Going Through the Emotions: The Measurement of Emotions with the Brief Affect Measure

Many measures of affect exist, but they are used inconsistently in psychological studies (Weidman, Steckler, & Tracy, 2016). The present aimed to create a short affect measure that reconciles different views of emotion. The aim was a measure that represents all four quadrants of the affective circumplex, reduces redundancy, and retains good measurement properties. A list of items was created from previous measures and studies of affect, then refined manually. In Study 1a, participants described emotional episodes, then recalled the extent to which they felt each of the 354 feelings. In Study 1b, research assistants answered questions about each of the feeling items, rating them on a series of dimensions including pleasantness and arousal. These ratings were used to sort words into the four quadrants of the affective circumplex. An exploratory factor analysis on the data from Study 1a revealed two factors. The 20 highest-loading items from each quadrant were included in Study 2. After eliminating redundant items and adding theoretically important items, 76 items were included in Study 2. Study 2 was used to further narrow down items using an EFA, as well as other indices such as study frequency, Google Ngram frequency, and reliability. Using these metrics, three items from each quadrant were chosen for the final 12 item scale, called the brief affect measure (BAM). The scale revealed high convergent validity with other affect scales, good discriminant validity, and high internal consistency reliability. Future studies are needed to further validate this measure in a new sample

Cognitive and Physiological Measures in Well-Being Science: Limitations and Lessons.

Social and personality psychology have been criticized for overreliance on potentially biased self-report variables. In well-being science, researchers have called for more "objective" physiological and cognitive measures to evaluate the efficacy of well-being-increasing interventions. This may now be possible with the recent rise of cost-effective, commercially available wireless physiological recording devices and smartphone-based cognitive testing. We sought to determine whether cognitive and physiological measures, coupled with machine learning methods, could quantify the effects of positive interventions. The current 2-part study used a college sample (N = 245) to contrast the cognitive (memory, attention, construal) and physiological (autonomic, electroencephalogram) effects of engaging in one of two randomly assigned writing activities (i.e., prosocial or "antisocial"). In the prosocial condition, participants described an interaction when they acted in a kind way, then described an interaction when they received kindness. In the "antisocial" condition, participants wrote instead about an interaction when they acted in an unkind way and received unkindness, respectively. Our study replicated previous research on the beneficial effects of recalling prosocial experiences as assessed by self-report. However, we did not detect an effect of the positive or negative activity intervention on either cognitive or physiological measures. More research is needed to investigate under what conditions cognitive and physiological measures may be applicable, but our findings lead us to conclude that they should not be unilaterally favored over the traditional self-report approach

Cognitive and Physiological Measures in Well-Being Science: Limitations and Lessons.

Social and personality psychology have been criticized for overreliance on potentially biased self-report variables. In well-being science, researchers have called for more "objective" physiological and cognitive measures to evaluate the efficacy of well-being-increasing interventions. This may now be possible with the recent rise of cost-effective, commercially available wireless physiological recording devices and smartphone-based cognitive testing. We sought to determine whether cognitive and physiological measures, coupled with machine learning methods, could quantify the effects of positive interventions. The current 2-part study used a college sample (N = 245) to contrast the cognitive (memory, attention, construal) and physiological (autonomic, electroencephalogram) effects of engaging in one of two randomly assigned writing activities (i.e., prosocial or "antisocial"). In the prosocial condition, participants described an interaction when they acted in a kind way, then described an interaction when they received kindness. In the "antisocial" condition, participants wrote instead about an interaction when they acted in an unkind way and received unkindness, respectively. Our study replicated previous research on the beneficial effects of recalling prosocial experiences as assessed by self-report. However, we did not detect an effect of the positive or negative activity intervention on either cognitive or physiological measures. More research is needed to investigate under what conditions cognitive and physiological measures may be applicable, but our findings lead us to conclude that they should not be unilaterally favored over the traditional self-report approach

Examining the Social in the Prosocial: Episode-Level Features of Social Interactions and Kind Acts Predict Social Connection and Well-Being

Experiments prompting people to engage in more prosocial behavior (e.g., acts of kindness) or simple social interactions (e.g., acting extraverted) have both shown promise in boosting well-being. However, little is known about how much the impact on well-being depends on the type of interpersonal interaction (i.e., social versus prosocial) or on other proximal features (e.g., whether the interaction takes place online versus in-person, the closeness of the relationship, or in-the-moment social connection). We randomly assigned a sample of full-time employees recruited via mTurk (N = 754) to perform weekly acts of kindness online vs. in person, to engage in weekly social interactions online vs. in person, or to list their daily activities (control) over the course of 4 weeks. First, on average, all conditions reported improvements in well-being (i.e., increases in positive affect and life satisfaction, decreases in negative affect) across the 4-week intervention period. Second, relative to controls, the four experimental groups reported increases in general social connectedness over time. Finally, according to auxiliary analyses collapsed across experimental condition, closer relationship with target and non-digital medium of delivery predicted in-the-moment (or episode-level) social connection, which, in turn, was associated with general social connectedness and positive affect. We conclude that the “who” and the “how” of a behavior (i.e., its target, its delivery method, and the feelings of social connection generated) may be as important for well-being as the “what” (i.e., whether the behavior is social or prosocial)

Examining the Social in the Prosocial: Episode-Level Features of Social Interactions and Kind Acts Predict Social Connection and Well-Being

Experiments prompting people to engage in more prosocial behavior (e.g., acts of kindness) or simple social interactions (e.g., acting extraverted) have both shown promise in boosting well-being. However, little is known about how much the impact on well-being depends on the type of interpersonal interaction (i.e., social versus prosocial) or on other proximal features (e.g., whether the interaction takes place online versus in-person, the closeness of the relationship, or in-the-moment social connection). We randomly assigned a sample of full-time employees recruited via mTurk (N = 754) to perform weekly acts of kindness online vs. in person, to engage in weekly social interactions online vs. in person, or to list their daily activities (control) over the course of 4 weeks. First, on average, all conditions reported improvements in well-being (i.e., increases in positive affect and life satisfaction, decreases in negative affect) across the 4-week intervention period. Second, relative to controls, the four experimental groups reported increases in general social connectedness over time. Finally, according to auxiliary analyses collapsed across experimental condition, closer relationship with target and non-digital medium of delivery predicted in-the-moment (or episode-level) social connection, which, in turn, was associated with general social connectedness and positive affect. We conclude that the “who” and the “how” of a behavior (i.e., its target, its delivery method, and the feelings of social connection generated) may be as important for well-being as the “what” (i.e., whether the behavior is social or prosocial)

Examining the Social in the Prosocial: Episode-Level Features of Social Interactions and Kind Acts Predict Social Connection and Well-Being

Experiments prompting people to engage in more prosocial behavior (e.g., acts of kindness) or simple social interactions (e.g., acting extraverted) have both shown promise in boosting well-being. However, little is known about how much the impact on well-being depends on the type of interpersonal interaction (i.e., social vs. prosocial) or on other proximal features (e.g., whether the interaction takes place online vs. in-person, the closeness of the relationship, or amount of social connection associated with a given interaction). We randomly assigned a sample of full-time employees recruited via a special employed mTurk sample (N = 754) to perform weekly acts of kindness online versus in-person, to engage in weekly social interactions online versus in-person, or to list their daily activities (control) over the course of 4 weeks. First, on average, all conditions reported improvements in well-being (i.e., increases in positive affect and life satisfaction, decreases in negative affect) across the 4-week intervention period. Second, relative to controls, the four experimental groups reported increases in general social connectedness over time. Finally, according to auxiliary analyses collapsed across the experimental condition, closer relationship with target and non-digital medium of delivery predicted episode-level social connection, which, in turn, was associated with general social connectedness and positive affect. We conclude that the "who" and the "how" of a behavior (i.e., its target, its delivery method, and the feelings of social connection generated) are important for well-being, but not the "what" (i.e., whether the behavior is social or prosocial). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)