Published in the research literature as Positive Expressivity.
How openly do you show good feeling?
How much of your happiness, affection, and amusement other people get to see.
Positive Expressivity is about how much good feeling reaches the outside. Not how much somebody feels, which is a different question, but how much of it shows.
The distinction this rests on is between having a feeling and displaying it. Two people can be equally delighted by the same news and look completely different while it happens. Nothing about that says which of them enjoyed it more.
It shows in small, constant things. Whether a compliment gets said or only thought. Whether a hug is the natural greeting or a slightly awkward one. Whether a joke produces a laugh out loud or a breath through the nose.
This is one of seven separate scales, and none of them measures skill. Showing more good feeling is not better at anything. It is one way of being, with its own advantages and its own costs, and the same is true of showing less.
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Start your free assessmentEvery one of the seven runs between two named ends, and neither end is the one to aim for. Each buys something and each costs something, which is why both of them have a name here.
Good feeling mostly stays inside. Somebody at this end can be thoroughly pleased and show very little of it in their face or voice. Open enthusiasm rarely comes naturally, even with people they are close to. What it buys is weight: when they do say the warm thing, nobody doubts it. What it costs is that other people cannot always tell where they stand.
Good feeling arrives in the room with the person. Somebody at this end laughs out loud, says the warm thing while they are still thinking it, and is comfortable with affection that shows. What it buys is that nobody has to guess how they are regarded. What it costs is that warmth this constant can get read as a default setting rather than a response.
The middle usually means it depends on the company. Warmth comes out easily with people who have earned it, and gets held back in a newer group or at work. That is flexibility rather than inconsistency, though it does mean anybody who only sees one setting is getting a partial picture.
A result names one of five positions along this scale. They run from one end to the other, and no figure sits beside them: there is no reference sample for these scales, so nothing here can say how many people land where.
The common misreading is that this measures how warm somebody is. It does not. It measures how much of the warmth is visible, and a quiet person can be the most affectionate one in a family without much of it ever reaching their face.
The two expressivity scales run separately. Positive Expressivity is about showing happiness and affection; Negative Expressivity is about showing anger, fear and sadness. Plenty of people are open with one and closed with the other.
Both involve good feeling and other people. Responsive Joy is about whether somebody else's mood reaches a person; Positive Expressivity is about whether their own mood reaches anybody else.
A scale describes a tendency, not an ability. There is no good end of any of the seven, and where somebody sits says nothing about how well they handle what they feel.
It also says nothing about where they stand next to anybody. No reference sample exists for these scales, so a result describes how one person answered and stops there.
Or start with what emotional intelligence means.
Sixty-eight questions, about eight minutes. You get a plain read on all seven scales, free, with both ends of every one of them named rather than scored.
68 questions · about 8 min · free
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