The hierarchical structure of emotional expressivity: scale development and nomological implications

Integrating existing models of emotional expressivity, the 3-level hierarchical model contains a general factor of emotional expressivity vs. inexpressivity at the highest level; relatively independent factors of positive and negative expressivity at the second-order level; and discrete expressivity factors of sadness, hostility, guilt/shame, fear, joviality, confidence and amusement at the lowest level. The bottom-up analytic strategy consisted of identifying first the structure of the discrete affects; subsequent second-order factor analyses supported the existence of the higher order factors. The Iowa Scales of Emotional Expressivity (ISEE)--a hierarchical set of scales--systematically incorporate the level of abstraction of the items to assess each level of the hierarchy. Structural analyses replicated across college student (N = 387) and young adult (N = 344) samples with strong comparability coefficients. Striking differences existed in comparisons of the nomological relations of the general factor level vs. second-order level--Positive and Negative Expressivity demonstrated differential relations with Extraversion and Neuroticism and incremental predictive validity beyond Positive and Negative Affect, respectively. The ISEE demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity with existing scales and through multi-trait multi-method analyses of self-other agreement and test-retest data. Although test-retest correlations were less than optimal, the ISEE improve upon existing measures of emotional expressivity by extending the assessment to the discrete affect level and by creating Positive and Negative Expressivity scales with improved discriminant validity and clearer differential relations.