Emotional responsiveness

Persons' ability to express their emotions freely and openly. Emotional responsiveness is revealed by the spontaneity and ease with which a person is able to respond emotionally to another person, the extent to which the individual--adult or child--feels comfortable forming warm, intimate, involved, lasting, and non-defensive attachments with other people, attachments that are untroubled by emotional wariness, constriction, or lack of trust. The interpersonal relationships of emotionally responsive people tend to be close and personal, and such people have little trouble responding to the friendship advances of others. In contrast, emotionally unresponsive people are emotionally insulated from others. They have restricted and often only defensive emotional involvement with others. They may, however, be sociable and friendly, but friendliness is not to be confused with the ability to enter into intimate relationships. Some people who are friendly are incapable of having intimate, involved, non-defensive relationships; their relationships tend to be non-personal and somewhat distant emotionally. (See acceptance-rejection syndrome; personality subtheory)