Abstract

The general consensus among emotion researchers is that mood is a function of both top-down and bottom-up influences (e.g., David, Green, Martin, & Suls, 1997; Feist, Bodner, Jacobs, Miles, & Tan, 1995). Situational factors, such as the occurrence of major and minor events, comprise a critical element of the bottom-up influence. Negative events tend to produce increases in negative affect, whereas positive events are associated with positive affect. There are also top-down influences, which include personality dispositions to experience certain forms of affect, and which also predispose people to interpret and cope with life events in particular ways (Diener, Smith, & Fujita, 1995). In this chapter, I review relevant evidence concerning individual differences in response to life stressors using contemporary personality theory as a framework. As I describe, certain dispositions make people more emotionally reactive to stressors, partly because of the interactive roles of affect and cognition.