Feeling What It Means to Be Affluent

What is affluence? We may be inclined to think of affluence as related to prosperity, possessions, or resources. The Latin origin of the word refers to the notion of “flowing toward or flowing freely,” and the Middle English etymology refers to “abundance or profusion.”[1] From the perspective of affect psychology, the quality of being emotionally affluent represents a free-flowing abundance of positive feelings within oneself and in one’s interactions with others.

Personalities imbued with affluence brighten the souls of people they encounter. Their enjoyment in the uniqueness of others is authentic, and they are interested in learning further when they encounter others who have divergent experiences and viewpoints. A capacity to find their way into each person’s humanness enables affluent people to move toward others and resonate freely with them. They may maintain their positive emotions in aesthetic ways as well. A great percentage of their life space may involve positive internal rewards derived from beautiful scenes having to do with nature, music, or science.[2]

The poverty of positive affect is notable in people who have a limited interest in others whose beliefs, ideals, or identities diverge from their own. We can observe this in politically polarized negative emotional states: those who are continually coiled-up and waiting for an opportunity to strike out at others who believe differently.

Similar poverty of affect is notable in those who are comfortable enough yet respond with constant distress or an angry intolerance to any discomfort or restriction on their sense of freedom. So imagine a person whose approach to other people and life is filled with an abundance of interest or joy, in contrast to someone whose interactions with others are colored by anger or fear about their own circumstances or situations that exist in the world. Which person would you want to accompany you on a long elevator ride, especially if you belong to a different race, class, or political party?

The principal ways in which affluence is achieved are scripted. Based on innumerable encountered scenes of past and current emotions, perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors, our lifetime of memories form scripts that become sets of rules by which we predict, interpret, respond to, and control what happens to us.[4] These scripts determine how we relate to others, the world, and ourselves. The family, culture, and environment in which we were raised contribute to how our emotions become scripted. In some cultural contexts, the goal is moderation of positive emotion, instead of maximization.[5] The expression of intensely felt positive emotion may be discouraged, for example, if excitement may lead others to become envious or judgmental. Thus, our accumulation of emotional memories tends to bias our expressions of emotion and our responses to others' emotions.

Individuals may behave as though they have an abundance of positive affect, but affluence cannot necessarily be attributed to them. Those who have narcissistic tendencies, for instance, are capable of behaviors that disavow negative emotions such as shame. They may appear affluent in that they publically, and even privately, maintain a positive emotional state. Others attempt to achieve a state of affluence by activating positive emotions through acquisitions. However, they may become habituated to getting things to the point where the positive emotions activated by procurements are constant and short-lived. [6]

An essential skill in maintaining affluence is learning to invest positive emotion into one’s purposes and commitments. This takes skill in learning to minimize negative emotions by containing and absorbing them when they are encountered.[7] Decreasing activities that evoke negative emotion is helpful. People who watch hours of news broadcasts daily, for example, often do not realize that their negative emotions become triggered, impact their mood, and influence their relationships. When the scenes of one’s life change from affluence (positive affect) to damage, the affluent have a sense of competence to recover the lost or diminished positive feelings. This is especially significant when feelings involve shame.[8] Affluence, then, involves accepting change, flaws, mistakes, and perceived imperfections in ourselves and in others, as well as protecting our emotional lives.

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