Congratulations, you’re a Poet! Yes, congratulations. As you know, you generally have low positive affect and high negative affect, or, put another way, you tend to feel negative emotions more than positive emotions. How, you might wonder, is this worthy of celebration?
Poets feel negative emotions deeply, which means they are highly attuned to emotional circumstances. This leads to a cascade of good qualities: Poets are empathetic friends, excellent listeners, and have a propensity to think critically about adverse consequences that could develop from personal or professional choices. Research also shows that people with higher negative affect are very creative (thus, a Poet). The greatest writers and artists, for example, often score highly on negative affect: They are able to tap into the complexities of human emotion better than anyone. The world needs Poets.
Yet being a Poet is not without its costs. Driven by their high negative affect, Poets tend to be anti-social, pessimistic about the future, and generally gloomy. Left unchecked, Poets tend to drag down morale and ostracize friends, family, and colleagues.
As a Poet, your complementary profile is a Cheerleader—people with high positive and low negative affect. Cheerleaders can help you address the costs of your affect profile. They can help you develop a more optimistic vision, encourage you to build stronger relationships, and boost your low positive affect. At the same time, your negative affect can help Cheerleaders see life more realistically and thus make better decisions.
Remember, no affect profile is better than another. You are not rigidly bound to the best and worst qualities of a Poet. The point is to know yourself. Now that you know your strengths, act on them with purpose. And now that you know your weaknesses, keep an eye out for your pitfalls.