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Affect Grid: A Single-Item Scale of Pleasure and Arousal

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This article introduces a single-item scale, the Affect Grid, designed as a quick means of assessing affect along the dimensions of pleasure–displeasure and arousal–sleepiness. The Affect Grid is potentially suitable for any study that requires judgments about affect of either a descriptive or a subjective kind. The scale was shown to have adequate reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity in 4 studies in which college students used the Affect Grid to describe (a) their current mood, (b) the meaning of emotion-related words, and (c) the feelings conveyed by facial expressions. Other studies (e.g., J. Snodgrass et al; see record 1989-13842-001) are cited to illustrate the potential uses of the Affect Grid as a measure of mood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Journal
of
Personality
and
Social Psychology
1989,
Vol.
57, No.
3,493-502
Copyright
1989
by
the
American
PswWoeical
Association,
Inc.
0022-3514/89/J00.75
Affect
Grid:
A
Single-Item
Scale
of
Pleasure
and
Arousal
James
A.
Russell
University
of
British
Columbia,
Vancouver
British Columbia, Canada
Anna
Weiss
and
Gerald
A.
Mendelsohn
University
of
California,
Berkeley
This article introduces
a
single-item scale,
the
Affect
Grid,
designed
as a
quick means
of
assessing
affect
along
the
dimensions
of
pleasure-displeasure
and
arousal-sleepiness.
The
Affect
Grid
is
poten-
tially
suitable
for any
study that requires judgments about
affect
of
either
a
descriptive
or a
subjective
kind.
The
scale
was
shown
to
have
adequate
reliability,
convergent validity,
and
discriminant validity
in 4
studies
in
which college students used
the
Affect
Grid
to
describe
(a)
their current mood,
(b)
the
meaning
of
emotion-related words,
and (c) the
feelings
conveyed
by
facial
expressions. Other
studies
are
cited
to
illustrate
the
potential uses
of
the
Affect
Grid
as a
measure
of
mood.
In
this article,
we
introduce
the
Affect
Grid,
a
scale designed
as a
quick
means
of
assessing
affect
along
the
dimensions
of
pleasure-displeasure
and
arousal-sleepiness.
The
Affect
Grid
is
potentially suitable
for any
study that requires judgments
about
affect
of
either
a
descriptive
or a
subjective kind.
The
Affect
Grid
is a
single-item
scale.
Our aim was for an
instrument
that would
be
short
and
easy
to fill out and
that
could,
therefore,
be
used rapidly
and
repeatedly. Currently
available
scales
of
affect
are
multiple-item checklists
or
ques-
tionnaires that
are too time-consuming or too
distracting
for
some
purposes.
In
particular, they
do not
lend themselves
to
continuous
or
quickly repeated observation. They
are
awkward
in
dealing
with
the
rapid fluctuations
of
affect
that occur,
for
example,
in
response
to
music,
or for all we
know,
to
many
ev-
eryday
emotion-laden events.
In
repeated-measures
designs,
subjects
tiring
of the
same checklist
may
eventually
become less
conscientious
or, in
longitudinal studies, drop
out of the
study.
Researchers
who
have
wanted something quick
and
simple
have
sometimes resorted
to
homespun
measures—with
resulting
un-
certainty
as to
precisely what
is
being measured
and how
well.
The
Affect
Grid
is
shown
in
Figure
1.
The
subject
is
asked
to
take
several minutes beforehand
to
learn precisely
how to use
it.
General instructions
for
this purpose
are
given
in the
Appen-
dix.1
Once
the
subject understands these general
instructions,
he
or she can
then
be
given
the
Affect
Grid
together with what-
ever
specific instructions
are
appropriate,
such
as
"Please
rate
This study
was
supported
by
Grant
410-85-1379
from the
Social Sci-
ences
and
Humanities Research Council
of
Canada.
This
study
was
con-
ceived
and
much
of the
data
gathered while James
A.
Russell
was
visit-
ing
the
Institute
for
Personality
Assessment
and
Research,
for
whose
support
we are
grateful.
We
thank Larry Chan, Lisa
Wong,
and
Janet
Wu
for
their help
as
research
assistants;
Liz
McCririck
for
typing
the
manuscript;
and
Eric
Eich,
Jessica
McFarlane,
Auke
Tellegen, David Watson,
and
Tannis
Wil-
liams
for
comments
on an
earlier draft.
Correspondence concerning this article should
be
addressed
to
James
A.
Russell, Department
of
Psychology,
University
of
British
Columbia,
#2095-2136
West
Mall,
Vancouver,
British
Columbia,
Canada
V6T
IY7.
your
reaction
to
each stimulus
as it
occurs,"
"Please
rate
your
mood
as it is
right now,"
and so on. The
subject places
a
single
mark
somewhere within
the
grid.
The
pleasure score (P), which
ranges
from
1 to 9, is the
number
of the
column checked, count-
ing
from th