Emotionality And Habit Formation
Emotionality And Habit Formation
Emotionality And Habit Formation
Emotionality and Rigidity:
Emotionality serves to strengthen habits; so if two people one high on emotionality and one low form a habit, the highly emotional individual will feel more compelled to repeat that habit in a variety of situations, whether it be appropriate or not. Low emotionality gives a little more flexibility.
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Hans Eysenck, using this principle of emotionality and habit formation, has offered an explanation of the oft-observed rigidity of emotional people. Highly emotional persons tend to get locked into rigid, self-perpetuating patterns. Eysenck suggests that this high emotionality causes them to form strong habits that is, the skills they learn, they tend to cling to much more strongly. It's as if their great emotional energy cuts deep grooves hi their habit patterns, making both appropriate and inappropriate habits stronger than in the non-emotional person.
So when they are placed in a situation requiring a slightly different behavior from the one they've already learned, they find it hard to learn new habits. Studies of skill learning in which individuals can win money for performing a certain learned skill have shown that once highly emotional individuals learn a given skill, they tend to cling to it rigidly no matter how inefficient it becomes in other situations. Low emotional individuals, on the other hand, show much more flexibility in their ability to discard old skills and learn new ones. This no doubt accounts for much of the difficulty some highly emotional persons have in social situations; they tend to cling to old habits of relating to people no matter how unfruitful these habits have become.
I think this relationship between high emotionality and rigidity explains in part another maladaptive behavior pattern: fear of failure.
Some people have such extremely high goals for themselves that they feel they must always live up to. If they fall short of those standards even once, they punish themselves severely. (They often come from homes where one or both parents were overly punitive.) This puts them in a bind. They are motivated to attempt great things, and yet they fear failure. So they often settle the dilemma by trying to do such impossible tasks that no one could blame them if they fail. Thus they lock themselves into a self-destructive, self-perpetuating pattern. This pattern is reinforced by their high emotionality and resultant rigidity.
As a college teacher I've seen many students lock themselves into this destructive pattern. They will come into my office with a long schedule of courses they want to take, even though they may already be working a full-time job. I'll suggest that they take it easier and only take as many courses as they are sure they can successfully pass. They will insist that they can successfully pass this many. Then I watch them in the classroom. They are late turning work in. Even as late as the middle of the quarter they've hardly done anything. The smarter ones do the inevitable: they drop the course. The others go right on down into failure, insisting that they can get it done ("if only I didn't have to take so many courses"). When failure comes, their friends console them by saying, "You shouldn't try so much. You'll kill yourself." They console themselves by thinking, "I didn't really try my best on this one. If I really try next time, I can be successful." So they continue the pattern again, not learning from their mistakes.
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I find that these persons are almost always highly emotional. Though the pattern they've created for themselves is easy to see, they still can't seem to break it. There is so much emotional energy invested in it that these habits and patterns defy logic and insight.
It's obvious from this discussion that high emotionality has both adaptive and no adaptive features. On the adaptive side, the highly emotional person has quite a source of energy and activity at his disposal. He will likely feel driven at times. If he is forced to sit passively for any length of time, he will become restless and unhappy. Tension may build up. On the other hand, his fantasy level and mental vigor will be aided by the emotional energy. He will have the raw products of creativity lively imagination available for use. In his daily activities also, he will be more productive and energetic than his less emotional friends.
On the no adaptive side, the person with much emotional energy will tend to perform more poorly under pressure than emotionally stable people. He will be more likely to get himself locked into rigid, self-perpetuating patterns. His spontaneity may suffer as a result of this greater emotional drive. Emotion may cause him to cling to some behaviors and ideas tenaciously, even when they no longer serve a purpose.
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