The Fredrickson and Levenson paper proposes that one function of positive emotions is to speed cardiovascular recovery from negative emotions. While the evidence presented in support of this claim is convincing, the results are somewhat surprising. In contrast to past findings, these studies found fear and sadness to decrease heart rate. The Ruch chapter suggested that smiling is associated with heart rate increases, and others have associated heart rate increases with approach behavior (presumably accompanied by positive emotions). Thus, if sadness and fear decrease heart rate as in the Fredrickson and Levenson experiments, it seems quite reasonable that emotions associated with increases in heart rate (amusement, smiling) would speed recovery. However, the question remains whether or not this can be generalized to instances where fear and sadness increase heart rate. It seems that in these cases, the effect of smiling may actually prolong heart rate increases. In other words, increases associated with both smiling and fear may act in an additive fashion, lengthening the response. Still, such an effect would seem to contradict opponent process theory and the alliesthesia findings of Cabanac. If opposite subjective feelings were to intensify activation, homeostasis would be difficult to achieve. This theoretical problem is perhaps the result of an over-extension of the ANS specificity hypothesis. When 'conflicting' emotions are experienced in close temporal proximity, their individual associated autonomic changes may not occur. Moreover the subjective experience of emotion may account for this. For example, this weekend I saw the film Scream. During the film, humor and laughing (exhilaration) accompanied some of the tense or fear inducing scenes. Moreover, I recall that laughing seemed to reduce the rapid pounding of my heart during these parts of the film (it's unfortunate that I was thinking about the physiology of emotion on a Saturday night). The Ruch chapter indicates that exhilaration is usually associated with heart rate increases, but in this situation I recall the opposite effect. Perhaps the two very different subjective feelings of fear and joy 'canceled out' or dampened the heart rate increases expected with both responses. Such a response (or lack thereof) may serve a functional purpose. If the environment contains both 'good' and 'bad' stimuli that lead to both positive and negative emotions within a short period of time, it would seem adaptive for a person to stay near a baseline level arousal. As a result, the body would be less prepared for any one response, but more able to respond in diverse ways depending on which of the conflicting environmental cues became more salient or required a response. In other words, when the future is unpredictable (a result of co-occurring positive and negative emotions), a conservative response seems most adaptive.

Allport introduces the difference between the idiographic and nomothetic approaches with an example of two statements: "the problem of human personality concerns me deeply", and "the problem of Bill's personality concerns me deeply." These two statements represent very different approaches to personality. However, they also seem to illustrate a reason that idiographic studies have remained a minority in the study of personality. Why would anyone care about Bill's individual personality, unless he was Bill Clinton? In other words, there are few people for whom others (personality psychologists included) want to know about in great detail. This of course excludes family and friends, but it's unlikely that a scientific approach to personality description would be considered an acceptable way of knowing these people. For example, the case of Jenny is not interesting because I wanted to know about her personality. It is interesting because it is an example of the idiographic approach While the case study has gained additional interest because of her influence on Allport and Allport's influence on personality psychology, most of personality's research subjects do not hold this special place. This doesn't detract from the advantages of the idiographic approach, but it helps explain why is hasn't gained much acceptance. It also suggests when idiographic techniques are likely to be useful and more accepted. In studying people who have a large impact on many others (e.g., presidents or cultural leaders), a nomothetic approach is unlikely to yield a satisfying assessment of personality. If we assume that these people have exceptional or unusual personalities (in addition to or in absence of exceptional circumstances) a 'one size fits all' approach is likely to fail. Constructs developed to describe the majority seem less likely to adequately describe a qualitatively different minority of persons.
 In addition to exceptional person applications, idiographic studies may help to understand nomothetic personality better. It's possible that the structure of personality is fairly universal. By structure, I mean the ways in which traits, motives, and cognitions can be organized to better understand personality. To understand structure, it seems necessary to take account of interactions between personality variables. Because of this, claims that the orthogonal Big 5 dimensions are the structure of human personality seem spurious. Indeed, the elements of a personality don't exist independently, but rather combine to create one gestalt, the personality. To say that across many people these traits are independent says little about a single person's traits. We would find extraversion and emotional stability to be independent even if for half the population extraversion and emotional stability correlated perfectly, but in the other half of the population extraversion and neuroticism correlated perfectly. Likewise, to say that a person doesn't have qualities of both introversion and extraversion because across people these traits represent two poles of the same dimension would be incorrect. Still, a generic structure of personality could exist across most, if not all, people. A theory of this structure would not specify which particular person variables were important, but it would describe how generic categories of variables related to one another. For example, consider Allport's ideas about cardinal and secondary traits, or Winter et. al.'s 'channeling' hypothesis relating motives to traits. In finding such a structure, idiographic studies would seem particularly useful. If a researcher was able to construct an idiography (is this a word?) of many individuals, my intuition is that much similarity in the abstract structure would be seen. While this abstract structure is clearly a nomothetic concept, better descriptions of individual personalities would follow, as one could 'fill in the blanks' in an idiographic manner. Moreover, an idiographic approach would clearly out perform a nomothetic approach in determining this structure. Because across personalities, variables will correlate differently than within individual persons, finding a structure of the individual personality would be difficult. To find this structure one would first have to look at specific interactions, and then generalize. In such a model, the overall structure would remain constant across people, but the interactions between person variables could be different for every one.

 Reading through this week's articles, it seems that much of cultural similarity and difference parallels individual similarity and difference, or in other words, personality. Facial expression, biology, cognitions, emotion regulation and so on, are all free to vary within individuals as well as cultures. However, when considering cultural differences, we assume that personalities within a culture are more similar than personalities between cultures. This basic assumption seems to shape what we view as cultural differences and what we consider to be universals. As a consequence the term 'universals' may be inappropriate. Rather than universal across all people, the variation may simply be greater within groups than between them. For example, the popular view (and supported by the Levenson paper) seems to be that the physiology of emotion systems is universal across cultures, but differences in these systems are also possible. Age seems to affect the strength of ANS reactivity, and it seems possible that personality variables may also correspond to differences in these systems. On the other hand, there seems to be great variability between cultures in the specific stimuli that elicit a given emotion, and the way in which emotion is communicated. This is unsurprising in that languages, values and social rules vary more between cultures than within them. In short, cultural differences in emotion are likely to be seen in domains where cultures differ the most, but we should not generalize this tendency to units of analysis (individual vs. all humans).
 Subjective experience seems to be the area of emotion most difficult to compare cross culturally. By definition, subjective experience would seem to be defined purely on an individual basis, but does it vary more between cultures or within them? Within a given culture we share and measure subjective emotional experience with a common language. Still, it's debatable as to whether or not the essence of subjective experience can be communicated in this way, or, in other words, if language is an adequate tool to convey subjective experience. Cross culturally, languages differ and thus it becomes difficult to compare subjective experience. Still, the question remains, is it cultural differences in subjective experience that cause variation, or the inadequacy of language to convey subjective experience that permits the possibility of illusory cultural differences? This is probably an impossible question to answer, but it leaves open the possibility that subjective experience is the only true human universal in emotions. It seems possible that the feeling of a given emotion (independent of its cause, context, or expression), may be common to all humans.

The Greenberg chapter suggests that patients in psychotherapy benefit from turning their thoughts inward and focusing on their emotional experiences. Similarly, the Pennebaker paper suggests that focusing on and writing about a past traumatic event, improves the functioning of the immune system. Together these articles seem to support the idea that reflecting on one's negative emotional experience leads to desirable consequences. Still, this suggestion seems to contradict Susan Nolen-Hoeksema and colleagues' findings that rumination increases negative affect, and helps perpetuate depression. Perhaps the associations between Nolen-Hoeksema's work and that of Greenberg and Pennebaker are loose, but her research suggests making some caveats before concluding that the exploration of negative emotional experience ubiquitously provides benefits.
 One clear difference between the way Nolen-Hoeksema shows the negative effects of rumination and Greenberg suggests the benefit of emotional awareness is in context. When a person is in psychotherapy they have the benefit of a professional to guide their emotional exploration. In contrast, people who ruminate without the intervention of a therapist seem less likely to make progress towards a helpful understanding of their negative emotions. Still, Greenberg's technique may benefit from warning 'patients' about spending long periods of time exploring inner emotional experience when not with their therapist. Additionally, it seems that teaching patients techniques designed to prevent rumination (perhaps writing down their thoughts to avoid repetition) would help them as they contemplate their emotions outside of the psychotherapist's office. In short, if the introspection Greenberg suggests goes unchecked, it could lead to negative outcomes rather than real emotional awareness.
 Pennebaker's subjects showed increased immune system functioning after writing about traumatic events. Again, Nolen-Hoeksema's work might suggest that reflecting on this negative emotional experience could maintain depression. It's important to note that Pennebaker's subjects were not clinically depressed, but normal college students. Perhaps a sample with depressive or ruminative tendencies would not have benefited from writing about trauma. On the other hand, because in Pennebaker's design subjects are asked to write down their thoughts (rather than just contemplate traumatic events), rumination may be an unlikely outcome. When forced to write, it becomes easier to make progress and avoid the rehashing of negative thoughts. Still, it seems wise to be cautious before prescribing 'writing therapy' to a depressed person.