Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: It is a long known reality that humans have difficulty to accurately rate the absolute intensity of internal experiences, yet the predominant way experience sampling (ESM) researchers assess participants’ momentary emotion levels is by means of an absolute measurement scale. In a daily-life experiment (n = 178), we evaluate the efficacy of two alternative measurement methods that solicit a simpler, relative emotional evaluation: (1) the visualization of a relative anchor point on the absolute rating scale that depicts people’s previous emotion rating, and (2) the phrasing of relative emotion items that ask for a comparison with earlier emotion levels by means of a relative rating scale. Using six quality criteria relevant for ESM, we conclude that the use of a visual ‘Last’ anchor significantly improves emotion measurement in daily life: (a) Theoretically, this method has the best perceived user experience, which suggests that it better aligns with people’s emotional rating experience. Methodologically, this type of measurement generates ESM time series that (b) carried a stronger emotional signal, (c) exhibited less measurement error, produced person-level emotion dynamic measures that were (d) more stable, and generally showed stronger (e) unique and (f) incremental relations with external criteria like neuroticism and borderline personality. In sum, we see great value in the addition of a relative ‘Last’ anchor to the absolute measurement scales of future ESM studies on emotions, as it structures the ambiguous rating space and introduces more standardization within and between individuals. In contrast, using relatively phrased emotion items is not recommended.