David Watson, a personality and emotion researcher at the University of Notre Dame, discusses his career and findings in this interview from Yale's Experts in Emotion series, directed by June Gruber. Watson traces what drew him to studying emotion, then walks through central themes from his research on how personality traits relate to emotional experience, including his work on trait affect and mood structure. He addresses where he sees the field heading next and closes with practical advice for students considering research careers in emotion science. The format is a structured interview divided into chapters, moving from personal background to research substance to forward-looking commentary, rather than a classroom lecture, but the content is grounded in Watson's decades of published work on personality and affect.