Detecting transient emotional responses with improved self-report measures and instructions

Psychological research often yields null results on self-reported emotion as measured by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), even when using manipulations that might intuitively be expected to be emotionally impactful. Three studies reported here support the hypothesis that changes in self-reported negative emotion may be detected more sensitively when discrete emotions are measured rather than by either PANAS NA or a measure created by combining discrete emotions, and when participants were instructed to report how they felt during an emotion-eliciting event versus how they felt afterward. In Study 1, emotion was manipulated with disgusting photographs, in Study 2, with recall of social exclusion/inclusion, and in Study 3, with reminders of personal mortality. Discussion focuses on implications for detecting emotional changes in psychological research, and the inadvisability of interpreting null results on an insensitive measure as indicating that emotional changes did not occur. (PsycINFO Database Record