Emotional Stability

1
Emotional Stability

• Josh Dobson
• Caitlin McGuire
• Tammy Bingley

2
Previous Research

• Summary 1
• Study which examined links among sex,
  personality, and expectations for emotional
  events and found a relation between agreeableness
  and expectations for reactions to positive and
  negative emotionally evocative material. Study 2
  participants described contents of emotionally
  evocative slides to a partner (either friend or
  stranger) and indicated that agreeableness and
  sex were significant predictors of emotional
  experience and of efforts to control emotion
  (Tobin et al, 2000).
• Summary 2
• There have been many studies performed to find
  the relationship between personality traits
  emotional stability and anxiousness. Berrien
  (1993) did a study that tested the relationship
  between emotionally stable and unstable persons
  and their dreams. His theory was that persons who
  were emotionally unstable recalled more dreams or
  dream fragments than emotionally stable persons.

3
Emotional Stability

• By Definition
• ? a mental state of calmness and
  composure.
• In reference to our scale HIGH scorers are
  generally more sensitive, emotional and prone to
  feelings that are upsetting, such as guilt or
  sadness. LOW scorers are emotionally secure,
  resistant and relaxed individuals even under very
  stressful conditions.

4
Purpose

• There has been previous work done on the topic of
  emotional stability. This is partially because
  it is an important personality trait that is part
  of the Big 5 Theory. The purpose of our study is
  to design a scale that will test a participants
  emotional stability. In order to make sure we
  are testing for emotional stability we will have
  an anxiousness scale for convergent validity and
  an interpersonal trust scale for discriminant
  validity, both having been used for previous
  professional research.

5
Hypothesis

• We have devised a 15-item scale and believe that
  it will test participants Emotional Stability.
  In order to make sure that it does measure what
  we want it to we are using an anxiousness scale
  for convergent validity and an interpersonal
  trust scale for discriminant validity.

6
Emotional Stability Scale

• Based on the questions below fill in the blanks
  with the answer you believe best suits you, using
  the following scale
• 1- Always, 2- Often, 3- Sometimes,
  4- Rarely, 5- Never
• 1. _____ I have no confidence in myself. (R)
• 2. _____ I am a determined person.
• 3. _____ I never get upset when menial tasks
  go poorly.
• 4. _____ I believe that I control my future.
• 5. _____ I do not second guess myself.
• 6. _____ I believe that I am in control in
  high stress situations
• 7. _____ I fear judgment from others when
  giving my opinions. (R)
• 8. _____ I get distracted easily (R)
• 9. _____ I agree with others opinions just
  to fit in. (R)
• 10. _____ I am an independent individual.
• 11. _____ I have goals to accomplish and do not
  let road blocks deter me.
• 12. _____ I am always a happy person.
• 13. _____ I fear expressing my emotions. (R)
• 14. _____ I am able to adjust to changes in
  plans
• 15._____ I always sweat the small stuff. (R)

7
Convergent Validity

• For Convergent Validity we chose to use the
  Interaction Anxiousness Scale by Leary (1983).
• It is a 5 point Likert scale including 15
  questions.
• This scale is used to measure social anxiety.
• We chose this scale for our convergent validity
  because we believe that anxiousness should have a
  high negative correlation with emotional
  stability, as its related to experiencing
  negative emotions. We believe that people who are
  emotionally stable are less likely to experience
  negative emotions.

8
Discriminant Validity

• For discriminant validity we chose to use the
  Interpersonal Trust Scale by Rotter (1967, 1971).
• It is a 5 point likert scale including 25
  questions.
• This scale is designed to measure ones
  expectation that the behavior, promises, or
  (verbal or written) statements of other
  individuals can be relied upon.
• Our reason for choosing an interpersonal trust
  scale is that it should provide discriminant
  validity because it is not related to emotional
  stability. We want to show our test measures
  emotional stability, not just a measure of how
  trust might affect emotions.
• We expected to find a low correlation between our
  discriminant variable and emotional stability.

9
Cronbachs Alpha

• ESS Cronbachs Alpha - .748
• Interpersonal Trust - Cronbachs Alpha - .802
• Anxiousness Scale Cronbachs Alpha - .749

10
Analysis of Discriminant and Convergent Validity

• The correlation between our Emotional Stability
  Scale and Interpersonal Trust Scale was not
  significant at R -.081
• The correlation between our Emotional Stability
  Scale and Anxiousness Scale was significant in a
  2-tailed t-test, R -.661, p lt .01

11
Conclusion

• Our hypothesis was supported which means that
  emotional stability and anxiousness are inversely
  correlated. Trust has no relationship with
  emotional stability which were proven by our
  results.
• In future research, wording should be more
  simplistic. As we had questions from participants
  regarding what words meant, ie. Hypocrisy,
  judiciary and menial.