness Social Potency Absorption Ashievement Stress Reaction Alienation Aggression Control Harm Avoidance Traditionalism Positive Emotionality Negative Emotionality Constraint

-.lo .01 .10 -.03 .44$ .32t .29*

-.I8 .14 .ll

-.lo .43$ .03

-.I3

*p

Personality correlates and cyclicity in positive and negative affect.

The current study investigated over time variation of Positive and Negative Affect and the relation between mood level and personality characteristics...
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