Lifestyles of the Emotions

Emotions don't just express feeling--they regulate the pitch of the nervous system.

By PT Staff, published on January 01, 1992 - last reviewed on August 30, 2004

What happened to the days when emotions were the results of feeling and you laughed because you were happy?. Gone forever, sidelined by those who look at the biological underpinnings of personality. In a turnabout, they contend that emotions do far more than express feeling -- they regulate the pitch of the nervous system.

In the same way that appetite-regulation systems maintain body weight at a stable setpoint, mood-regulation systems maintain a person's emotional life at an "affective setpoint," believes Randy Larsen, Ph.D. And these systems come in polar opposites.

There are those whose bodies normally amplify sensory stimuli: augmenters. Because their nervous system operates at a constant screech, they find the emotional slow lane exciting enough. And there are those whose bodies dampen incoming stimuli: reducers. They may need to find ways to jazz up their emotional life simply to stay awake. Their baseline arousal level is low.

An assistant professor at the University of Michigan, Larsen sees personality as a process, the unfolding of behavioral, affective, and cognitive patterns that are consistent over time. He didn't invent the so-called augmenter/reducer theory, but he is the first to extend it into the domain of emotions. Previous research by others has shown that reducers tend to have greater pain tolerance, prefer contact sports, and abuse drugs.

Emotional responses appealed to Larsen because they are a powerful source of stimulation in everyday life. So he looked at how people respond to boring conditions -- like having to do 2,000 math problems. Reducers found them intolerable, and their performance was miserable. Given a choice, they opted for a mood-arousing experience, even an unpleasant one.

By Larsen's calculations, 20% of the population is similarly physiologically constituted to seek emotional intensity. Just be sure to get out of the way if two of them get together.