Psychology Commons^™

Individual Differences In Emotion Expression: Hierarchical Structure And Relations With Psychological Distress, Jeffery H. Kahn, Leah K. Barr, Joel W. Schneider

Faculty Publications – Psychology

Several constructs reflecting individual differences in emotion expression have been described in the literature, yet their structural organization is unknown. The present study provided a taxonomy of these individual differences and determined their relations to depression and anxiety symptoms. Exploratory factor analyses suggested seven emotion-expression factors-Affect Intensity, Ambivalence About Expression Disclosure of Negative Emotion, Disclosure of Emotion, Disclosure of Lack of Affect, Expression of Positive Emotion, and Secret Keeping-are explained by two second-order factors: Emotional Constraint and Emotional Expression. Multiple regression and canonical correlation analyses suggested that a reluctance to express emotions is related to heightened psychological symptoms. These findings …