Research on the consequences of acting out of character yielded mixed findings. One reason might be that these studies have typically focused on one personality dimension a time, while personality is multidimensional. In the present paper, we study the affective consequences of acting out of character, accounting for personality’s multidimensional nature. Additionally, we study the mechanisms underlying this association by examining the mediating role of depletion. In three repeated measures datasets, we show that within-person fluctuations in the extent to which one acts out of character are associated with lower levels of positive affect and higher levels of negative affect. Moreover, in one of the three studies we demonstrate that this association might be explained by the higher levels of depletion associated with acting out of character. These findings are one of the first to show that deviating from one’s personality profile can be depleting, and that this is associated with affective costs.

对不正常行为后果的研究得出了喜忧参半的结果。一个原因可能是这些研究通常一次只关注一个人格维度，而人格是多维的。在本文中，我们研究了违背性格的行为所产生的情感后果，从而解释了人格的多维性质。此外，我们通过检查耗竭的中介作用来研究这种关联的机制。在三个重复测量数据集中，我们表明，一个人行为失常程度的人体内波动与较低水平的积极情感和较高水平的消极情感相关。此外，在三项研究中的一项中，我们证明了这种关联可能是由与行为不正常相关的更高水平的消耗来解释的。