Following the Emotional Well-being Data Trail: Part 2
Abstract
This second article in a two-part series outlines three more research studies on the Emotional State Indicator survey instrument. These studies influenced the design of the assessment and an emotional well-being system, for which it serves as the centerpiece.
Keywords
Emotional well-being, Emotional balance, Measurement
Updated 092924
Table of Contents Show
Introduction
Multiple rounds of research on the Emotional State Indicator (ESI) have resulted in an 87-item assessment. This assessment is the crown jewel of Emotional Intelligence 3.0® (EI3.0®) and the EI3.0 System of Emotional Well-being (SEW). SEW is part of a larger framework of core well-being known as the White-Bryan Gestalt of Human Wholeness (GHW).
This survey instrument measures emotional balance, the primary benchmark of emotional well-being (EWB). It does so by assessing critical factors identified through research. The results identify where an individual's emotional functioning falls on a continuum ranging from low balance to high balance.
The survey questions are designed to measure a person’s relational dynamics of connection, collaboration, and communication. These are the fundamental aspects for and conduits of love and belonging. When these dynamics entangle (because of emotional imbalance), the quality of interactions with self, others, life, and the system is negatively impacted. When a person is in emotional balance, they engage, greatly enhancing the quality of these dynamics.
The quality of a person’s relational dynamics is a vital indicator in the EI3.0 body of work. It houses a comprehensive approach to achieving EWB, which contributes to happiness and satisfaction, and core well-being, which contributes to joy and fulfillment.
This article summarizes research rounds 4, 5, and 6 and explains their impact on SEW.
To facilitate clarity, an EI3.0 Glossary is available for download at the end of this article.
Round 4
In Spring 2023, a study comparing the EQ-i 2.0® to the ESI was conducted. The EQ-i 2.0 is one of the world’s most widely used emotional intelligence tests, backed by over 25 years of research and experience. This study, called Round 4, included 30 participants. The study hypothesized that a person’s emotional balance should reveal their emotional intelligence. Ha! Was I wrong on that one.
The EQ-i 2.0 uses these emotional intelligence classifications: low-range, mid-range, and high-range. I used these emotional balance classifications for the ESI: low, below-average, average, above-average, and high. Figure 1 compares these designations. Note that the average balance category doesn’t mean average balance. It is where the highest percentage of the population is located (about 32%).
My expectation was that people with high balance would have high-range emotional intelligence, people with above-average and average balance would have mid-range emotional intelligence, and people with below-average and low balance would have low-range emotional intelligence. That didn’t occur consistently among the participants.
Figure 1. Assessment Designations
About 60% of the participant results aligned with my expectations, which means 40% did not. That perplexed me. Part of the coaching guidance offered by those who certify practitioners in the EQ-i 2.0 is to ask the clients if they had anything going on in their lives when they took the assessment. Apparently, and obviously, emotional swings due to life circumstances can impact responses. For some reason, I couldn’t let that go. I decided to explore emotional swings as a possible reason for the differences between the ESI and EQ-i 2.0 results.
Theory Development
While I knew there was a construct of emotional balance, I had struggled to connect it to something else in the system. Round 4 was the catalyst for the realization that we have an emotional operating system that has an emotional presence that determines how we interact emotionally with ourselves (inner emotional presence) and others and life (outer emotional presence). Both are required to be in balance to be in emotional balance. This insight would lead to a breakthrough about the different facets of our identity and which one most influences EWB.
As I mapped these updates to the framework, I finally realized the real task the universe had assigned me wasn’t to devise a new model of emotional intelligence but to understand the emotional operating system underneath it. That was when SEW was born. Its premise is that we each have an emotional operating system that is balanced, imbalanced, or somewhere between these two poles, and that balance impacts quality of life.
Revisiting Previous Studies
To round out the edges of SEW, I revisited data from previous studies to understand more about the balance of the emotional operating system and what influences it. I also began tinkering with subscales to achieve a better model fit.
During this review, I traced the root cause of the imbalance of the emotional operating system to the harshness of our childhood experiences around love and belonging. These experiences shaped our self-perceptions of worth and authority and made us fearful of exclusion. At this young age, our survival instincts were running the show, with a mantra of “I have to do what it takes to remain safe, as I won’t make it on my own.” Here is where SEW connects to Maslow’s (1943) Hierarchy of Needs. See Figure 2.
Figure 2. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
In SEW, the quality of our relationships, and thus our lives, is greatly enhanced when our emotional needs for love and belonging are met. Unfortunately, we can’t access these higher-order needs when we fear for our emotional safety.
The harsher childhood experiences around love and belonging are, the more distorted self-perceptions are. The more distorted the perceptions, the more imbalanced the emotional operating system. The belief that the foundation of the emotional operating system was our self-perceptions of worth and authority was an educated guess that seemed to fit the theory.
With these new insights, I began investigating possible indicators that could reveal a person’s perceptions of self-worth and self-authority.
One of the most critical paths that emerged as I waded through the data was the idea of different versions of the self. There seemed to be a managed self, a stressed self, and a unique self. In adulthood, the immediate threat of marginalization activates the stressed self. It usually shows up when the managed self has run out of resources or is overwhelmed by fear, resulting in activation of the stress response.
When operating from the managed self, a person effectively deploys their coping mechanisms while having the will to acknowledge and mitigate their tendency toward less productive behaviors. However, they still engage in emotional tendencies: compulsively seeking or offering love and belonging or over-relying on others for it instead of protecting (which is what the stressed self does). Approximately 99% of the population runs the patterns of their emotional tendencies when they aren’t protecting (and aren’t even aware they are doing it). It is a reflection of the imbalanced emotional operating system.
Upon activation, the stressed self circumvents the conscious brain, taking over decision-making and overriding conscious choice. It is so determined to keep a person safe that it will turn on others (interpersonal conflict) and the self (inner conflict in the form of self-criticism) to preserve emotional safety.
On the other hand, the unique self sees the worth of the self and knows how to choose from that place of worth. In this balance of emotional balance, apprehension over marginalization is minimized.
Resting within this critical revelation was the understanding that the EQ-i 2.0 can’t distinguish which facet of a person’s identity is being assessed: the managed, the stressed, or the unique self.
Round 4 highlighted that assessing emotional balance effectively uncovers the shadow self - the aspect of personality that emerges under stress. This process demonstrates how feelings of emotional insecurity can constrain one's current performance. The ESI is designed to capture the lingering effects of childhood experiences in adulthood, regardless of which facet of self responds to the questions. Thus, the results consistently reflect how past experiences shape your present emotional landscape and functioning.
Based on the insights gained from Round 4, SEW underwent significant design changes. I focused on the predominant patterns of emotional safety as they form the survival instinct's stress pattern (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn). An actual or perceived threat to emotional safety activates this pattern. When emotional safety is threatened, the natural response is to become angry. Anger prepares the body to defend against the threat if needed. A fight can be physical or verbal. Next, the body determines how to resist the emotional threat. Finally, anger and resistance are conveyed via defensive communication. Here is more about each item:
Emotional safety is at risk when a person fears being devalued, disregarded, or excluded (their worth or authority feels marginalized).
When we love ourselves and belong to ourselves as we are, no facet of a person’s unique individuality is excluded. People who care for and value themselves feel secure in who they are, know how to connect and collaborate with others, life, and the system, and extend that outward.
A person’s feeling of safety arises from within, so they typically aren’t triggered by an external experience that others may consider marginalizing.
Anger because it masks low self-worth and the hidden self-hatred that accompanies it.
The self-hatred forms because the child is not accepted or allowed to belong as they are.
If no one else likes the child as they are, why should the child-like themselves as they are?
People usually aren’t aware of their low self-worth or self-hatred (it is in the shadows), so it can be challenging to measure these two factors. However, just about everyone understands anger and has experienced it at some point.
Anger also has consistent patterns that can be used to predict behavior when stress triggers it.
Resistance because it masks low self-authority and the unique self that was disowned in childhood in an effort to stay safe.
People usually aren’t aware of their low self-authority or that they have a unique self, so it can be challenging to measure those factors.
Just about everyone understands resisting and has engaged in some version of it.
Resistance also has consistent patterns that can be used to predict behavior when stress triggers it.
Defensive communication because it is the outward manifestation of a person’s inner perceptions of worth.
These factors felt like significant structural conflicts to explore further.
SEW was created using systems thinking (this methodology was described in a previous journal article). In that method, once you know the structural conflicts that slow down a system, the opposites likely speed up the system. Identifying anger, resistance, and defensive communication as the most influential drivers of emotional imbalance helped me identify the opposites of peace, allowing, and open communication as the most influential drivers of emotional balance. I used these opposites to map a from-to movement that became the development path to emotional balance and, thus, emotional well-being. A later journal article provides more details on this development matrix.
The highlight of Round 4 theory development was understanding that when most people are confronted by an immediate threat to their emotional safety, they get stressed. They then protect themselves via anger, resistance, and defensive communication. These patterns entangle by creating trapped energy (energy that lingers long after the moment is over).
Trapped energy entangles. Thus, it felt like exploring entangling and engaging as subscales might yield data points important to ongoing theory development.
I must say that I would often feel stuck during theory development. I would fall asleep at night, turning over an idea, only to wake up at 5:00 a.m. with a note from the universe in my head: “Hey, doesn’t that sound like entanglement versus engagement?” I would immediately rise and begin exploring the idea. It is so very clear to me that something larger than me was leading the development of the EI3.0 body of work. That is how the notion of entanglement versus engagement came about.
Round 5
In Spring 2024, I reorganized the ESI questions around the concepts of entanglement and engagement. I did this because I had begun to observe that the indicators of imbalance entangle people with others, locking them in emotional imbalance. Entangling happens when the stressed self shows up and protects via anger, resistance, and defensive communication. The opposites of peace, allowing, and open communication emerged as engagement patterns that did not entangle.
As I mapped the continuums of anger to peace, resistance to allowing, and defensive to open communication, I saw a trend emerge in these continuums that involved the softening of anger and resistance toward others, then life, and finally, toward the self. I combined these trends to create six levels, four levels of entangling and two levels of engagement:
Level 1: Entangling the self, others, and life (imbalanced)
Level 2: Entangling others and life while exploring the unique self (moving toward balance)
Level 3: Entangling others and life while embracing the unique self (moving toward balance)
Level 4: Entangling life while exploring others and embracing the unique self (more balanced than not)
Level 5: Engaging by embracing the unique self and others while exploring life (emotionally balanced)
Level 6: Engaging by allowing (divine balance and system balance)
Of the 87 survey items, 54 are used to determine a person's level, and 33 are used to pinpoint the what and how of resistance.
When 50 participants completed the ESI in Spring 2024, this data set was used to isolate the impact of imbalance through the lens of entanglement and engagement using a regression analysis (Round 5). The participant results were sorted into three categories: above-average balance, average balance, and below-average balance. No participant fell into the high-balance or low-balance categories. A regression analysis was conducted on the average balance, and below-average balance data sets collectively and individually to understand the relative importance of each question. The above-average balance sets were excluded from the analysis as there were not enough in the sample to be statistically significant. Note that average balance does not designate the type of balance. It describes where the population's mid-range falls on the imbalanced scale to balanced.
Each of the 54 ESI questions was loaded onto one of the six levels of engaging and entangling. Level 1 is a place of imbalance and includes about 75% of the population, encompassing average and below-average respondents. This level contains 15 questions. The remaining question distribution was as follows: Level 2 has three, Level 3 has 13, Level 4 has six, Level 5 has nine, and Level 6 has eight.
The results were compelling, revealing that people in the structure of imbalance can’t see or understand the behaviors of the structure of balance.
Each of the 15 questions loaded onto Level 1 positively correlated with entangling. Table 1 presents the standard coefficients for a sample of the questions at this level. The questions presented capture behaviors that entangle.
Table 1. Sample Level 1 (emotional imbalance) positive correlations
Of the remaining 39 questions for Levels 2 through 6 (which are moving toward balance or are balanced), all but three had a negative correlation. The questions with positive correlations focused on apologizing and forgiveness, which people with imbalance usually aren’t skilled at, but they understand they aren’t skilled at. See Table 2. The questions presented in this table capture behaviors that entangle.
Table 2. The only positive correlations for questions used in Levels 2 through 6
Finally, Table 3 offers a sampling of the negative coefficients for levels 2-6. The questions presented in this table reflect behaviors that engage.
Table 3. Sample negative correlations in Levels 2 through 6
When I saw these results, it reinforced my understanding that people in imbalance don’t understand the behaviors of balance. They can only do what they know: entangle. It explains why achieving emotional balance can be tricky.
Round 6
A subsequent data analysis used the same 50 participants from Round 5 but loaded all the questions to the two factors of entanglement and engagement to determine Cronbach’s Alpha (Round 6). Entanglement and engagement turned out to be the most reliable factors to date. The Cronbach’s Alpha for the entanglement questions was .806, while it was .928 for the engagement questions.
Based on this analysis, and to understand its importance in real-world situations, I began using the concepts of entangling versus engaging with my coaching clients. My favorite new coaching question is, “Are you entangling or engaging?” Using it opened up a new level of conversation and understanding with them.
Understanding the difference between engaging and entangling is central to the current version of the ESI.
Conclusion
This second article in a two-part series summarizes significant studies on the ESI, a reliable and valid measure of emotional balance, the primary benchmark of EWB. This research influenced the development of SEW by identifying anger, resistance, and defensive communication as critical elements of emotional imbalance. It also facilitated classifying our emotional safety behaviors as entangling and our love and belonging behaviors as engaging.
Expanding our understanding of EWB and its different facets and developing a framework alongside it will hopefully allow for more efficient and effective development.
While the six studies summarized in this two-part article series offered critical information for formulating a new approach to EWB, the journey is just beginning. There are still many more research opportunities with the ESI, including pursuing a better fit. Also, exploring engaging versus entangling and the nuances of anger, resistance, and defensive communication feel like vital next steps to nurturing the emerging discipline of EWB.
Miscellaneous Notes
This section shares information on participant recruitment, data screening, and funding.
Participant Consent
Every research participant in the various studies explained in this article agreed to participate, acknowledged being over 18, and consented to their responses being randomized and used for research and educational purposes.
Participants in Round 5 were offered a $10 gift card or a donation to their charity of choice for participating.
Data Screening
Each dataset was screened before data analysis in each round to ensure inclusion/exclusion criteria were met. In Round 5, some participants were removed because 1) they completed the survey too quickly, 2) they took too long to complete the survey, 3) there was no variance in their responses, or 4) they dropped out before completing the survey.
Funding
All of the studies described in this article were funded by my husband and biggest supporter, James W. Bryan. Thank you. I appreciate you.
Downloads
Download the PDF version of this article.
Download terms used in EI3.0 (Revised March 30, 2025).
References
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-96. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346
