Kidwell, Blair L.2011-08-222011-08-222004-04-08etd-05082004-161747http://hdl.handle.net/10919/11172The focus of this research is to examine the impact of emotional intelligence on consumer decision making. Several research goals are presented: 1) to develop and test a practical domain-specific scale of emotional ability, 2) to identify the influence of emotional ability on behavioral individual and group level performance in a consumer context, 3) and to identify how performance is further influenced by cognitive ability, cognitive and emotional confidence and calibration between perceived (i.e., confidence) and actual ability. Three studies were conducted to meet these goals. Study 1 involved the development and validation of a consumer emotional ability scale (CEAS), based on four underlying emotional abilities (i.e., perceiving, facilitating, understanding, managing). This instrument allowed for further examination of how emotional intelligence affected performance among consumer relationships. A proposed conceptual model was examined in an individual (study 2) and small group (study 3) context using the CEAS scale, along with additional items to assess the influence of cognitive ability, cognitive and emotional confidence, and calibration on performance in the consumer domain of healthy food choices.ETDIn CopyrightEmotional IntelligenceDecision MakingAbilityCalibrationConfidenceDissertationhttp://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05082004-161747