Emotional intelligence is defined, in part, by the capacity to discriminate between different emotional experiences. Considerable evidence suggests that there are individual differences in people's tendency to discriminate: some individuals use discrete emotion labels to name their feelings in a distinct and specific fashion, whereas others use the terms to refer to more global feeling states. The long-term objective of the proposed research is to examine the factors that contribute to this individual difference, with the larger goal of understanding the relationship between conscious emotion labeling, emotional intelligence, and effective emotion regulation. The research will investigate two psychological characteristics associated with individual differences in the labeling of discrete emotional experiences: valence focus (the extent to which individuals incorporate pleasantness or unpleasantness into their conscious affective experience), and arousal focus (the extent to which individuals incorporate subjective experiences of arousal into a conscious affective experience). One series of studies will determine whether valence focus is a characteristic specific to emotion labeling, or whether it is part of a broader cognitive style defined by a chronic tendency to make evaluative judgments of all sorts. If successful, these studies will indicate whether the failure to use discrete emotion labels distinctly is a function of (1) a general cognitive style or (2) incomplete knowledge of emotion and emotion regulation strategies. A second series of studies will use Signal Detection Theory to determine whether those who are higher in arousal focus (i.e., who incorporate subjective experiences of arousal into their emotional experience) have more accurate perceptions of their internal sensations (arising from autonomic nervous system activity). If successful, these studies will demonstrate that bodily cues are more important to the emotional experiences of some individuals than of others, and will provide the foundation for studying the role that the body plays in emotional intelligence more broadly. The proposed research has implications both for basic theory in emotion and for the role of emotional experience and emotion regulation in mental health.
