ASSESSING YOUR OWN PERSONALITY
Emotional Expressiveness
Indicate the extent to which each of the following statements describes you.
Indicate your response using a 6-point scale with 1 = Never true and 6 =Always true.
1. I think of myself as emotionally expressive.
2. People think of me as an unemotional person.*
3. I keep my feelings to myself.*
4. I am often considered indifferent by others.*
5. People can read my emotions.
6. I display my emotions to other people.
7. I don ’t like to let other people see how I ’m feeling.*
8. I am able to cry in front of other people.
9. Even if I am feeling very emotional, I don’ t let others see my
feelings.*
10. Other people aren ’t easily able to observe what I ’m feeling.*
11. I am not very emotionally expressive.*
12. Even when I ’m experiencing strong feelings, I don’ t express
them outwardly.*
13. I can ’t hide the way I ’m feeling.
14. Other people believe me to be very emotional.
15. I don ’t express my emotions to other people.*
16. The way I feel is different from how others think I feel.*
17. I hold my feelings in.*
To calculate your score, first reverse the answer values for the items
w i t ha s t e r i s k s .T h a ti s ,f o rt h e s ei t e m so n l y ,6=1 ,5=2 ,4=3 ,3=4 ,
2 = 5, 1 = 6. Then add all 17 answer values. The higher your score,
the more expressive you tend to be. When the test developers gave
t h i ss c a l et oag r o u po fu n d e r g r a d u a t e s ,t h e yc a m eu pw i t ht h e
following norms:
Mean Standard Deviation
Females 66.60 2.71
Males 61.15 12.69Total Sample 64.67 12.97
Scale: The Emotional Expressivity Scale
Source: Copyright © 1998 by the American Psychological Association. Reproduced with permis-
sion. Kring, A. M., Smith, D. A., & Neale, J. M. (1994). Individual differences in dispositional
expressiveness: Development and validation of the Emotional Expressivity Scale. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology , 66, 934– 949. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.66.5.934. No further
reproduction or distribution is permitted without written permission from the American PsychologicalAssociation.Emotions 211