The Discrete Emotions Questionnaire : a new tool for measuring state self-reported emotions

Cindy Harmon-Jones, Brock Bastian, Eddie Harmon-Jones

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

319 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Several discrete emotions have broad theoretical and empirical importance, as shown by converging evidence from diverse areas of psychology, including facial displays, developmental behaviors, and neuroscience. However, the measurement of these states has not progressed along with theory, such that when researchers measure subjectively experienced emotions, they commonly rely on scales assessing broad dimensions of affect (positivity and negativity), rather than discrete emotions. The current manuscript presents four studies that validate a new instrument, the Discrete Emotions Questionnaire (DEQ), that is sensitive to eight distinct state emotions: anger, disgust, fear, anxiety, sadness, happiness, relaxation, and desire. Emotion theory supporting the importance of distinguishing these specific emotions is reviewed.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages25
JournalPLoS One
Volume11
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© 2016 Harmon-Jones et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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