Exploring the relations between traits and emotions

The relationships among traits and among emotions have been well researched and are well known, but few experimental probes of the relationships between traits and emotions have been undertaken. The present investigation sought to describe the relations that exist between traits and emotions. The Comrey Personality Scale (a trait inventory) and the Profile of Mood States (an emotion inventory) were administered to 140 students and the subscales were correlated using canonical procedures. The resulting canonical correlations may be specified in bipolar summary form as follows: Neurotic‐Stable was found to be correlated with Depressed‐Hopeful; Introverted‐Extraverted was found to be correlated with Quiescent‐Vigorous; and Empathic‐Egocentrical was found to be correlated with Content‐Confused. Furthermore, the predictive strength between the trait set and the emotion set was reasonably good, although substantially better when traits rather than emotions served as the predictors.