Emotional Information Management: Concept development and measurement in public service announcements

Research on emotion as information in persuasive communication and ad response has created a need for a measure of individual abilities in the management of emotional information. Previous measures (e.g., emotional intelligence measures) lack adequate validity and reliability for use in persuasion and advertising contexts. Four studies iteratively refine a parsimonious Emotional Information Management scale that corresponds to theoretical dimensions of the construct and interrelationships between those dimensions—recognition of emotion, regulatory processes of optimistic utilization and management of emotions, as well as cognitive and emotional empathy. Reliability and construct validity are demonstrated, and scale norms are established. Although gender does not affect recognition of emotions or cognitive empathy, females exhibit greater emotional empathy ability, whereas males exhibit greater emotion regulation ability. Measuring emotional information management should contribute to greater understanding of responses to emotion‐laden or emotion‐eliciting persuasive communication (e.g., public service announcements). ©2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.