Development and preliminary validation of an emotional self-efficacy scale

Abstract

Building on research in the areas of emotional intelligence and self-efficacy, a measure of emotional self-efficacy was developed and validated. Two hundred and seven participants rated their self-efficacy for adaptive emotional functioning as operationalized by the facets of Mayer and Salovey’s (1997) and Mayer, Salovey and Caruso’s (2004) model of emotional intelligence and completed measures of constructs expected to be related to emotional self-efficacy. Items grouped into a one-component solution, and the internal consistency of the scale based on this solution was .96. Two week test–retest reliability was .85. High emotional self-efficacy was associated with greater dispositional emotional intelligence, greater performance emotional intelligence, higher positive mood and lower negative mood. Emotional self-efficacy showed evidence of incremental predictive validity in that it remained associated with positive and negative mood after dispositional emotional intelligence was controlled and with positive mood after performance emotional intelligence was controlled.