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Given how central emotions are to the field of acting, surprisingly little research has examined how actors' emotional tendencies and skills vary from other individuals. In a sample of 284 college students, we investigated how theater majors differed from other students who have limited or no experience with acting. We expected that theater majors would be more temperamentally emotional, have more positive attitudes about emotions, have better awareness and understanding of their own emotions, and be more skilled at regulating and identifying emotions. Results indicated that theater majors (compared with those with no acting experience or those with some experience) reported higher temperamental sadness and fear, more positive views toward anger and sadness, greater awareness of their own emotions, and greater ability to amplify their emotions. Theater majors more accurately identified pride expressions than nonactors, but students in the no-acting group more accurately identified anger expressions than those with some acting experience and theater majors. Overall, this study advances current understanding of how actors differ emotionally from other individuals and provides new insight into variations in temperament, emotional beliefs, and regulatory and perceptual skills.

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