EmotionalStability APJM2016
EmotionalStability APJM2016
EmotionalStability APJM2016
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Abstract Despite being generally well studied, emotional stability (ES) has not yet
been widely accepted as a satisfactory and solidly valid theoretical construct. Without a
clearly defined and validated construct, it is difficult to infer what ES means for the
behavior and decisions of individuals as well as the performance of groups and
organizations. Based on self-organization theory, this study infers a two dimensional
construct for ES (threshold and recovery) under the framework of dynamic change and
complexity. Two studies were conducted in China to develop and examine the construct
of ES in an organizational context. The psychometric examination indicated that the
newly developed construct of ES has discriminant and convergent validity with respect
to different though related constructs such as the Big Five personality model and
emotional intelligence (EI). It also demonstrates incremental validity in predicting
group leadership, job satisfaction, job self-efficacy, and commitment. The findings also
demonstrate that ES moderates the relationship between individual commitment and
group relationship conflict. The results indicate that self-ratings effectively reflect the
theoretical construct, whereas peer ratings and supervisor ratings create different biases.
Additional theory, empirical, and methodological contributions are also discussed.
* Yan Li
[email protected]
David Ahlstrom
[email protected]
1
School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
2
School of Business Administration, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
2 Y. Li, D. Ahlstrom
Keats, & DeMarie, 1998). Such rapid change coupled with new competitors emerging
from around the world can stir strong emotions in the workplace, which can have a
significant impact on performance even in the largest firms, especially if workplace
emotions are not properly managed (Ashkanasy, 2004; Ashkanasy, 2011a, b;
Ashkanasy & Daus, 2002; Li, 2011). This is especially true for firms that have
experienced very solid and steady growth for many years, but face increasing disruptive
threats from new competitors. Such transformational challenges require that employees
manage their emotions well, build trust and adapt to changes quickly rather than
treating them like a threat (Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011; Gilbert, 2005, 2006) while
maintaining good decision making, innovation, and evaluation practices (Li,
Ashkanasy, & Ahlstrom, 2014; Slovic, Finucane, Peters, & MacGregor, 2002; Williams
& Du, 2014; Zhao, Gu, Yue, & Ahlstrom, 2013).
Emotions are especially salient in terms of organizational commitment (Li,
Ahlstrom, & Ashkanasy, 2010a), innovation and new ventures (Li, 2011) and a host
of other important organizational and managerial performance considerations of par-
ticular importance today (Ahlstrom, 2014; Ashkanasy, 2004; Zerbe, Härtel, &
Ashkanasy, 2010). In spite of this importance, individuals vary in their stability to
maintain their psychological calm in the face of difficult pressures, especially in an
organizational context. The easily elicited anger, sadness, anxiety, upset, or fear can
inhibit people from providing rational analyses to difficult situations or generally using
their emotions (and intellect) effectively (Ashkanasy & Daus, 2015). Thus, in an
unsettled business environment, emotional stability (ES) is likely to be a key element
in predicting important outcomes such as people’s reaction to stressful events, propen-
sity to make intelligent and well-considered decisions, and generally adapting to
changes in the organizational and commercial environment effectively (Ashkanasy &
Humphrey, 2011). And this is not only true for line employees and support staff; ES
also impacts executives’ capacity for good judgment, trust, and the minimization of
unproductive conflict (Hiller & Hambrick, 2005; Judge & Bono, 2000).
Despite its likely importance in organizational contexts, the theoretical construct of
ES has remained somewhat ambiguous. The previous understanding of ES held that it
is still descriptive and largely inductive (Saucier & Goldberg, 2001). In addition, past
research has often been based on natural language or clinical observation studies, which
reduces predictive validity (Saucier, 1994). To bridge this gap in terms of the lack of a
theoretical framework, this study takes a deductive tack and infers the ES construct
through the use of self-organization theory. Such a dynamic and nonlinear approach can
better reflect the biological and psychological complex of emotion systems (Ahlstrom,
2010; Izard, Ackerman, Schoff, & Fine, 2000).
In this study, ES is reflected by two dimensions derived from self-organization
theory, the threshold of chaotic emotions and recovery from negative emotions and thus
in turn ES can be discriminated from similar constructs such as neuroticism and
emotional intelligence (EI). Since the construct is well defined, it should provide
incremental validity in comparison to its competing construct, neuroticism, in the Big
Five personality model. The newly developed ES should be positively related to
satisfaction and self-efficacy measures and also should moderate the relationship
between organizational commitment and relationship conflict. To test the hypotheses,
two studies were conducted. In the first study, items were developed to measure the two
dimensional construct. In the second study, the hypotheses were examined thorough the
Construct of emotional stability 3
Literature review
theory is employed as a new way to reveal the nature of emotional stability from a
dynamic nonlinear perspective and its importance in organizations (cf. Aaker, Drolet, &
Griffin, 2008; Li et al., 2010a). As an emerging research paradigm, self-organization
theory has been applied to study psychological systems (Barton, 1994). And as a part of
a psychological system, emotion is also considered to be a self-organizing system (e.g.,
Izard et al., 2000), assuming that emotion can recover to its equilibrium state automat-
ically. Emotional stability hereby is defined as a property to label the efficiency that an
emotional system automatically maintains its equilibrium. Higher emotion stability
indicates that an emotion system can recover its equilibrium efficiently (Li, Ashkanasy,
& Ahlstrom, 2010b). More specifically, this study more deeply addresses the key
construct of ES through the following three issues: First, a new construct of ES based
on self-organizational theory. Second, this paper develops a new scale to represent the
construct and also develops the psychometric properties of the new measurement.
Finally, the new construct is applied to organizations, in particular, the moderating
effects of ES on the relationship between organizational commitment and group
relationship conflict.
The construct of ES
Constructs are essential to the defining, testing, and improving of theory (Ahlstrom,
Bruton, & Zhao, 2013; Ashkanasy, Christensen, 2006; Edwards, 2003). Based on self-
organization theory, personality can be determined by stabilized behavioral patterns. A
pattern is defined as a coherent set of interactions among sub-level components (Izard
et al., 2000) and lower-order constituents interact together and generate higher-order
patterns (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984; Van de Ven, 2007). The analyses of patterns can
obviate the need to analyze all the Batomic^ coordinates of emotion activities. In order
to describe or constrain a particular pattern from a higher level, the order parameter that
indicates the degree of order of a system, is used as a critical element in defining the
macroscopic order state of self-organization accurately (Haken, 2004).
Correspondingly, in the process of emotion activation and recovery, the higher-order
patterns reoccur and stabilize as a personality characteristic (Kelso, 2000; Treffner &
Kelso, 1999), that is, emotional stability. Two patterns of an emotion system could be
identified at the higher order level: stable or unstable. Pattern A (a stable emotion
system shown in Fig. 1) has a long intermittent period between emotion episodes and a
short recovery time, which means that the emotion of a person with Pattern A is not
easily activated (i.e., a high threshold of emotional response) and that person can
recover quickly. Pattern B (an unstable emotion system) has a short emotion intermit-
tent period (low threshold of emotion response) from which also takes a relatively long
time to recover. The threshold of emotion response and the time of emotional recovery,
therefore, are two order parameters that define the ordered state of an emotional system.
The threshold represents a critical parameter that describes the sensitivity of the
system in analyzing a self-organization system (Partridge, 2000; Tong, 1990). The
threshold level will determine whether or not an emotional system can easily become
disordered. A lower threshold means that the equilibrium of an emotional system is
easily disturbed. In Eyenck’s arousal theory (Eyenck & Eyenck, 1985: 248), very low
and very high levels of stimulation activate negative feelings, whereas positive feelings
Construct of emotional stability 5
Intensity
Pattern A
Intermittent Period
Time
Recovery Period Recovery Period
Intensity
Pattern B
Time
Recovery Period Recovery Period
Fig. 1 Patterns of emotional stability
occur only at intermediate levels of sensory stimulation. Thus, the activation of positive
emotions could not represent the threshold of the emotional system, and hence, the
activation of negative emotions is an indicator to measure the threshold of an emotional
system. The time required for emotion recovery is further related to psychological
resilience, a term used by Tugade and Fredrickson (2004: 320), who define it as the
Bflexible adaptation to the changing demands of stressful experiences.^ The recovery
time can reflect whether the sub-components of the emotional system can collaborate
effectively to cope with negative stimuli and restore it efficiently to a stable state or not.
It also is one of the dimensions that can be used to indicate whether an emotional
system is stable. Therefore, in the new construct, ES is comprised of two dimensions
(i.e., the threshold of negative emotion responses and their recovery time).
Construct validity of ES
similar properties to ES. Thus, ES should have a higher correlation with neuroticism
(convergent validity) but can also be discriminated from the four other Big Five
personality traits. Therefore, we hypothesize:
Hypothesis 1a ES has a higher correlation with neuroticism than with other four
dimensions of the Big Five traits.
On the other hand, ES differs from the neuroticism of Big Five (e.g., McCrae &
Costa, 1987). Neuroticism measures static emotional experience, composing of pairs of
emotional adjectives, for example calm–worrying, at ease–nervous, relaxed–high-
strung, comfortable–self-conscious. On the basis of self-organization, the stability of
the emotional system is evaluated from dynamic courses of emotional changes, such as,
whether the emotional system is easily activated (threshold) and can recover quickly.
Therefore, ES should be discriminant with neuroticism. Therefore we hypothesize:
ES and EI
emotion can recover automatically and that recovery could happen naturally, which
indicates that ES might have greater validity in predicting satisfaction than EI. Despite
the similarity between ES and EI, they are different constructs. Thus, we hypothesize:
Criterion validity of ES
As to leadership at the group level, the evolutionary viewpoint regards that groups
are the by-product of individual behaviors to maximize reproductive potential
(Caporael, Wilson, Hemelrijk, & Sheldon, 2005). Natural selection results from
8 Y. Li, D. Ahlstrom
Study 1
Methodology
In this study, the items representing the two dimensional construct of ES are developed
according to the previous descriptions on the two dimensions. As a first step, the
negative emotions include upset, irritable, angry, guilty (ashamed), anxious, panicked
(or fearful, scared), disturbed, feeling as if faced with imminent disaster, hurt, and hostile
were collected from the Big Five, 16PF, and PANA scale (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen,
1988). Second, these negative emotions items were transferred to represent their thresh-
old and recovery. As the sensitivity of negative emotional responses, ten items of
Construct of emotional stability 9
Measurement
In order to avoid the center tendency bias of the Chinese participants, all the 20 author-
centered items were evaluated by bipolar 6-point scales (1=strongest agreement, 6=
strongest disagreement).
Results
Item analysis was conducted to select the items. The two dimensions of ES, threshold
and recovery, were separately analyzed based on the values of co-efficient alpha, item-
total correlation, and scale variance according to three disciplines: (1) Only one item
was deleted per item analysis; (2) The deleted item has the least item-total correlation
and deleting it will increase the co-efficient alpha and scale variance; and (3) No items
were deleted until the item-total correlations of all the remaining items are above .50.
By this procedure, four items remain to represent the dimension of threshold and three
items for the dimension of recovery as shown in Table 1. The higher item-correlations
(larger than .5) indicate that these remaining seven items have items consistency to
represent the two dimensions.
In order to know whether these items are discriminant on the two factors, explor-
atory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted. The principal components method was used
to extract factors and the factors were rotated by varimax. The results show that the
seven items distributed on two factors account for 68.2 % of the variance. From Table 1,
the factor loadings of each item have higher loading on one factor but lower on the
other, indicating that these items have discriminability over the two factors. The items
1, 2, and 3 converge on the factor 2, that is whether people can recover or calm down
from negative emotions quickly. It is named as the recovery of emotion. The items 4, 5,
6, and 7 represent factor 1, threshold, that is whether negative emotions like upset,
panic (scared, fear), and anxiety can be activated easily.
In order to increase the content validity of the seven items, we interviewed some
participants and asked them whether these items represent the threshold and recovery of
10 Y. Li, D. Ahlstrom
1. Are you a person who can recover 3.97 1.05 −.13 .82 .61 .76
from negative emotion quickly?
2. Do you calm down quickly after 3.87 1.11 −.18 .80 .61
trivial incidents?
3. Some trivia in life make you upset. 3.80 .91 −.20 .78 .56
But you can recover calm quickly
and not be influenced by
the negative emotion?
4. Do you get upset easily? 3.45 1.18 .67 −.40 l.63 .83
5. Do you easily feel as if you are 3.81 1.20 .82 −.00 .65
facing imminent disaster?
6. Do you panic easily? 3.52 1.03 .82 −.00 .61
7. Do you get anxious easily? 3.46 1.12 .81 −.36 .76
emotions from the item content. The content validity of threshold was identified
however, one item of recovery (i.e., BSome trivia in life make you upset. But you
can recover calm quickly and not be influenced by the negative emotion?^ was
suggested to be short and simple). Hence this item was revised as BCan you recover
from upset quickly and not be influenced by it?^ Another item BDo you calm down
quickly after trivial incidents?^ was criticized by the participants as having no explicit
relationship with negative emotions. Hence, this item was replaced by the emotions
which appeared in the threshold dimension. Therefore, there are four more items to
measure recovery, such as BDo you calm down quickly from panic (or scare/fear),
unhappiness, distress (or worry), anxiety?^ On the basis of the above procedure of item
analysis and content analysis, an updated scale to measure ES was formed, which is
expected with increased face and content validity than the previous one. Further
analyses were conducted in Study 2.
Study 2
The second study aimed at examining the correspondence between the theoretical
construct of ES and the modified ES measure, in terms of construct validity (Cronbach
& Meehl, 1955; Schwab, 1980), including its convergent and discriminant validity with
relevant traits, multi-trait-multi-methods (MTMM) test. Its incremental validity, crite-
rion validity, and its moderating effect were also examined in this study.
Methodology
Research design
In order to examine the discriminant validity of ES across different rating sources, MTMM
(multi-traits-multi-methods) was used in our sample design. We used three traits (emotion
Construct of emotional stability 11
recovery, emotion threshold, and group leadership)×three methods (self-rating, peer rating,
and supervisor rating) design. Except the three traits, the other variables were all self-rated.
All participants were employees from eight Chinese firms based in Beijing, and drawn
from the IT, publishing, consultancy and design industries. Apart from one being state-
owned, all of the firms were privately-owned. The size of the firms ranged from 25 to
300 employees. All departments of each firm were involved in the survey. In order to
control participants’ social desirability, there was an introduction on the first page of the
questionnaire highlighting that: (1) it is for the purposes of academic research; (2) the
survey is confidential; and (3) as for the answers to each question, there was no wrong
and no right. They were not required to write their name on the questionnaire. The
participants were selected based on the register of each firm. The procedure of sampling
was: (1) the working group was the unit of our sampling; (2) all group members were
selected as participants, if the number of members of a particular group was less or
equal than 5; (3) otherwise, 5 participants were randomly selected based on their roll
number. Two hundred thirty employees from 56 working groups took part in the
investigation. HR managers selected peers within the same group to rate the target
employees. The peer should have worked with the target employee for at least 3 months.
Supervisor rating was conducted by the direct group leader. All of the questionnaires
were completed within 1 week.
Among the 230 employees, average age was 28.92 years (SD=7.05, range from 21
to 60); 38 % were female, 62 % male. The average tenure of the respondents was
25.04 months (SD=33.03, ranging from 3 to 290). The average working hours each
day was 8.66 (SD=1.28, ranging from 5.5 to 14). One hundred ninety-two cases had a
complete self-, supervisor, and peer rating record.
Measures
All multi-item scales were measured on a 6-point scale (1=strongly agree, 6=strongly
disagree). The questionnaire about ES was developed in Chinese. All of the other
measures were first translated from English to Chinese and back translated to English to
ensure equivalence of meaning.
The Big Five Since the original Big Five inventory of McCrae and Costa (1987) is too
long (80 items), the inventory was shortened according to Saucier’s (1994) rationale to
increase the factor purity. Forty bipolar adjectives that satisfy the following two
conditions were then selected: (1) the factor loading on the target factor is above .50,
and (2) the factor loadings on other factors are less than .40. The Cronbach’s alphas of
the five traits were Neuroticism .76, Extraversion .82, Openness .77, Agreeableness
.85, and Conscientiousness .93.
EI Emotional intelligence was measured by the 16-item WLEIS (Law, Wong, & Song,
2004) over 4 dimensions: (1) self-emotion appraisal, (2) others’ emotion appraisal, (3)
regulation of emotion, and (4) uses of emotion. The Cronbach’s alpha values for the
four dimensions were .83, .83, .84, and .91, respectively.
12 Y. Li, D. Ahlstrom
Job satisfaction We used Andrews and Withey’s (1976) 6-item scale to evaluate em-
ployees’ job satisfaction. Participants were asked to rate their overall feeling about the job,
coworkers, the job itself, equipment, information, good supervision, physical surroundings,
the hours, and the pay and fringe benefits. The Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .75.
Group leadership The 8-item scale of Zimmerman and Zahniser (1991) was used.
Items included: BI am often a leader in the groups,^ BI would rather someone else took
over the leadership role when I am involved in a group project (Reverse),^ BI would
prefer to be a leader rather a follower,^ or BI can usually organize people to get things
done.^ The Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .72.
Self-efficacy The 8-item self-efficacy scale of John (1986) is used. This scale is close
to the work context. For example, BI do not anticipate any problems in adjusting to
work in this organization,^ or BI feel confident that my skills and abilities equal or
exceed those of my future colleagues.^ The Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .74.
Life satisfaction Life satisfaction was measured by the SWL Scale (Dienner, Emmons,
Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; Lucas, Diener, & Suh, 1996). The 5-item scale includes BIn
most ways my life is close to my ideal^ or BThe conditions of my life are excellent.^
The Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .74.
Group relationship conflict The 4-item ICS (intra-group conflict scale) (Jehn, 1995;
Pearson, Ensley, & Amason, 2002) is used to measure the group relationship conflict,
including BThere is much friction among members in my work unit,^ BThere is much
tension among members in my work unit,^ and BThere is much emotional conflict
among members in my work unit.^ The Cronbach’s alpha of the relationship conflict
scale was .90.
Results
Two-dimensional construct of ES
Dimensions
Item M SD Recovery (λ) Threshold (λ)
Note: All correlation coefficency among the items is significant at the .01 level (2-tailed). The correlation
between ESR and EST is .65
recovery and threshold have .65 correlations. When the correlation co-efficiency is
constrained as 1 (denoted as M1), the model is poorly fit. RMSEA fell to .104, while χ2
increased to 51.5. So, M1 was rejected. The analysis supported that recovery and
threshold are two dimensions of ES. They are correlated but discriminant from each
other.
The correlations among ES, EI, and Big Five are shown in Table 4. ES has a higher
correlation with neuroticism (−.55) than with the four other traits of Big Five, for
instance, extraversion (.36), openness (.39), agreeableness (.36), conscientiousness
(.40), indicating that ES is convergent but also discriminant with neuroticism, which
supports H1a. At the same time, ES is highly correlated with EI (r=.66, p<.001),
supporting H1c that ES is converged with EI.
Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Neuroticism 1.00
2. ES −.55** 1.00
3. EI −.36** .63** 1.00
4. Extraversion −.30** .36** .38** 1.00
5. Openness −.12 .39** .52** .51** 1.00
6. Agreeable −.24* .36** .30** .63** .37** 1.00
7. Conscientiousness −.25** .40** .37** .45** .35** .78**
M 3.71 1.94 1.27 2.94 3.22 1.98
SD .62 .72 .32 1.17 .94 .77
* p<.05; ** p<.001
Further CFA was conducted to examine the trait discriminant validity between ES
neuroticism, and EI. The base model M0 (the correlation matrix between ES, EI, and
Big Five) has an acceptable model fit (RMSEA=.071; NFI=.93; CFI=.94) as shown in
Table 5. After the correlation co-efficiency between ES and neuroticism was
constrained to 1 in M1, χ2 significantly increased to 74, showing that M1 is
significantly different from M0. M0 is a parsimony model, so M1 was rejected, which
supports H1b, that is ES could be differentiated from neuroticism. On the basis of M0,
when the correlation co-efficiency between ES and EI was constrained to 1 (denoted as
M2), the model fit of M2 is not as good as M0. χ2 significantly increased to 66. So ES is
a different trait to EI, supporting H1d. These results demonstrated that the newly
developed ES has good trait convergent and discriminant validity.
MTMM (Multi-traits-Multi-methods)
Different with the traditional method to examine MTMM, CFA could quantify the
degree to which the traits converge and discriminate over multiple ratings (Bagozzi &
Yi, 1991; Schmitt & Stults, 1986). Among the CFA MTMM models, the CTUM
(correlated traits uniqueness method) model had been examined with stable and proper
solutions (March & Bailey, 1991). It was used to test the convergent and discriminant
validity of ES over multiple ratings.
M0: Correlation matrix of ES, Neuroticism, EI, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeable, and Conscientiousness
M1: As M0 but with PH between ES and Neuroticism constrained to 1
M2: As M0 but with PH between ES and EI constrained to 1
Construct of emotional stability 15
The results from CTUM (see Fig. 2) indicate that the model fits well
(RMSEA = .052; NFI = .96; NNFI = .97; CFI = .98; GFI = .97; df = 15; χ2 = 24.38;
p=.0995), which means that the predicted and observed results are sufficiently alike
in supporting the MTMM model. However, the trait factor loading was not balanced
(see Table 6). For example, on the trait recovery, the factor loading of recovery from
self-rating is .22, whereas peer rating gives .70, and supervisor rating .36. The
convergent validity among different methods on a specific trait in terms of their shared
trait (Alwin, 1974; Marsh & Grayson, 1995) is lower (shown in Table 6), ranging from
.08 to .28. The lower traits variance indicates that each trait (recovery, threshold, and
group leadership) has a lower convergent validity over the ratings. The CTUM model
provides quantified analysis on MTMM data, but it is impossible to tell what kinds of
rating sources are more valid. Therefore, the criteria proposed by Campbell and Fiske
(1959) were utilized to qualify which rating method is better (shown in Table 7).
According to these criteria, the correlations among the traits in each heterotrait-
homomethods triangle demonstrated different patterns. Recovery and threshold are
from the same construct, so they should have highest correlation than any other
correlations. In the self-rating triangle, the correlation co-efficiency between recovery
and threshold is higher (.66) than the others (recovery and group leadership=.29;
threshold and group leadership=.40), which is consistent with the conceptual relation-
ships. But in the peer rating triangle the correlation between recovery and threshold is
low (r=.29, p<.01) and lower than the other correlations, which means recovery and
threshold were not perceived as one construct by peers. The correlation co-efficiency
pattern is different from the theoretical construct. The pattern of supervisor rating is as
same as it of self-rating; however, the supervisor rating could not discriminate between
recovery and threshold because the correlation between the two dimensions (r=.88,
Fig. 2 CTUM model analyses on multiple rating sources. Note: ESR, EST, and LC are self rating recovery of
ES, threshold of ES, and leadership; PEST, PESR, and PLC are peer ratings of the three traits; SESR, SEST,
and SLC are supervisor ratings
16 Y. Li, D. Ahlstrom
p<.01) is too high to be discriminated. In this specific research, peer ratings and
supervisor ratings generated two biases. Peer ratings cannot reflect the theoretical
construct, or peers wanted to distort the real observations to the target employees
intentionally because of their competitive nature in organizations; whereas supervisor
ratings cannot discriminate the similar construct and they may feel that the subordinates
should have a higher emotion threshold if they are perceived as having fast emotion
recovery especially when one supervisor has to rate multiple subordinates. The findings
indicated that self-rating of ES is more valid than peer rating and supervisor rating,
which is consistent with recent findings on the issue of whether we put too much
emphasis on other ratings (Barr & Baju, 2003; Craig & Kaiser, 2003; Penny, 2003;
Yammarino, 2003).
Criterion validity of ES
Hypotheses 2a to 2d concern the criterion validity of ES. Consistent with our hypoth-
eses 2a, 2c, and 2d (shown in Table 8), ES is a positively related with job satisfaction
* p<.05; ** p<.01
Table 8 Intra-correlations among latent variables
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Construct of emotional stability
(r=.38, p<. 001), job self-efficacy (r=.41, p<.001), and commitment (r=.35,
p<.001). Consistent with Judge’s paper (Judge & Bono, 2000), neuroticism has no
significant relationship with group leadership (r=−.12, p>.1). H2b was not supported,
no significant relationship has been found to link ES to life satisfaction. It might be
attributed to the SWLS scale mainly measures the cognitive evaluation on life satis-
faction (Pavot & Diener, 1993), not the emotional satisfaction with life.
Incremental validity
The incremental validity can provide evidence on whether a newly developed scale has
a greater ability or power to predict outcomes than the previous scales or construct
(Sechrest, 1963). According to the method (Hunsley & Meyer, 2003), hierarchical
multiple regression was conducted, and the entry order and demographic characteristics
(such as age, gender, educational level, marital status, and employment status) were
also controlled to examine whether the newly developed ES scale provides incremental
validity in prediction than the similar construct neuroticism. The findings show that ES
has incremental validity in predicting leadership (ΔR2 =.07, p<.01), job satisfaction
(ΔR2 =.06, p<.01), commitment (ΔR2 =.02, p<.05), and job self-efficacy (ΔR2 =.06,
p<.001) except life satisfaction (ΔR2 =.03, n.s.), after controlling neuroticism (shown
in Table 9). But when ES was controlled at first, neuroticism did not show
significant effects on these outcomes except on life satisfaction (Shown in
Table 10).
Discussion
CV Control variables
* p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001
19
20
CV Control variables
* p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001
Y. Li, D. Ahlstrom
Construct of emotional stability 21
β R2 ΔR2
* p<.05; ** p<.01
Contributions
4.5
Commitment
3 Low ES
High ES
1.5
0
LOW HIGH
imminent disaster) from the original ten negative emotions. According to the bifurca-
tion structure of affect (Li et al., 2010a), the four negative emotions are chaotic
emotions, which are different with anger, sadness, guilty, and hostility, these near
equilibrium emotions. When near equilibrium emotions are activated, the emotion
system works well functionally. But when chaotic emotions are activated, the system
is at an unstable state that cannot react to the event by following the extant procedures
or strategies. Therefore, the threshold to measure the stability of an emotion system
should be evaluated by the activation of chaotic emotions as the findings indicated,
rather than the negative emotion at the near equilibrium state.
On the recovery dimension, after item selection, the remaining three items with the
largest item-correlation commonly reflect the recovery speed from general negative
emotions, with no differentiation between chaotic and near equilibrium emotions. But
future study should examine whether emotional recovery exists differences between
near equilibrium emotion and chaotic emotions or both can be represented by general
negative emotions. Despite this unsettled issue, the construct of ES could be marked
specifically by the recovery speed of negative emotions and the threshold of chaotic
emotion activation. The subsequent psychometric properties support the two-
dimensional scale’s construct validity and its incremental validity in comparison to
the previous similar construct neuroticism.
As the well documented evidence on ES and organizational behavior, the newly
developed construct consistently found that ES plays an important and positive trait
effect on job satisfaction, job self-efficacy, and organizational commitment. It also found
the supposed but unfound empirical relationship between ES and leadership, which
demonstrated increased validity, indicating that the higher ES is likely to be perceived as
leaders. Its moderating effects on the organizational commitment under the group
relationship conflict manifest its buffer effect under organizational stress and difficulties.
In sum, ES reflects one person’s disposition to adapt to stressors. A higher ES
individual tends to react functionally to external and internal events—the emotion
system has higher threshold to be disturbed and it is likely to recover quickly. Such
individuals are easily perceived as leaders particularly when the groups or organizations
encounter the variety of conflicts and stresses (Li, Chun, Ashkanasy, & Ahlstrom,
2012). These findings provide important implications on organizational management.
In leader selection, organizations could promote the employees with higher ES because
they are more likely to be perceived as leaders. In stress management, organizations
should provide intervention to the lower ES employees especially when organizations
are in a stressful stage, such as acquisition and merger, innovative transformation, or
strategic change.
In spite of the well-established knowledge about ES in organizations, very little has
been established regarding its mechanisms specifically from the threshold of chaotic
emotion and the recovery speed of negative emotions. The robust two-dimensional
construct of ES based on self-organization theory contributes to research design in that
it can facilitate future studies to explore its functionality in organizations. This will be
helpful in stimulating new knowledge and provides tools to further develop the
effective management of human resources and the improvement of the performance
of entrepreneurs and organizations in Asia (Ahlstrom, Bruton, & Chan, 2001; Bruton,
Ahlstrom, & Yeh, 2004) as well as in modern and developing organizations around the
world (Pattnaik & Kumar, 2014; Pudelko, Reiche, & Carr, 2015; Young et al., 2014).
Construct of emotional stability 23
Conclusion
Taken together, this study elucidated the psychological construct of ES on the basis of
self organizational theory, which is a new approach to reveal the nature of a psycho-
logical construct. It improves on the shortcomings of previous specifications of the
construct given the weakness of the lexical approach to ES which just reflects the
description of natural language on personality or trait. The empirical findings support
that the newly developed scale has improved psychometric characters, such as incre-
mental validity and criterion validity. It also demonstrates discriminant and convergent
validity in comparison with Big Five model of personality and research on emotions
including EI. In the organizational context, it successfully predicts the positive rela-
tionship with group leadership. Furthermore, we also found that the organizational
commitment of lower ES individuals would be affected by group level relationship
conflict and it will be decreased with the increasing of group relationship conflict. It
indicates that ES is an important individual trait to cope with organizational conflict or
turbulence and as enablers to initiate followers under turbulent organizational
environments.
In addition, a better understanding of personality and related concepts such as EI and
interpersonal relations in organizational and professional settings has important impli-
cations for firm performance (Dunbar & Ahlstrom, 1995; Jordan et al., 2007; Li et al.,
2014; Pearson & Porath, 2009; Pfeffer, 1998, 2007). Such a clearer and studied
specification of the new constructs (Ahlstrom, Lamond & Ding, 2009) such as ES
can also contribute to future research in the expanding and important area of research
on affect (Abrahamson, 2008; Ashkanasy, 2011b; Slovic, Finucane, Peters, &
MacGregor, 2007). Understanding ES and its implications is likely to have a wide
range of research and practical application in the study of emotion (e.g., Davidson,
Sherer, & Goldsmith, 2003) and a variety of organizational activities including selec-
tion in human resource management and intervention in organizational change and
corporate governance. This is particularly important in the face of continued develop-
ment of firms in East Asia and other emerging economies (Liu, Ahlstrom, & Yeh,
2006) as they continue to strive to modernize and globalize (Yamakawa, Khavul, Peng,
& Deeds, 2014).
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Yan Li (PhD, The Chinese University of Hong Kong) is an associate professor at the Beijing Institute of
Technology (BIT) where she teaches management and entrepreneurship. Dr. Li studied in Italy and Australia,
as well as Hong Kong and spent several years working in entrepreneurial firms in the information technology
industry in China. Dr. Li is active in the Academy of Management, Asia Academy of Management, and the
Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management. Her research focuses on emotion, decision making,
entrepreneurship, and experimental design, and she has published several peer reviewed papers and book
chapters in those areas. She is currently on the Editorial Review Board of the Asia Pacific Journal of
Management.
David Ahlstrom (PhD, New York University) is a professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He
obtained his PhD in Management and International Business after working for nearly a decade in government
and industry, including several years in the computer industry. His research interests include managing in Asia,
innovation and entrepreneurship, decision-making, and management and organizational history. Professor
Ahlstrom has published over 90 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as the Strategic Management Journal,
Academy of Management Review, Journal of International Business Studies, Academy of Management
Perspectives, Journal of Management History, Food Policy, and Journal of Business Venturing. His work
has also appeared multiple times in The Wall Street Journal. Professor Ahlstrom co-authored the textbook
International Management: Strategy and Culture in the Emerging World and guest edited two Special Issues
of Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice. Professor Ahlstrom has also guest edited three Special Issues of Asia
Pacific Journal of Management: Turnaround in Asia (in 2004), Managing in Ethnic Chinese Communities (in
2010), and Asia & Poverty: Closing the Great Divide through Entrepreneurship & Innovation (in 2015).
Professor Ahlstrom was Senior Editor of APJM 2007–2009, before serving as APJM’s Editor-in-Chief from
2010 to 2012, and is currently a Consulting Editor. Professor Ahlstrom is also the International Editor of
Journal of World Business.