The Construct and Criterion Validity of Emotional Intelligence and Its Potential Utility for Management Studies.

In this study, the authors reviewed the definition of emotional intelligence (EI) and argued that El is conceptually distinct from personality. In Study 1, the authors showed that EI was related to yet distinct from personality dimensions and that it had incremental predictive power on life satisfaction. The authors examined the construct validity of self-reports and others' ratings of EI using two samples in Study 2. In a student sample, parents' ratings explained additional variance in the students' life satisfaction and feelings of powerlessness after controlling for the Big Five personality dimensions. In the work sample, peer ratings were found to be significant predictors of job performance ratings provided by supervisors after controlling for the Big Five personality dimensions. Other implications for future research on EI are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactive Effects of Personality and Perceptions of the Work Situation on Workplace Deviance.

Previous research on workplace deviance has examined the relationship of either personality or employees' situational perceptions with deviant behavior. In this study, the authors focused on the joint relationship of personality and perceptions of the work situation with deviant behavior. Using 4 samples of employees and multiple operationalizations of the core constructs, the authors found support for the hypothesis that positive perceptions of the work situation are negatively related to workplace deviance. In addition, consistent with hypotheses, the personality traits of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and agreeableness moderated this relationship. Specifically, the relationship between perceptions of the developmental environment and organizational deviance was stronger for employees low in conscientiousness or emotional stability, and the relationship between perceived organizational support and interpersonal deviance was stronger for employees low in agreeableness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Double Dissociation Between Mood States and Personality Traits in the Anterior Cingulate.

Neuroticism and extraversion are personality traits associated with negative and positive mood states, respectively, confounding trait and state factors that may affect brain responses to emotional stimuli. The authors dissociated these factors using fMRI and the emotional Stroop attention task: Anterior cingulate (AC) response to positive stimuli varied as a function of personality trait, but not mood state, whereas AC response to negative stimuli varied as a function of mood state, but not personality trait. Negative mood, but not personality trait, also increased the functional connectivity between AC and other regions. Variance in AC activation can thus be ascribed to an intersubject variable (extraversion) when responding to positive stimuli and an intrasubject variable (mood) when responding to negative stimuli. The former may explain stable differences between extraverts and introverts. The latter may provide an adaptive mechanism to expand an individual's dynamic range in response to potentially dangerous or threatening stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Costly Pursuit of Self-Esteem.

Researchers have recently questioned the benefits associated with having high self-esteem. The authors propose that the importance of self-esteem lies more in how people strive for it rather than whether it is high or low. They argue that in domains in which their self-worth is invested, people adopt the goal to validate their abilities and qualities, and hence their self-worth. When people have self-validation goals, they react to threats in these domains in ways that undermine learning; relatedness; autonomy and self-regulation; and over time, mental and physical health. The short-term emotional benefits of pursuing self-esteem are often outweighed by long-term costs. Previous research on self-esteem is reinterpreted in terms of self-esteem striving. Cultural roots of the pursuit of self-esteem are considered. Finally, the alternatives to pursuing self-esteem, and ways of avoiding its costs, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Optimism, Perceived Risk of Breast Cancer, and Cancer Worry Among a Community-Based Sample of Women.

Optimism is frequently inversely associated with distress; however, less is known about the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Optimism can be defined as having a generalized positive expectancy about the future. The authors hypothesized that a specific expectancy might mediate the relationship between optimism and distress. That model was tested using perceived risk of breast cancer as a specific measure of expectancy and cancer worry as a measure of distress in a community-based sample of 1,366 women. It was hypothesized that optimism would be inversely associated with cancer worry and that perceived risk of breast cancer would mediate the relationship between optimism and cancer worry. Multiple regression analyses revealed that perceived risk partially mediated the relationship between optimism and cancer worry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of familism in the relation between parent–child discord and psychological distress among emerging adults of Mexican descent.

Although parent–child discord is a predictor of distress among emerging adults, little is known about this important link among Mexican-descent populations. This is an important gap, given Mexican Americans’ high risk for psychological distress and their expected high value placed on close family ties. This topic was studied in a sample of 392 college students from El Paso, TX (n = 193) and from Ciudad Juárez, México (n = 199). The authors tested a stress-appraisal model with self-report measures of familism, parent–child discord, threat appraisals of parent–child discord, and psychological distress. As predicted, threat appraisals partially mediated the relation between parent–child discord and psychological distress. Moreover, the relation between parent–child discord and threat appraisals was stronger at higher than at lower levels of familism. Study findings highlight the need to consider that, under certain conditions, familism may increase risk of distress among emerging adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting distress-induced eating with self-reports: Mission impossible or a piece of cake?

Comments on the original article, Assessing yourself as an emotional eater: Mission impossible? by C. Evers, D. T. D. de Ridder, and M. A. Adriaanse (see record 2009-20990-009). Results of a functional MRI study (Bohon, Stice, & Spoor, 2009) contradict the assertion that it is impossible to self-assess emotional eating because the self-report emotional eating scale of the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ-em) predicted important individual differences in reward response during negative moods. Evers et al advance their argument in the context of results of four experiments where self-reported “emotional eaters” (DEBQ-em) did not eat more food during emotional encounters as compared to control conditions or “no emotional eaters.” However, the core characteristic of emotional eaters is not that they eat so much during distress (though binge eaters may do), but that they do not show the typical stress response of eating less (the typical stress response being loss of appetite because of physiological effects that mimic satiety) (Gold & Chrousos, 2002). Accordingly, the moderator effect of emotional eating during distress would be that. “No emotional eaters” eat less and “emotional eaters” eat the same or more compared to control conditions. Close inspection of the results of Evers et al reveals that their “no emotional eaters” did not show the typical stress response of eating less. This opens the possibility that the null findings of Evers et al may be simply explained by misclassification of “no emotional eaters” versus “emotional eaters” because of their use of median splits (a procedure notorious for possible misclassification of subjects into distinct groups). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The moderating effect of work-linked couple relationships and work–family integration on the spouse instrumental support-emotional exhaustion relationship.

Based on boundary theory and conservation of resources theory, we argue that employees with a spouse in the same occupation or workplace (referred to as work-linked couples) enhance the effectiveness of spousal instrumental support in reducing emotional exhaustion. In the first study of nurses (n = 103), we found that work-linked couples have more highly integrated work and family roles than participants whose spouses did not share an occupation or workplace. In a second study of working adults (n = 484), we found that work-linked couples have a stronger relationship between spouse instrumental support and the reduction of emotional exhaustion; this moderated relationship was mediated by their work–family integration. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of work and family roles, social support, and emotional exhaustion, and provide suggestions for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of age on cross-modal emotion perception.

Efficient navigation of our social world depends on the generation, interpretation, and combination of social signals within different sensory systems. However, the influence of healthy adult aging on multisensory integration of emotional stimuli remains poorly explored. This article comprises 2 studies that directly address issues of age differences on cross-modal emotional matching and explicit identification. The first study compared 25 younger adults (19–40 years) and 25 older adults (60–80 years) on their ability to match cross-modal congruent and incongruent emotional stimuli. The second study looked at performance of 20 younger (19–40) and 20 older adults (60–80) on explicit emotion identification when information was presented congruently in faces and voices or only in faces or in voices. In Study 1, older adults performed as well as younger adults on tasks in which congruent auditory and visual emotional information were presented concurrently, but there were age-related differences in matching incongruent cross-modal information. Results from Study 2 indicated that though older adults were impaired at identifying emotions from 1 modality (faces or voices alone), they benefited from congruent multisensory information as age differences were eliminated. The findings are discussed in relation to social, emotional, and cognitive changes with age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of smoking opportunity on attentional bias in smokers.

The emotional Stroop task was used to examine the influence of opportunity to smoke on attentionall bias to smoking-related stimuli. At the outset of the study, 92 nicotine-deprived smokers were told that they (a) would, (b) would not, or (c) might be able to smoke during the experiment. Next, participants completed an emotional Stroop task, in which they were presented with smoking-related or -unrelated words in an unblocked format. Smokers demonstrated interference to the smoking words, relative to matched neutral words, F(1, 87)?=?18.0, p?F(2, 87)?=?4.35, p?