Self-reported emotional intelligence: Construct similarity and functional dissimilarity of higher-order processing in Iran and the United States

This study employed the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS) to assess self-reported emotional intelligence cross-culturally as an input (attention to emotions), process (clarity of emotions), and output (repair of emotions) information-processing system. Iranian (N = 231) and American (N = 220) university students responded to the TMMS along with measures of alexithymia, public and private self-consciousness, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and perceived stress. Negative correlations with alexithymia and expected linkages with all other variables documented the validity of the TMMS in both cultures. Most of the other measures correlated similarly in the two samples. However, private and public self-consciousness displayed a stronger positive association in Iran. These two scales were also more predictive of adjustment in Iran and of maladjustment in the United States. This difference perhaps reflected a poorer integration of the two dimensions of self-consciousness within a presumably more individualistic American society. Confirmatory factor analyses and measurement invariance procedures revealed cross-cultural similarities in the fit of an a priori higher-order factor structure to the obtained data, but subsequent structural equation modelling techniques uncovered cross-cultural dissimilarities in the actual processing of emotional information. Specifically, the higher-order factors of emotional intelligence were similar, but the interrelationships among those higher-order factors were not. As expected, Iranians displayed positive relationships among the input, processing, and output activities of the information-processing model. For the Americans, however, greater input was associated with diminished processing and output. This unanticipated relative contrast seemed congruent with speculation that the historical American emphasis on the self and individualism promotes positive, optimistic thinking. Overall, these data most importantly suggested that subtle cultural differences might exist in the processing of emotional information.