attempt to assert positive affect balance. Second, an individual can err on the
side of differentiation, placing less emphasis on positive affect balance than
on efforts at differentiation, analysis, and understanding. These forms of dy-
namic interplay and their more or less integrative solutions can best be con-
veyed by referring to Werner’s (1957) developmental theory. In Werner’s the-
ory, integration presumes the presence of differentiated substructures; hence,
positive affect in the absence of affect differentiation would not be described
as integration, but rather as globality or underdifferentiation. In turn, an
overemphasis on differentiation similarly would not be an integrative solu-
tion. Yet both underdifferentiation and overdifferentiation can be relatively
organized and coherent patterns, in contrast to genuine disorganization (see
Labouvie-Vief & Medler, 2002). What, specifically, are the features related to
both of these solutions?
Processes of Degradation. The dynamic integration principle suggests
that in the case of underdifferentiation, forms of representation reappear that
maintain positive affect for the self, yet that also display some of the features
of developmentally less complex behaviors. On a most general level, such
degradation of complexity implies, as noted by Metcalfe and Mischel (1999),
that strong emotional activation (especially fear about one’s security) results
in a higher level of automaticity of responses. Eysenck (1982) already pro-
posed that high arousal biases retrieval processes toward high probability re-
sponses, while debilitating lower probability responses. Individuals’ ability to
engage in differentiated and analytical processing is constrained and instead
they engage in simple, relatively undemanding processing that is based on rel-
atively few available categories, schemas, and heuristics (e.g., Forgas, 2001;
Kruglanski & Freund, 1983). As Metcalfe and Mischel (1999) put it, the hot
system gets activated as the cool system is suspended.
The suspension of reflective control is accompanied by a reduction in the
complexity of responses that can be discerned by several aspects. First, atten-
tion is restricted to features that are less abstract, and to a narrower range of
features and as well as a narrower range of contexts. Specifically, attention is
focused on those features and contexts that are most personally significant—
following the dictum that even in decline there often is a marvelously adap-
tive restriction to what is most vital and essential in securing survival.
Easterbrook’s (1959) classic theory also suggested that overarousal narrows
the range of information an organism processes (from peripheral toward cen-
tral information)—central here can refer to information that is more critical
to the self ’s survival. Hence, there is an overall narrowing of the attentional
field to what is most self-relevant.
A second and related feature of complexity degradation is a reduction in
the complexity of affect. Paulhus and Lim (1994), for example, suggested that
as arousal increases, the extremity of evaluative judgments increases, and the
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