Exuberance: The Passion for Life (14 page)

Antonio Damasio, a neurologist and writer at the University of Iowa, uses the sea anemone to draw in a simple and elegant way the differences between an active, exposed animal and a closed and withdrawn one: “
This fundamental duality is apparent in a creature as simple and presumably as nonconscious as a sea anemone. Its organism, devoid of brain and equipped only with a simple nervous system, is little more than a gut with two openings, animated by two sets of muscles, some circular, the others lengthwise. The circumstances surrounding the sea anemone determine what its entire organism does: open up to the world like a blossoming flower—at which point water and nutrients enter its body and supply it with energy—or close itself in a contracted flat pack, small, withdrawn, and nearly imperceptible to others. The essence of joy and sadness, of approach and avoidance, of vulnerability and safety, are as apparent in this simple dichotomy of brainless behavior as they are in the mercurial emotional changes of a child at play.”

The exuberant person, far from simply responding to the environment in which he finds himself, acts vigorously upon it or seeks out new ones. Whether through play, through exploration, or through engagements of the imagination, those who are exuberant
act
. Spirited play, as we have seen, rewards exploration with pleasure, and propels young animals and children into more intimate and varied contact with their physical environment; play sees to it that necessary skills are acquired and a diversity of experiences is tried. Joyous states do other critically important things as well. They strengthen the bonds between members of a group and make more likely the group’s participation in shared activities that will benefit the group as a whole; they fortify the ties between parent and child, teacher and student, leader and follower, lover and lover.
The energy, enthusiasm, and optimism of those who are exuberant tend to make them more socially outgoing, as well, and more likely to take risks; this, in turn, almost certainly increases their attractiveness to the opposite sex and, accordingly, their chance of reproductive success.

We have some sense of what exuberance does, but what actually is meant by it, and how is exuberance measured? What elements combine to make an exuberant temperament? How often, and with what steadiness, does the temperament persist over time? To what extent is exuberance determined by genes and to what extent is it influenced by the environment? We know more than we did in William James’s time, but not nearly as much as one would like.

Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen described individual differences in temperament, as did others over the centuries to follow, but it was not until the twentieth century that scientists and clinicians studied and classified temperament in a more empirical way. Temperament, which can be broadly defined as the relatively stable pattern of moods and behaviors first manifest early in life, has been more fully described by the psychologist Gordon Allport as the
“class of ‘raw material’ from which personality is fashioned.” “Personality” generally denotes the unique or most distinctive aspects of an individual, characteristics shaped by innate forces operating under the influence and constraints of upbringing and environment. “Temperament,” according to Allport, is the “internal weather” in which personality evolves. “The more anchored a disposition is in native constitutional soil the more likely it is to be spoken of as temperament.… [It comprises] the characteristic phenomena of an individual’s emotional nature, including his susceptibility to emotional stimulation, his customary strength and speed of response, the quality of his prevailing mood, and all peculiarities of fluctuation and intensity in mood.” These phenomena, Allport assumed, were largely inherited. In practice, the
terms “temperament” and “personality” are often used interchangeably, although temperament is assumed to be more genetically determined.

One of the most reliably measured differences in temperament is between those individuals who are highly enthusiastic and active, who reach out to new people and new experiences, and those who are less energetic and outgoing, more likely to avoid the unfamiliar. The German psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers, in his classic 1913 textbook
General Psychopathology
, described a continuum of active, ebullient temperaments. The “euphoric” temperament, as set out by Jaspers, was distinguished by the “abnormally cheerful” individual who “
bubbles over happily … is blissfully light hearted about everything that happens to him and is contented and confident. The happy mood brings a certain excitement with it including motor excitement.” The “sanguine” temperament, he believed, was abnormally excitable: “It reacts quickly and in lively fashion to every kind of influence, it lights up immediately but excitement dies down equally fast. The individual leads a restless life, and likes extremes. We get a picture of vivacious exuberance or of an irritable, troubled hastiness.”

More recently, Hagop Akiskal, a psychiatrist at the University of California at San Diego, has developed
the concept of “hyperthymia” to describe the cheerful, overly optimistic individual, more often male than female, who is talkative, extraverted, self-assured, and filled with plans and ideas. He or she needs little sleep and possesses the kind of energy which leaves others gasping. Akiskal, who estimates that at least one person in a hundred meets the research criteria for hyperthymia, cautions that while there are many advantages to this type of temperament—gregariousness, indefatigability, and the ability to handle highly stressful situations with relative ease—there is, as well, an instability in mood that can lead to intemperate behavior.

Extraversion, of all of the traits examined by psychologists to date, is the one most clearly and directly related to exuberance.
The extravert, as defined by a variety of extensively and well-validated personality assessment measures, is energetic, outgoing, lively, cheerful, enthusiastic, forceful, active, and talkative, and tends to seek excitement. Extraverts have low levels of social anxiety, high levels of self-esteem, and are
exquisitely alert and sensitive to reward signals. In experimental situations, for example, they react far more intensely than introverts when shown photographs of people with happy faces. (This is consistent with findings from neuropsychological studies of patients with manic-depressive illness. When manic, patients attend and respond far more to positive words presented to them in an experimental task; when depressed, they are much more likely to pay attention and respond to negative words.
The state of one’s mood also clearly affects the content of the material that is remembered. Neuropsychologists repeatedly find that depressed patients disproportionately recall words with depressive content and that nondepressed subjects do the opposite. Depressed patients are also more likely to remember failures and other negative experiences in their lives, as well as to underestimate their performance on a variety of psychological and intellectual tests.) Mood state influences what is noticed, how it is remembered, and how it is retrieved from the memory. Those whose temperaments afford them extended periods of positive mood, or periods of particularly intense and exuberant moods, experience the world in a very different way from those who are more even-tempered or dyspeptic.

Differences in temperament exist in many other species. In a
cross-species review of temperament in nonhuman animals, “extraversion” was the most universal. Seventeen out of nineteen studies identified a factor related to extraversion, such as sociability in pigs and dogs, “vivacity” in donkeys, or a “bold
approach versus avoidance” dimension in octopuses. The reviewers point out that the manner in which temperament shows itself depends upon the species: “Whereas the human scoring low on Extraversion stays at home on Saturday night, or tries to blend into a corner at a large party, the octopus scoring low on Boldness stays in its protective den during feedings and attempts to hide itself by changing color or releasing ink into the water.” (Scientists find
significant differences between octopuses on several dimensions of behavior, most consistently in levels of activity, reactivity, and avoidance. These differences show themselves early, by the third week of life, and researchers believe that the diversity of temperaments increases the likelihood that the octopuses will better adapt to their highly variable habitats, predators, and prey. Octopuses often live in exceptionally fluctuating near-shore environments that are subject to violent storms, extreme changes in tide and season, and pollution. Variability in temperament is also seen in animals that rely upon learning in order to adapt to changing circumstances; octopuses, it has been known for a long time, are good learners.)

Some species—rhesus and vervet monkeys, for instance, as well as hyenas and pigs—score particularly high on measures of curiosity, playfulness, and exploration. Primates vary a great deal from one species to another. Chimpanzees are more outgoing and impulsive than gorillas, who are shyer; rhesus monkeys are more exploratory and socially active than pigtail macaques. Primatologists speculate that
species with the most diverse diets, those who must forage farther afield and actively defend against predators, need to be bolder, more curious, more energetic, and more exploratory than, for example, the less active fruit-eating monkeys.

Cats, dogs, and monkeys vary enormously within their own species in how fearful or bold they are in approaching new situations or unfamiliar individuals. Perhaps
one house cat in seven, for
instance, will avoid new situations and strangers and only unusually attack a rat.
One in five young rhesus monkeys is easily distressed and fearful, a figure comparable to that found in human infants. Similar differences may also be seen in some species of birds and fish.
Among zebra finches and pumpkinseed sunfish, for example, those animals most likely to explore novel objects are less likely to fly or swim in close proximity to other animals of their species; they are also more likely to be leaders, to forage independently and over a greater range, and to be better able to adapt to novel environments. They, by dint of their behavior, are also more likely to put themselves in danger’s way. The anthropologist
Melvin Konner has discussed at length the importance of such risk-taking behavior in his excellent book
Why the Reckless Survive
. If an animal is designed for survival and reproduction, he points out, it is not designed for perfect safety.

Joyce Poole studied a family of twenty-four elephants in Kenya and found significant personality differences among them. Some elephants, she says, were “
just plain boring,” others were timid, and yet others were “full of games and mischief.” She believes that some elephants are inherently “mercurial,” while others “just plod along.” One of the elephants she observed, for instance, a female named Ebony, was “always up for some mischief and full of life and exuberance most of the time.” Others were more phlegmatic and only intermittently ebullient.

Few animal researchers have looked at exuberance per se, although one intriguing
study of brown bears living in an open area of sedge and flats on Admiralty Island in Alaska did assess “sparkliness,” “liveliness,” and “spiritedness.” Robert and Johanna Fagen, zoologists at the University of Alaska, collected data on seven adult bears during three years of summer salmon runs. “Sparkly” bears were defined as “bubbly, cheerful and full of sprightly movements.” “Spirited bears,” in like vein, were defined
as “vivacious, animated and energetic, [approaching] life with abundant physical and mental energy.” The Fagens repeatedly rated the bears on a wide variety of measures and concluded that there are four general dimensions—liveliness, irritability, confidence with other bears, and fishing behavior—that best describe the personality of brown bears. They noted that although liveliness is an essential characteristic in bears, it is very little studied: “
We find it interesting that a dimension (Lively) that includes lively curiosity and spirited movements, animation, flamboyance, sparkle, and a tendency to show off should emerge as a prominent feature of bears’ individual personalities.… It seems to measure qualities of behaviour and personality rather than absolute levels of activity or amount of movement. Previous studies of individuality in nonhumans and in humans did not report lively curiosity, spirited movements, or the other items included in our Lively dimension.” Rosemary Bolig and her colleagues at Ohio State University did find
a related personality trait in rhesus monkeys, however, which consisted of opposing behavior patterns of “exuberance” and “nurturance” (the researchers referred to the monkeys with these qualities as “party animals” and “homebodies”). The exuberant animals were assessed by the researchers as highly active, curious, and playful; the nurturant animals, on the other hand, scored high on maternal and protective behavioral dimensions.

Extraversion in humans, extensive research shows, predisposes the individual to experience and display more positive emotions such as enthusiasm, interest, excitement, and joy. The relationship between positive emotions, or
pleasant affect, and extraversion is one of the most consistent findings in studies of personality; it is also one of the strongest (
the correlation between the two traits approaches 0.80 in several studies). Indeed, some psychologists have argued that positive emotionality is the glue that holds together the component parts of extraversion. Extraversion is also
closely related to the number of close friends an individual has and to how likely he or she is to be selected for leadership roles. Extraverts as a group
tend to be happier than their more introverted peers. The psychologists Ed Diener and Martin Seligman studied more than two hundred undergraduates, for example, and found that those students who described themselves as “consistently very happy” were much more extraverted than those who described themselves as less happy. It is to some extent a self-perpetuating phenomenon. Extraverts are gregarious and enthusiastic; such characteristics tend to be attractive to others and to create more opportunities for pleasure through greater contact with other people and the surrounding world. Enthusiasm itself leads to a more fervent engagement with ideas and an impassioned pursuit of interests.