People differ in how much they seem to trust, value, and rely on their feelings. Research on emotional intelligence suggests that relying on one's feelings is a beneficial process, for feelings can provide important information. Happiness indicates that everything is going well, whereas sadness indicates that their is a problem that should be addressed.
To date, many researchers seem to assume that if you pay attention to one type of feeling, then you pay attention to all of them. We, however, found that people differ in the extent to which they pay attention to the positive and negative feelings. They also differ in their propensity to ignore their positive and negative feelings. These individual differences can be measured via the Following Affective States Test (FAST). Research using the FAST reveals that these differences are related to people's affective experiences, their psychological well being, and how they respond to affective stimuli.