Published in the research literature as Responsive Joy.
Does other people's good mood reach you?
How much other people's happiness and excitement carries over to you.
Responsive Joy is about whether other people's good mood reaches somebody. Not whether they are pleased for them, but whether the feeling carries across.
The everyday version is a room somebody walks into. If it is cheerful, does that do anything to them within a minute, or do they arrive in whatever mood they brought and stay in it?
It is a separate question from liking people. Somebody can be delighted by a friend's good news, be entirely sincere about it, and feel no lift of their own at all. The two get confused constantly and are not the same measurement.
This is one of two scales here about catching what somebody else is feeling. They run separately, which surprises people: picking up a room's joy and picking up its distress are not one setting on a dial.
It is also quite hard to see from the inside. Catching a mood happens below the level of a decision, so the usual way somebody finds out where they sit is by noticing how an hour with a particular friend leaves them.
Curious where you land on the seven? Take the free assessment and find out.
68 questions · about 8 min · free
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.
The mood in the room stays in the room. Somebody at this end arrives with whatever they had and leaves with much the same, and a lively group does not change their weather much. What it buys is being genuinely unaffected by hype, and steady company on a day when everybody else is swinging about. What it costs is that shared celebration can feel like something happening nearby.
Somebody else's good mood arrives intact. A friend describing something they are excited about produces real excitement here, sometimes about a subject this person has no interest in whatsoever. What it buys is that they are excellent to tell good news to and lift a group without trying. What it costs is a mood partly outsourced to whoever is nearest, which is fine until the room is flat.
The middle usually means it depends on the people. A close friend's good news carries across easily and a stranger's enthusiasm bounces off, which is how a great many people work and rarely notice they are doing it.
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.
It gets read as being cheerful, or as being easily led. Neither follows. Somebody at the steady end can be perfectly happy. Somebody at the moved end can hold a firm line on a decision while catching the mood of the room they are holding it in.
The pair. Responsive Joy is about catching happiness; Responsive Distress is about catching pain. They run separately, and plenty of people are wide open to one and not the other.
Both concern good feeling. Responsive Joy is about whether somebody else's reaches a person; Positive Expressivity is about how much of their own reaches anybody.
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
Start your free assessmentselfwyse helps you reflect and connect — not to diagnose, treat, or predict any medical, psychological, or mental health condition.
