Personality and the Centrality of Emotions

In this chapter I examine the relationship between the self and emotions. More specifically, I’m interested in personality and what may be called the emotional nature of a person. First, I argue that emotions are central and essential to self-knowledge, since they can reveal a person’s inclinations, dispositions, and ways of being, that is, personality. If we believe that a person’s personality determines the emotional responses they will have with respect to a given situation, then we can argue that identifying, observing and knowing that person’s emotions (or our own emotions) will give us some form of access to or knowledge of that person’s personality (or our own personality). Secondly, I explain how emotions can disrupt an individual’s general state and—following Haybron (The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)—in virtue of what some kind of affects (i.e., central affective states) may even alter an individual’s emotional nature which, I argue, is part of personality. Lastly, I demonstrate that intense and what may be called “standing” emotions are the best candidate to be central to personality and to alter it.