Developing a Scale Measuring Emotion Validation and Invalidation

Abstract

How leaders attempt to manage employees’ emotions serves as a prominent topic within the fields of leadership and emotions. Emotion validation and invalidation refer to various ways leaders respond to employees’ emotions. Based on a lack of research and literature on how leaders manage employees’ emotions, researchers and scholars often refer to these concepts as promising topics of investigation. To contribute to the literature and research regarding how leaders manage employees’ emotions, we attempt to develop a valid scale measuring emotion validation and invalidation. Three studies were included in the scale development process. The first study involved a qualitative investigation of 30 MBA students’ experiences with emotion validation and invalidation. This study resulted in categories and a pool of items, which were further reviewed by experts in our second study. The expert review resulted in 44 items, which were included in a quantitative study. By performing principal component analyses and conducting post-analyses assessing for validity and unidimensionality, the pool of items was reduced to 10 items. The scale of 10 items contributes to theory and research about emotion validation and invalidation, which thus reflect different ways leaders attempt to manage employees’ emotions.