One hundred and seventy-eight men and women were exposed to the negative Velten mood induction procedure in order to examine how individual personality characteristics contributed to differences in their responses. Personality characteristics measured were chosen based on relationships with naturally occurring depression (locus of control, emotional intelligence, neuroticism, negative attributional style, self-critical perfectionism, rumination, silencing the self score). Locus of control and silencing the self score was correlated with change in happy mood and emotional intelligence was correlated with and predicted change in happy mood, while neuroticism was correlated with and predicted change in sad mood. Differences in findings related to happy and sad mood scores and the influence of emotion regulation on the results are discussed.