MEASUREMENT AND MISMEASUREMENT OF MOOD - RECURRENT AND EMERGENT ISSUES

The ''affective explosion'' in psychology has led to tremendous advanc es in mood measurement. Mood ratings reflect a hierarchical structure consisting of two broad dimensions-Positive Affect and Negative Affect -and multiple specific states. Brief scales have been developed that r eliably assess Positive and Negative Affect across different populatio ns and time frames, in both between- and within-subject data. We exami ne controversies related to (a) the content of these higher order scal es and (b) the independence of Positive and Negative Affect. Regarding the latter, we show that Positive and Negative Affect scales remain l argely independent across a wide range of conditions, even after contr olling for random and systematic error. Finally, there remains little consensus regarding the lower order structure of affect. This lack of a compelling taxonomy has substantially slowed progress in assessing m ood at the specific affect level.