Individual differences in dispositional expressiveness: Development and validation of the Emotional Expressivity Scale.

Abstract

Although emotional expressivity figures prominently in several theories of psychological and physical functioning, limitations of currently available measurement techniques impede precise and economical testing of these theories. The 17-item Emotional Expressivity Scale (EES) was designed as a self-report measure of the extent to which people outwardly display their emotions. Reliability studies showed the EES to be an internally consistent and stable individual-difference measure. Validational studies established initial convergent and discriminant validities, a moderate relationship between self-rated and other-rated expression, and correspondence between self-report and laboratorymeasured expressiveness using both college student and community populations. The potential for the EES to promote and integrate findings across diverse areas of research is discussed.

Estilos de Apego y Dificultades de Regulación Emocional en Estudiantes Universitarios

“…Posteriormente se procedió a describir las variables en estudio (apego y DRE) y a identificar diferencias por género en las DRE mediante una prueba t para muestras independientes, a la luz de antecedentes que documentan que las mujeres expresarían más sus emociones que los hombres (e.g., Kring, Smith & Neale, 1994;Mendes, Reis, Seery & Blascovich, 2003) y experimentarían sus emociones con mayor claridad (Barrett, Lane, Sechrest & Schwartz, 2000). Para el contraste de las hipótesis se realizó un análisis multivariado de la varianza (MANOVA), dado que es una prueba de mayor potencia cuando se busca evaluar el efecto sobre un conjunto de variables dependientes correlacionadas entre sí, controlando la tasa de error tipo II (Hair et al, 1987(Hair et al, /1999.…”

Sex differences in emotion: Expression, experience, and physiology.

“…Participants viewed six brief emotional film clips (ranging in length from 264 to 350 s) that represented three emotion domains: happy, sad, and fear (two clips from each domain). 2 These film clips have been successful in eliciting both experienced and expressed emotion in previous research (Fredrickson & Levenson, 1996;Kring, Kerr, Smith, & Neale, 1993;Kring et al, 1994), and they have been shown to elicit higher ratings of their intended emotion than other similar clips (Kring, Rauhuff, & Gordon, 1992). The film clips included scenes of slapstick comedy, children with a dying parent, a man being swarmed with cockroaches, and a man nearly falling off the ledge of a tall building.…”

“…vanderbilt.edu. 1977; Lang, 1995;Levenson, 1994;Leventhal, 1984;Plutchik, 1993). In our view, emotional expressivity reflects the extent to which individuals outwardly display their emotions (Kring, Smith, & Neale, 1994), which is similar to Gross and John's (1997) conceptualization; "the behavioral changes (e.g., facial, postural) that typically accompany emotion" (p. 435); it is also similar to Halberstadt and colleagues' definition: "a persistent pattern or style in exhibiting nonverbal and verbal expressions that often but not always appear to be emotion related'' (Halberstadt, Cassidy, Stifter, Parke, & Fox, 1995, p. 93). The degree to which the expressive, experiential, and physiological emotion components correspond to one another varies depending on a number of social, cultural, and situational factors (e.g., Adelrnann & Zajonc, 1989;Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1982;Lang, 1968;Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1990;Miller & Kozak, 1993).…”

“…That is, a number of studies have found women to be more expressive than men using a variety of expression measures, such as EMG (e.g., Greenwald, Cook, & Lang, 1989;Lang, Greenwald, Bradley, & Hamm, 1993;Schwartz, Brown, & Ahem, 1980), ratings of communication accuracy (e.g., Buck, Baron, Goodman, & Shapiro, 1980;Buck, Miller, & Caul, 1974;Buck, Savin, Miller, & Caul, 1972;Fujita, Harper, & Wiens, 1980;Rotter & Rotter, 1988;Wagner, Buck, & Winterbotham, 1993;Wagner, MacDonald, & Manstead, 1986;Zuckerman, Lipets, Hall Koivumaki, & Rosenthal, 1975), self-report of expression (e.g., Allen & Haccoun, 1976;Balswick & Avertt, 1977;Gross & John, 1995;Kring et al, 1994), and ratings of a variety of nonverbal behaviors such as smiling and gesturing (e.g., Barr & Kleck, 1995;Frances, 1979;Halberstadt, Hayes, & Pike, 1988;Notarious & Johnson, 1982;Ragan, 1982;Riggio & Friedman, 1986). Although fairly rare, some studies have failed to find sex differences in expressiveness (e.g., Cupchik & Poulos, 1984;Fridlund, 1990;Lanzetta, Cartwright-Smith, & Kleck, 1976;Vrana, 1993;Wagner, 1990;Zuckerman, Hall, DeFrank, & Rosenthal, 1976).…”

A psycho-ethological approach to social signal processing

“…This account may pose problem because it relies on the assumption that emotional components have specific meaning, that is, correspond to particular classes of emotion, a question still debated in the psychological literature (Scherer and Ellgring 2007a). Moreover, it assumes that some situations invariably lead to particular emotional experiences, while it is reasonable to expect individual differences in the way people react to a given situation (Davidson 1992;Kring et al 1994). According to that model, the evaluation of a signaller's intentions based on the relationship between symbolic and emotional signals should therefore take into account a person's prototypical responsiveness (Ekman 1985).…”