Abstract
The dimensionality of the construct of affect intensity is still a debated issue and most of the studies dealing with this debate have used the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM; Larsen & Diener, 1987) although this measure has been criticized on various psychometric grounds. We speculate that the inconsistency regarding the dimensionality of affect intensity may be either because of lack of clarity in its conceptualization or inappropriateness of its psychometric measures. In view of this, the present study attempts to explore the dimensionality of affect intensity using the Hindi version of the Emotional Intensity Scale (EIS; Bachorowski & Braaten, 1994) that claims to overcome the psychometric limitations of the AIM. The EIS-H was administered to 284 Hindi speaking Indian adults (119 males and 165 females). Exploratory factor (principal component) analysis identified two factors that were labelled as positive and negative emotional intensity. However, observation of some overlap and/or cross loading undermines the factorial purity of the EIS-H. Thus, a maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test two models - one assuming the two factors to be uncorrelated and the other as correlated. Findings revealed that the correlated two factors model provided a better fit to the data as compared to that which assumed the two factors to be uncorrelated. Findings imply that affect intensity is a multidimensional construct that encompasses two independent yet related dimensions of positive and negative affect intensity and the EIS-H may be used to reliably measure it.
Highlights
The dimensionality of the construct of affect intensity is still a debated issue and most of the studies dealing with this debate have used the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM; Larsen & Diener, 1987) this measure has been criticized on various psychometric grounds
The observation of the anti-image correlation matrix revealed that the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy (KMO) values for individual variables were higher than .50, which further supports the adequacy of the data for factor analysis
The findings of the present study clearly indicate that affect intensity is a multidimensional construct and is composed of at least two factors: positive and negative emotional intensity
Summary
The dimensionality of the construct of affect intensity is still a debated issue and most of the studies dealing with this debate have used the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM; Larsen & Diener, 1987) this measure has been criticized on various psychometric grounds. Findings imply that affect intensity is a multidimensional construct that encompasses two independent yet related dimensions of positive and negative affect intensity and the EIS-H may be used to reliably measure it. Bryant and colleagues (Bryant, Yarnold, & Grimm, 1996) examined the goodness-of-fit of five different measurement models of the AIM in order to resolve the dimensionality issue of affect intensity They noted that the Larsen's one-factor model produced the poorest fit, whereas the Bryant et al.'s (1996) three-factor model (Positive Affectivity, Negative Intensity, Negative Reactivity) produced the best fit. These empirical evidences indicate that affect intensity should be considered as multidimensional construct, the lack of consensus regarding the number of factors associated with it suggests two possibilities. Dimensionality of Affect Intensity mean and secondly, the measure(s) used to examine the structure of the construct may be psychometrically less adequate
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