THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG MOMENTARY EMOTION EXPERIENCES, PERSONALITY DESCRIPTIONS, AND RETROSPECTIVE RATINGS OF EMOTION

In psychological research, respondents often make retrospective rating s of their emotional experiences after an extended period of time. The present study sought to determine whether such memory-based ratings a re influenced by respondents' descriptions of their own emotionality, over and above a summary of their momentary emotion ratings. Participa nts completed self-report measures of neuroticism and extraversion and made momentary ratings of their emotions across 90 days. At the end o f the study, participants recalled what their emotions had been during the course of the study. Findings indicated that recrospective rating s of emotion contained accurate information about momentary emotion re ports. Also the retrospective ratings were influenced in the direction of respondents' personality descriptions. Individual who described th emselves as neurotic remembered experiencing more negative emotion tha n they reported on a momentary basis; individuals who described themse lves as extraverted displayed a trend to remember more positive emotio n than they reported on a momentary basis.